HP shifts from hardware toward services as it falls to No. 84 on Fortune 500

HP is moving away from a hardware-centered business toward selling customer solutions and services, Rajendra Sitompoel, the company's chief technology officer for the Nordics and Benelux regions, said in an interview published by Fortune on October 15, 2026.

"We're going through a transition," Sitompoel said, describing a shift "from more of a hardware focus to a solution and experience focus." In practice, he said, that means spending more time with clients to understand their problems before matching technology and services to them. He measures his own performance partly by the ratio of client meetings to internal meetings, he said.

The strategy change comes as HP has lost ground on the Fortune 500, the magazine's ranking of the largest US companies by revenue. HP placed 11th in 2006, when it competed with IBM to be the country's biggest technology company. It ranked No. 84 in the most recent list, having been passed by Apple, Amazon, Meta and Microsoft.

Sitompoel, whose remit expanded to the Nordics about six months earlier, said HP has deferred some IT investments and changes to team structure to avoid altering too much at once. He also said a central part of his job is helping customers adopt artificial intelligence securely and prepare to limit damage from events outside their control.

This story was first reported by Fortune.