Comparative Analysis of Two Operational Developments within IT Companies' Servitization - Microsoft and HP

Servitization is a time-consuming-, and needs to be persistent-, process at the companies, especially in the IT branch. Thus, a company must find itself properly, on which phase of this process it is operating in, to perform further accurate steps, to succeed in a short time with this development, since the competition in the IT industry is highly dynamic. Accordingly, we perform in this paper an analysis of the customization grade in relation to the degree of integration into the product/service provided by a company. The analysis is based on the segments evaluation a company operates on. We study also the Servitization change processes in different business segments, based on the real scenarios of two mayor players in the IT business - Microsoft and HP, as well as revenue distribution/change within the ten years period.

I. Introduction

Since Servitization does not take place at once, it is a long continuous process - companies can be classified depending on which phase of this process they are operating in [1]–[8]. The steps/phases are rated based on their grade of implementation. In this aspect, a crucial analysis has to happen regarding the grade of customization, in relation to the degree of integration into the product/service provided by a company. In the larger companies, this analysis is based on the cells/segments a company operates on [3], [4].