Global CIO: Top 10 Most Strategic Vendors' #1 ChallengesGlobal CIO: Top 10 Most Strategic Vendors' #1 Challenges

6) Hewlett-Packard. We noted above that HP is doing a very impressive job of weaving together its infrastructure scale and prowess with its services businesses (EDS and others). Question: If IBM's key differentiator is predictive analytics and "smarter planet," and Oracle's is optimized systems powered by Oracle's industry-specific applications, what is HP's core—and unique—value proposition?

7) Teradata. Rob put Teradata on the list because of its ability to win business among a superb list of customers, and that leads to the question: With Oracle very specifically aiming its Exadata 2 machines at it, can Teradata harness the technological and marketing prowess to fend off Oracle and continue winning new and equally impressive customers in a much more competitive market?

8) VMware. The virtualization leader confronts its success: As virtualization spreads and becomes something close to the norm, what's VMware's next great value proposition: what happens after virtualization?

9) EMC. HP says converged infrastructure will be the wave of the future, with storage, servers, and networks all coming together. If that comes to pass, what happens to a company specializing in storage and the information-management and security tools and services that surround it? As with VMware, what's next?

10) Your Outsourcer. Question: How does your outsourcer continue to deliver great operational value while also enhancing the strategic, industry-specific, and transformative ideas you will need to keep growing and delighting customers?

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