Vendor
termnetworkingvendors & products
The company that makes the product, as distinct from anybody who sells, installs or operates it.
Most of the industry's stories are vendor stories, because a vendor is where a thing gets built before anybody knows what it is for. The word does real work in a channel conversation: it identifies who owns the roadmap, who fixes the defect, and who cannot be routed around when something is broken at the product level rather than the configuration level. An engineer who says "escalate to the vendor" is naming a specific escalation destination, not a generic supplier.
Also known as: manufacturer, oem, product vendor