Your comment made me think of the episode of the show Silicon Valley (in the current season), where the engineers want to build a scalable platform rather than

Your comment made me think of the episode of the show Silicon Valley (in the current season), where the engineers want to build a scalable platform rather than a box (appliance). The negotiate with mgmt to let them work on the platform after they have worked on the box :) As an aside, I thought this episode was very well done. The engineers believe their algorithm will get better over time as it ingests more data (hence, a scalable platform is the way to go). A box won't learn, and benefit from these improvements. However, large companies want boxes (servers/appliances in their data center) and aren't in a position to have their data leak out (for statutory or competitive reasons in many cases).