South African innovators are holding their own globally, as the world turns to new styles of business, says HP.
Speaking in Johannesburg at the HP Reimagine 2015 summit for partners and customers, Susan Blocher, HP's global VP for server marketing, said fresh business ideas and innovative applications were rapidly emerging from South Africa.
"South Africa may have faced constraints in terms of networking and bandwidth. But necessity is the mother of invention, and we are seeing innovation emerging from South Africa that is leapfrogging that seen in the rest of the world," Blocher said. "Sometimes, it's an advantage to be forced to innovate."
Innovators, start-ups and mature enterprises that operate like start-ups will have the upper hand in the new business environment, says HP. The computing giant is changing its own go-to-market strategies in line with what it sees as one of the biggest shifts in the market in decades. Now, agility and innovation underpinned by technology give businesses the competitive edge. "The disruptors in the global market today, like Uber and Airbnb, are start-ups," she points out.
The common thread enabling them to disrupt markets is the fact that they harness hybrid infrastructures, DevOps and analytics in an agile way, to rapidly effect change and become first movers, says HP.
Blocher says the new style of business is impacting established enterprises too. "Now, the conversations we are having with big business include the CEO, CFO and CMO. The procurement decisions are not so much about what the technology is, and more about what it can do for business."
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