7 ms·

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
  - gregw2 3y ago
    Elon Musk, Twitter/X CEO, went to the data center and started unplugging things. You can’t make this stuff up! https://www.techdirt.com/2023/09/12/the-batshit-crazy-story-of-the-day-elon-musk-decided-to-personally-rip-servers-out-of-a-sacramento-data-center/ https://www.techdirt.com/2023/09/12/the-batshit-crazy-story-... Why “Elmo”? https://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-insiders-users-calling-elon-musk-by-the-nickname-elmo-2022-11 https://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-insiders-users-calli...
    - exikyut 3y ago
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.

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
- gregw2 3y ago
  Elon Musk, Twitter/X CEO, went to the data center and started unplugging things. You can’t make this stuff up! https://www.techdirt.com/2023/09/12/the-batshit-crazy-story-of-the-day-elon-musk-decided-to-personally-rip-servers-out-of-a-sacramento-data-center/ https://www.techdirt.com/2023/09/12/the-batshit-crazy-story-... Why “Elmo”? https://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-insiders-users-calling-elon-musk-by-the-nickname-elmo-2022-11 https://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-insiders-users-calli...
  - exikyut 3y ago

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.