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Thank you for the response. The problem you described has been solved by the large vendors with Hyper-converged offerings for many years so it sounds like Oxide

Thank you for the response. The problem you described has been solved by the large vendors with Hyper-converged offerings for many years so it sounds like Oxide might be a bit late to the party. I do understand well the rational of running your own servers vs hyperscalers, as well as the repatriation trend but I see Oxide at best as a niche player.

sanderjd 3y ago
I mean, I don't know anything about this space like you do, I'm just an intrigued observer, but my impression is just: They are going to try to compete with those large vendors. Maybe they won't be able to! Such is life, and indeed is the most common outcome for new ventures. But precious few new ventures have ever entered a market where nobody said some form of "I don't get it, there are already established products in this space, how will this new thing ever get traction?". And yet, lots of new ventures turn out to be competitive with the established players in their market, for one reason and another.
liotier 3y ago
Lack of local support does make them a niche player, but everything starts from a niche and those who believe they don't start from a niche disperse their efforts. So, with the hypothesis that Oxyde is smart, the question therefore is: what niche is Oxyde focusing on ?
Voultapher 3y ago
Genuine question, you mention Hyper-converged, can you point to anything that comes even close to the experience you presumably get from the Oxide offering.
- hollerith 3y ago
  Although it might be true that the existing vendors don't provide a good experience, I'm still a little miffed that the OP does not even mention the existence of the existing vendors.
  - sanderjd 3y ago
    This I don't get. It's marketing copy, from a small upstart. They don't need to link to their established competitors...
    - hollerith 3y ago
      OK, then at least I'm glad someone in the comments pointed out their competitors.
      - sanderjd 3y ago
        Agreed, it's why I read stuff like HN comments! Marketing copy is not a good source for comparative information.
- sbarre 3y ago
  Part of the problem here is that the people who make the purchasing decisions (like this CTO guy) don't care about "the experience" because they're not the ones unpacking boxes and plugging in cables. They pay other people to do that and they don't really care if it's a miserable time. And if it takes days instead of hours, who cares? Rarely is someone setting up a data center under the gun (unless you're Elmo and we all saw how that went). Factors like scalability and ongoing support are much more top of mind. Not saying that Oxide can't address this, and I love Oxide's focus on the experience, but I think this bottom-up approach to convincing customers is going to be a steep climb.. But they seem to be up for steep climbs, so I wish them all the best!
  - sanderjd 3y ago
    Yeah I think this is the interesting question. My (naive, uninformed) interpretation is that Oxide is betting that there is some area in the overlap of the venn diagram between "people who have reasons not to run their businesses on the public clouds" and "people who are not suits but technologists and care about the user experience of setting up and maintaining their infrastructure because they want to do it themselves / without hiring lots of people and service contracts". I'm not sure how big that space is, or whether it is likely to grow or shrink over time, but I'm intrigued by the proposition they're testing here!
    - sbarre 3y ago
      I wonder if we'll see this space you describe grow as AI startups and scaleups - or even internal departments in large enterprises - start to increase in number... I know there's already plenty of concerns about giving cloud-based AI services access to corporate data, so maybe there's a growing market there..
  - dfc 3y ago
    Who is Elmo?
    - romanhn 3y ago
      Elon Musk
- parasubvert 3y ago
  Dell's VxRail has been very popular and successful. Not perfect, but pretty good, and I think the market leader. HPE Simplivity has done well. Also, Nutanix.
  - pl4nty 3y ago
    VxRail's the market leader? Last I touched it, it was a mountain of integration faults and vendors pointing fingers at each other. Maybe it's easier in larger or more traditional environments, but I'd be apprehensive of hyperconvered if VxRail's the best available
    - parasubvert 3y ago
      Evo:RAIL from VMware had those issues, but Dell VxRail has been relatively smooth at scale IME.
  - ricardobeat 3y ago
    These seem to solve the ‘host your own cloud’ problem, but are still standard server blades requiring a ton of surrounding hardware and maintenance. Oxide is entirely integrated.
    - parasubvert 3y ago
      "A ton of surrounding hardware" is vague, generally speaking it's bog standard network switches that are needed. Oxide is entirely integrated with their own custom (though based on OSS?) networking via Tofino based switches and software. Could be good, but a lot of subtle bugs can occur at this layer. It's a risk.
dboreham 3y ago
This might boil down to "why does anyone need Stripe when there's Visa"?
- mixdup 3y ago
  Stripe and Visa are two different parts of the same ecosystem though. You can't really replicate Stripe with entirely Visa services
jeffrallen 3y ago
Oxide has customers who have been waiting for real integration and innovation from HP, Dell, and Cisco and are ready to take a risk on something new. I set up some Cisco server hardware a few years ago, and only by the time I'd managed to order it I was already wishing I had a better choice. When it arrived and the remote serial was unusable to fix the BIOS ("American Megatrends copyright 1984" at 9600 baud? No thanks.) I was ready to give up and go back to AWS. This is a market ready for a kick in the ass, which Oxide plans to do.
yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
> The problem you described has been solved by the large vendors with Hyper-converged offerings for many years All Oxide has to do to win that market is ship software and firmware that doesn't suck, because there are incumbents but the incumbents are clearly incapable of doing so.
- count 3y ago
  The bar really is sooooo low
- SamuelAdams 3y ago
  It’s a bit like Apple entering the Bluetooth headphone market. Tons of players, but they all suck for a variety of reasons. Apple announced the AirPods, which pair extremely well with your phone, and they really don’t suck.

