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Dell, EMC, HP, Cisco are the walking dead

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Re: Dell, EMC, HP, Cisco are the walking dead

#31

Post by exelius »

hitekker wrote: post #16
exelius wrote: post #11

They're the walking dead because they pursued scale over innovation. Once they had achieved scale, they found themselves with too much momentum to innovate. So because they couldn't innovate, they built an army of consultants to hawk their wares to customers who also valued scale. But that consulting business never really took off because its existence was predicated on a model of dumping obsolete (but "enterprisey"!…

What would be your opinion on Oracle? I find it strange that the Author didn't include Oracle in the title although he talks about it at some length in the article body.

I gave my opinion on Oracle elsewhere in this thread. Basic just is that Oracle will be fine because they're a business software company -- all the companies on this list are manufacturers of technology infrastructure products. The model through which companies acquire tech infrastructure is changing from a product model where infrastructure companies build/design differentiated products to a services model, where a much smaller number of companies are buying increasingly commoditized infrastructure hardware and selling access to it as a service.

Oracle doesn't do this; the bulk of their value comes from software that is much more difficult to replicate.

Re: Dell, EMC, HP, Cisco are the walking dead

#32

Post by mkozlows »

noir_lord wrote: post #22
mkozlows wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook and Google and Amazon do not use Cisco networking equipment, nor do they use Dell servers: http://www.wired.com/2014/11/facebooks-new-data-center-bad-n... That's basically the point of the article: These companies that actually had to get up to that kind of massive scale quickly discovered that the way hawked by these big expensive "enterprise" companies didn't work. It was expensive and insufficient. So the…

Oth there are thousands (probably millions) of companies out there where cisco kit would be just fine. Very few companies have the kind of network requirements of Facebook or Google.

So the thing is, yes, that's true. Lots of companies can get by with Cisco/Dell/EMC stuff and don't need the ultra-high-end datacenters of Amazon/Google.

And if Cisco/Dell/EMC stuff was bargain-priced and the ultra-high-end stuff was expensive, well, there you go.

But the problem is, if you want your stuff hosted on Amazon-class hardware/network topologies, it's really cheap to do so with AWS (or Azure, or whatever). And the Cisco/Dell/EMC stuff is painfully, ruinously expensive.

If the high-end thing is also the cheap thing, what's the rationale for buying the low-end, expensive thing?

Re: Dell, EMC, HP, Cisco are the walking dead

#33

Post by evook »

mkozlows wrote: post #13
iheartmemcache wrote: post #7

This is such a perception skewed by Silicon-Valley-Syndrome. This is how the rest of the world works -- I run an import/export business and have to manage logistics. It doesn't matter what industry, it could be crude oil or widgets from China at half a penny a piece. It's my job as CIO to choose an implementation. I'm going to choose SAP or Dynamics (or one of the handful of other ERP's with name recognition) on DB2…

So two things: 1. Cloud providers are making it easy for legacy businesses to take baby steps. You don't have to use a NoSQL solution with AWS Dynamo, you can use Postgres with RDS. Or if you're hyper-conservative/stuck with legacy stuff, you can run Oracle with RDS. Or get an EC2 instance and install your own personal copy of Oracle on it. You don't have to jump to full modernity right away, you can take the easy wi…

Working at real scale, I'd choose some cages in a datacenter I can walk in and place offices at over AWS anytime.

Btw you'd cry if I were allowed call out some companies that still run lotus notes.

Re: Dell, EMC, HP, Cisco are the walking dead

#34

Post by creshal »

devit wrote: post #24

The problem of these companies is that they sell highly overpriced hardware that is in the best case sold because the consumer really wants support and risk avoidance, in the middle case because of vendor lock-in and in the worst case because of direct or indirect corruption. Obviously this is not economically efficient, and thus eventually the scheme has to unravel.

Overpriced, really? Dell sells desktop boxes sufficient for office work with three years on-site support for under 400€, and fast servers for under 1000€ kitted out.

If that's overpriced I really need to talk to your hardware supplier.

(Of course, they all have high-end products, but the breadth of the offerings is usually high enough that they're always an option. They're not stupid.)

Re: Dell, EMC, HP, Cisco are the walking dead

#35

Post by Karunamon »

adrianN wrote: post #5
ThomaszKrueger wrote: post #3

I read somewhere that the cloud is just someone's else computer. At least in the business I am working with that would never be allowed so if there is a cloud to be had it will be on premises, which may keep these so-called walking dead lumbering for quite some time.

Yes, there are plenty of businesses which would never put their data on someone else's servers. Also, you should never underestimate corporate inertia. Switching to a new system is immensely expensive, for many companies it won't happen, ever. Just look how many companies are still using decade old hardware and scour ebay for replacement 286 processors.

How much of that immense expense is due to various factors that can be summed up as "obstinance", and how much is due to actual, practical, tangible factors?

I'm not being snarky - I've seen many a large business make many a horrible decision, not due to a dispassionate evaluation of the pros and cons of each option, but because the people in charge hate change. And it's not that said change would be necessarily painful or demonstrably bad, it's an irrational bias.

