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The Cloud Computer

oxide.computer

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Re: The Cloud Computer

#341

Post by steveklabnik »

MichaelZuo wrote: post #327
steveklabnik wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously different marketing copy speaks to different people. But that is referring to how, when you buy a rack from us, you don't need to put everything together and cable it all up: you pull it out of the box, plug in networking and power, boot the thing up, and you're good to go. Installation time is hours, not days or weeks, which is the norm.

Will you be selling services as well, such as taking care of installation, boot up, testing, validation, etc., for a fee?

At this stage of the company, everyone gets a white-glove installation process. I suspect that will change over time but I don't work on that part of things, so I don't personally know the details.

Re: The Cloud Computer

#342

Post by slibhb »

dgb23 wrote: post #256
caymanjim wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except if everyone gets paid the same, you're not being rewarded for the value you provide. I don't think salary should be tied to location, but it should be tied to experience, ability, and effort.

> I don't think salary should be tied to location, but it should be tied to experience, ability, and effort. That's the labor theory of value (see: Smith, Marx), which in theory sounds meritocratic but it can't really be measured or assessed. In reality compensation either becomes a function of power, social currency and negotiation skills, which is the general norm in professions, or you have an institutionalized, p…

Saying that people should be paid according to experience, ability, and effort is absolutely not the labor theory of value.

The idea that contribution "can't really be measured" is a cop-out. Contribution can't be measured perfectly but it can be estimated with some accuracy by people who are involved in day-to-day work. "Some accuracy" is really all that's required: as long as contribution is correlated with compensation to some extent, you have a functioning meritocracy.

> The variant here where everyone gets the same, generous piece of a pie seems refreshingly simple and honest.

I bet it works great if you have a small team, are extremely picky about hiring, and quickly fire bad hires. Otherwise it will be awful.

Re: The Cloud Computer

#343

Post by steveklabnik »

gleb wrote: post #338
steveklabnik wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously different marketing copy speaks to different people. But that is referring to how, when you buy a rack from us, you don't need to put everything together and cable it all up: you pull it out of the box, plug in networking and power, boot the thing up, and you're good to go. Installation time is hours, not days or weeks, which is the norm.

I wouldn't be dismissive of people telling you that the product description can be improved. My opinion is that the description of the product in this thread will outperform your site 10 to 1.

I am not trying to be dismissive, I was just explaining since there was some confusion.

Re: The Cloud Computer

#344

Post by dmix »

layer8 wrote: post #308
flumpcakes wrote: post #278

I think a lot of commenters here have little experience with hyper-converged infrastructure if they don't see this is different. This looks, by far, the simplest way to run workloads outside of the big cloud providers (AWS, Azure, GCP). It seems they only support up to virtual machines but this is still miles ahead of VMWare, Nutanix, or CISCO ACI to my eyes. This honestly looks simple enough that a developer/DevOps…

It may be a limited market. You need to be large enough for a private cloud to make sense, but above a certain size it also should be a no-brainer to have a competent ops team making you less dependent on a singular infrastructure provider.

Maybe 37signals type businesses, SMB tech startups with a serious, stable, non-high growth business model and a tech savvy team. If you're selling $500k boxes you don't need to sell a TON of them to make a hundred million dollar business. Unless their VCs expect Oxide to be a billion dollar company with a broader market.

Re: The Cloud Computer

#345

Post by sorenbs »

steveklabnik wrote: post #315
gigatexal wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone know specs or prices?

Specs are here: https://oxide.computer/product/specifications Prices are here: https://oxide.computer/sales ;)

I know you are half joking, but it would really be helpful to have ball-park pricing available. Are we talking Sun-level markups here, or how should we think about it? Given the enterprise sales contact form, I'm thinking yes, but I'd love to know for sure.

Re: The Cloud Computer

#346

Post by Aeolun »

twoodfin wrote: post #36
Aeolun wrote: post #32

But there's no pricing! How will I know if this could potentially save me money compared to AWS if I cannot make a sensible comparison until I contact sales (or probably after I contact sales).

To be fair, if you’re in the market for a system like this, you’re probably not paying rack rate for AWS or Azure, either.

Most people that would be able to buy these would not, but that makes it more relevant to know how things compare.

If you already get a 50% discount on your on-demand prices for AWS, does buying your own cloud make economical sense?

Re: The Cloud Computer

#347

Post by Nilithus »

layer8 wrote: post #308
flumpcakes wrote: post #278

I think a lot of commenters here have little experience with hyper-converged infrastructure if they don't see this is different. This looks, by far, the simplest way to run workloads outside of the big cloud providers (AWS, Azure, GCP). It seems they only support up to virtual machines but this is still miles ahead of VMWare, Nutanix, or CISCO ACI to my eyes. This honestly looks simple enough that a developer/DevOps…

It may be a limited market. You need to be large enough for a private cloud to make sense, but above a certain size it also should be a no-brainer to have a competent ops team making you less dependent on a singular infrastructure provider.

Perhaps this changes the calculus. If you don't need as much of an ops team to go private cloud. Then you might not need to be as large before it makes sense.

Re: The Cloud Computer

#348

Post by ninkendo »

vidarh wrote: post #316
ninkendo wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "You" as in "the organisation as a whole" don't get elasticity. "You" as in "your department" or "you as an individual" do get elasticity. Right, but to the degree that you get elasticity, it starts to look more and more like "someone else's computer", no? If multiple people/departments/etc are provisioning virtual instances on one shared cloud infra, with nobody who's using the provisioning API caring about the un…

Yes, that is why we talk about it as a private cloud -- it looks almost exactly like a public cloud to the people actually using it.

So in other words, “Someone else’s datacenter” continues to be a perfect description of what Cloud is.

Re: The Cloud Computer

#349

Post by 0xbadcafebee »

cj wrote: post #324

Wow, they’ve raised a total of $78 million, and they’re only Series A! I remember a time when a Series A was rarely above $10m. Feels like at that capital level they should be further into the alphabet.

The business they're trying to build is capital-intense, and they're basically writing an OS from scratch, in addition to hardware from scratch. 78 million is actually really low

Re: The Cloud Computer

#350

Post by TimTheTinker »

bigironcto wrote: post #241

I am CTO of a large global data center provider posting with throwaway account. As a technologist, I really appreciate what they have done. Impressive work, high quality, however I don't understand who this is for. The meaningful market for Data Center hardware is pretty well defined in two clusters. People that build/make custom gear (such as Hyperscalers) and people that buys HP/Cisco/IBM/Dell... (blades or hyper-c…

You may not be aware of the pain that many large, non-software companies currently have on AWS. Gigantic monthly bills (hundreds of thousands per month) coming from subdivisions that aren't capable or motivated to reduce their AWS budget or usage. To the office of the CTO, Oxide's value proposition (buy instead of rent) could be very motivating.

"Hey subdivision A, could we buy a few Oxide racks and move your workload there from AWS? It looks like they would have all the storage and compute you need. Yes? Ok, in 36 months we'll pay your current IT department employees a bonus of 50% of whatever it has saved us vs your current AWS budget."

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