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The Cloud Computer

oxide.computer

371–380 of 994 posts

Re: The Cloud Computer

#371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they're mostly targeting customers who want an AWS- or GCP-like experience from a developer perspective (compute is abstracted and you can provision it with an API, etc.), but want to own their own compute infrastructure and have it on-prem. That market has mostly had to cobble together consumer-inspired HP/Cisco/whatever stuff historically (like, one of the early talks about the Oxide value proposition was c…

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.

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.

Re: The Cloud Computer

#372
post #280
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This really is one of these things where every employee in a cheap cost of living area will say "Exactly, man!" and people in an expensive area will see it differently because it might cap them lower than what they could get. I always find that a very naive point of view, of course I would want to earn a US tech salary while living somewhere in the country side, who wouldn't. But I'm also aware that this is not how t…

Assuming interchangeable human resources there are basically 2 options, either the company is extracting more value from everyone than the salaries they pay, in that case paying fairly would eat into the company's bottom line. Poor CXOs would not turn extra profits by keeping less fortunate employees on low salaries but just the regular one. Or the highest paid employees are not pulling their weight and their salarie…

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Re: The Cloud Computer

#374
post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They literally had CTOs of F100 companies that want to buy this gear as part of VCs pitch. Because as you can imagine your question was the first question VC's asked.

Purchasing a ton of hardware from a startup seems extremely risky for a F100. It's one thing to be left holding the bag when a SaaS startup goes under, but when you just spent millions on gear that is now completely unsupported... eek. I'd be curious to see what companies are interested, Oxide doesn't have any logos on their website which is a little odd given the space.

F100 waste so many millions already on projects that never see the light of day, why couldn't they throw money at Oxide and see if it works better than their AWS contract?

Re: The Cloud Computer

#375

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…

I think they are a competitor to the 'HP/Cisco/IBM/Dell... (blades or hyper-converged)' part of this. They basically saying 'we will do it better'.

Their marketing and story is supposed to convince you that you could save money running their things rather then Dell. And instead of paying for VMWare you get Open Source Software for most of it.

> Until this company has a certain/size and scale, no one serious will trust their black boxes at any type of scale.

I guess that a risk they are willing to take. Some costumers might wait for a few years until they see Oxide being big enough.

Other costumers might be sick of HP/Dell and might take a Risk on a smaller company.

Since they seem to have some costumers, some organizations are willing to take the risk to get away from Dell and friends.

So I think you are the target audience but you are not willing to risk it until they are larger and less likely to fail and they have a good story in regards to support. I assume they have a support story of some kind, no idea what it is 'Contact Sales' ....

In terms of 'trusting they will continue exists' all they can do is survive for a few years until they are pretty established, then more people will be willing buy their product. And hopefully in that time their existing costumers rave about how amazing the product is.

Lets hope they don't go bust because all potential costumers are just waiting. Then again, you can't anybody for not buying from a startup.

Re: The Cloud Computer

#377
post #11

This is actually a pretty big deal. They sell servers, but as a finished product. Not as a cobbled together mess of third party stuff where the vendor keeps shrugging if there is an integration problem. They integrated it. It comes with all the features they expect you to want if you wanted to build your own cloud. Also, they wrote the software. And it's all open source. So no "sorry but the third party vendor droppe…

Awesome. This would be especially useful in science but the lack of GPUs is a non-starter. :(

Re: The Cloud Computer

#378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oracle, AWS & Azure all have "Cloud at Customer" offerings. And these offerings have existed for years. And from hardware manufacturers, Dell/VCE, Nutanix, and more "hyper-converged" infra has existed. Note: I'm not being a hater. I'm just genuinely confused. --- https://www.oracle.com/cloud/cloud-at-customer/ https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/products/azure-stack https://aws.amazon.com/outposts/

maybe its about allowing you to create your own cloud, not using a third party vendor's software? its not a computer you hook up to a cloud, it is its own cloud? i only know about aws outpost tho, so I might be wrong

> "not using a third party vendor's software"

Wouldn't you still be using 3rd party vendor software, it'd be Oxide software now?

Re: The Cloud Computer

#380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

way better explanation than the website copy "no cables no assembly just cloud" wtf is that

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.

>plug in networking and power

No cables, except for a few cables.

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