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> Sun & EMC were both engineer led organisations in the old days Isn't that exactly the problem? Server and storage HW were rapidly getting commodified. That's
by jabl 5y ago
> Sun & EMC were both engineer led organisations in the old days
Isn't that exactly the problem? Server and storage HW were rapidly getting commodified. That's why the "vacuum cleaner salespeople" of the IT world (Dell, Compaq etc.) won, there's little value add in server HW engineering except at the bottom of the stack (Intel, NVIDIA, AMD, etc.).
- smackeyacky 5y agoThats a little harsh towards Compaq. They inherited industry leadership with the 386 and their stewardship of the PC in that time was pretty damn good. Dell, the cow people etc...not so much.
- simonh 5y agoIt's also why HP, the actual engineer led scientific instrument manufacturer HP, left the computer industry and became Agilent leaving the vacuum cleaner sales people part behind. It's a crying shame, but you're right, PC manufacturers were and still are in a brutal race to the bottom. For a while I though HP might have a chance on mobile, when they took on webOS. If they could have established a compelling platform stack with hardware, operating system and a decent dev environment they could have had a chance to grow their margins a bit. The problem is I suspect the PC side of HP just wasn't up to it. I had an HP digital camera around that time and it was a bulky, blocky uninspiring lump of a device.
- rjsw 5y agoHP had plenty of handheld/mobile experience, from their own work and aquired with DEC and Compaq.