Change hate appears to scale linearly with organizational size, more specifically, number of managerial staff.

Re: Dell, EMC, HP, Cisco are the walking dead

#36

Post by vonmoltke »

evook wrote: post #33
mkozlows wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So two things: 1. Cloud providers are making it easy for legacy businesses to take baby steps. You don't have to use a NoSQL solution with AWS Dynamo, you can use Postgres with RDS. Or if you're hyper-conservative/stuck with legacy stuff, you can run Oracle with RDS. Or get an EC2 instance and install your own personal copy of Oracle on it. You don't have to jump to full modernity right away, you can take the easy wi…

Working at real scale, I'd choose some cages in a datacenter I can walk in and place offices at over AWS anytime. Btw you'd cry if I were allowed call out some companies that still run lotus notes.

> Btw you'd cry if I were allowed call out some companies that still run lotus notes.

I worked for one (Raytheon). :/

Re: Dell, EMC, HP, Cisco are the walking dead

#37

Post by noir_lord »

mkozlows wrote: post #32
noir_lord wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oth there are thousands (probably millions) of companies out there where cisco kit would be just fine. Very few companies have the kind of network requirements of Facebook or Google.

So the thing is, yes, that's true. Lots of companies can get by with Cisco/Dell/EMC stuff and don't need the ultra-high-end datacenters of Amazon/Google. And if Cisco/Dell/EMC stuff was bargain-priced and the ultra-high-end stuff was expensive, well, there you go. But the problem is, if you want your stuff hosted on Amazon-class hardware/network topologies, it's really cheap to do so with AWS (or Azure, or whatever).…

Not denying the cost of AWS (I priced out S3 the other day and it's amazingly cheap) however there legitimate business cases where companies won't put data in the cloud (and in fact I've found more clients are asking about those in light of the press around Snowden/NSA/GCHQ).

Re: Dell, EMC, HP, Cisco are the walking dead

#38

Post by mkozlows »

evook wrote: post #33
mkozlows wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So two things: 1. Cloud providers are making it easy for legacy businesses to take baby steps. You don't have to use a NoSQL solution with AWS Dynamo, you can use Postgres with RDS. Or if you're hyper-conservative/stuck with legacy stuff, you can run Oracle with RDS. Or get an EC2 instance and install your own personal copy of Oracle on it. You don't have to jump to full modernity right away, you can take the easy wi…

Working at real scale, I'd choose some cages in a datacenter I can walk in and place offices at over AWS anytime. Btw you'd cry if I were allowed call out some companies that still run lotus notes.

Lotus Notes is a fine example of what we're talking about. Yes, companies use it, but no company is ever going to switch to Notes. The companies that use Notes in 2020 is going to be the ones that use it in 2015 minus the ones that quit using it. That's what "walking dead" means.

Re: Dell, EMC, HP, Cisco are the walking dead

#39

Post by traeblain »

iheartmemcache wrote: post #7

This is such a perception skewed by Silicon-Valley-Syndrome. This is how the rest of the world works -- I run an import/export business and have to manage logistics. It doesn't matter what industry, it could be crude oil or widgets from China at half a penny a piece. It's my job as CIO to choose an implementation. I'm going to choose SAP or Dynamics (or one of the handful of other ERP's with name recognition) on DB2…

Yes not to mention the thousands of companies that have to deal with Ex/Im laws that cannot move to "the cloud". Not to mention the CIOs that will have to tell there lawyers that all there IP is leaving the network...but don't worry, it's still secure. The list goes on.

The other thing is the writer seems overwhelmingly fond of Pure Storage...until they are bought by one of his Walking Dead. Instead of calling these companies "Walking Dead", he should be highlighting more the approach Microsoft has done. What Dell/EMC, IBM, Cisco, HP, and more will start to see is that they can operate in both worlds. Amazon will never turn over there stack to a company so that it can operate inside that companies physical control, but the listed companies (like Microsoft) can make there stacks available "in the cloud" and palpable to the public furthering there market.

To me, whereas Amazon and the like have plenty of growth ahead of them, these "Walking Dead" have higher ceilings although it will take quite a bit of inertial change. I can see IBM already working and heading in that direction. If they (like Microsoft) become another success story, it will be hard for the others to ignore that strategy.

But the author got his clicks and his eyes...so I'm sure we'll see of this.

Re: Dell, EMC, HP, Cisco are the walking dead

#40

Post by clavalle »

mkozlows wrote: post #32
noir_lord wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oth there are thousands (probably millions) of companies out there where cisco kit would be just fine. Very few companies have the kind of network requirements of Facebook or Google.

So the thing is, yes, that's true. Lots of companies can get by with Cisco/Dell/EMC stuff and don't need the ultra-high-end datacenters of Amazon/Google. And if Cisco/Dell/EMC stuff was bargain-priced and the ultra-high-end stuff was expensive, well, there you go. But the problem is, if you want your stuff hosted on Amazon-class hardware/network topologies, it's really cheap to do so with AWS (or Azure, or whatever).…

In a word? Control.
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