FAQ Friday

And the answer at some level is like, I mean, sure, of course, like anyone can make anything at some level.

But there are reasons why they haven’t, and there are reasons why it would be a challenge for them to do so. And the biggest reason, honestly, it’s mundane, but it’s the biggest reason, is organizational. So those companies, the companies that make servers, generally don’t make the software that runs on top of those servers.

They make, you know, a little bit of firmware and so on, maybe a little bit of management software, but they don’t make the control plane that actually runs a cloud. They don’t even make often the operating system. They’ve got partners that do that. And of those companies, understandably, given their history, they don’t wanna compete with those folks.

They want to offer them a commodity server upon which other people run their own software. Understandable. It’s very hard when you’ve built your business that way to say, "Actually, I’m gonna build this other thing that actually incorporates all of the software top to bottom, that incorporates a control plane and so on," because it puts you in a position where you’re competing with your own channel.

And historically, that’s really tough for companies to do. It’s tough for companies to actually develop a solution that effectively competes with their old way of doing things. It’s called a disruptive innovation, and it’s the classic innovator’s dilemma, and it’s honestly the biggest headwind for someone to do what we have done, holistic hardware, software, co-design with a rack-level product.

Something that is organizationally actually more difficult to do than it may seem. Thanks, and see you next time.