sanderjd 3y ago

I mean, I don't know anything about this space like you do, I'm just an intrigued observer, but my impression is just: They are going to try to compete with those large vendors. Maybe they won't be able to! Such is life, and indeed is the most common outcome for new ventures. But precious few new ventures have ever entered a market where nobody said some form of "I don't get it, there are already established products in this space, how will this new thing ever get traction?". And yet, lots of new ventures turn out to be competitive with the established players in their market, for one reason and another.

liotier 3y ago

Lack of local support does make them a niche player, but everything starts from a niche and those who believe they don't start from a niche disperse their efforts. So, with the hypothesis that Oxyde is smart, the question therefore is: what niche is Oxyde focusing on ?

Voultapher 3y ago

Genuine question, you mention Hyper-converged, can you point to anything that comes even close to the experience you presumably get from the Oxide offering.

hollerith 3y ago
Although it might be true that the existing vendors don't provide a good experience, I'm still a little miffed that the OP does not even mention the existence of the existing vendors.
- sanderjd 3y ago
  This I don't get. It's marketing copy, from a small upstart. They don't need to link to their established competitors...
  - hollerith 3y ago
    OK, then at least I'm glad someone in the comments pointed out their competitors.
    - sanderjd 3y ago
      Agreed, it's why I read stuff like HN comments! Marketing copy is not a good source for comparative information.
sbarre 3y ago
Part of the problem here is that the people who make the purchasing decisions (like this CTO guy) don't care about "the experience" because they're not the ones unpacking boxes and plugging in cables. They pay other people to do that and they don't really care if it's a miserable time. And if it takes days instead of hours, who cares? Rarely is someone setting up a data center under the gun (unless you're Elmo and we all saw how that went). Factors like scalability and ongoing support are much more top of mind. Not saying that Oxide can't address this, and I love Oxide's focus on the experience, but I think this bottom-up approach to convincing customers is going to be a steep climb.. But they seem to be up for steep climbs, so I wish them all the best!
- sanderjd 3y ago
  Yeah I think this is the interesting question. My (naive, uninformed) interpretation is that Oxide is betting that there is some area in the overlap of the venn diagram between "people who have reasons not to run their businesses on the public clouds" and "people who are not suits but technologists and care about the user experience of setting up and maintaining their infrastructure because they want to do it themselves / without hiring lots of people and service contracts". I'm not sure how big that space is, or whether it is likely to grow or shrink over time, but I'm intrigued by the proposition they're testing here!
  - sbarre 3y ago
    I wonder if we'll see this space you describe grow as AI startups and scaleups - or even internal departments in large enterprises - start to increase in number... I know there's already plenty of concerns about giving cloud-based AI services access to corporate data, so maybe there's a growing market there..
- dfc 3y ago
  Who is Elmo?
  - romanhn 3y ago
    Elon Musk
parasubvert 3y ago
Dell's VxRail has been very popular and successful. Not perfect, but pretty good, and I think the market leader. HPE Simplivity has done well. Also, Nutanix.
- pl4nty 3y ago
  VxRail's the market leader? Last I touched it, it was a mountain of integration faults and vendors pointing fingers at each other. Maybe it's easier in larger or more traditional environments, but I'd be apprehensive of hyperconvered if VxRail's the best available
  - parasubvert 3y ago
    Evo:RAIL from VMware had those issues, but Dell VxRail has been relatively smooth at scale IME.
- ricardobeat 3y ago
  These seem to solve the ‘host your own cloud’ problem, but are still standard server blades requiring a ton of surrounding hardware and maintenance. Oxide is entirely integrated.
  - parasubvert 3y ago
    "A ton of surrounding hardware" is vague, generally speaking it's bog standard network switches that are needed. Oxide is entirely integrated with their own custom (though based on OSS?) networking via Tofino based switches and software. Could be good, but a lot of subtle bugs can occur at this layer. It's a risk.

dboreham 3y ago

This might boil down to "why does anyone need Stripe when there's Visa"?

mixdup 3y ago
Stripe and Visa are two different parts of the same ecosystem though. You can't really replicate Stripe with entirely Visa services

jeffrallen 3y ago

Oxide has customers who have been waiting for real integration and innovation from HP, Dell, and Cisco and are ready to take a risk on something new. I set up some Cisco server hardware a few years ago, and only by the time I'd managed to order it I was already wishing I had a better choice. When it arrived and the remote serial was unusable to fix the BIOS ("American Megatrends copyright 1984" at 9600 baud? No thanks.) I was ready to give up and go back to AWS. This is a market ready for a kick in the ass, which Oxide plans to do.

yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago

> The problem you described has been solved by the large vendors with Hyper-converged offerings for many years All Oxide has to do to win that market is ship software and firmware that doesn't suck, because there are incumbents but the incumbents are clearly incapable of doing so.

count 3y ago
The bar really is sooooo low
SamuelAdams 3y ago
It’s a bit like Apple entering the Bluetooth headphone market. Tons of players, but they all suck for a variety of reasons. Apple announced the AirPods, which pair extremely well with your phone, and they really don’t suck.