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What Sun got wrong

692 points · 437 comments · chmaynard

  1. coreyh14444 · · focus · HN ↗
    As someone who was buying hardware in the late 1990s, it is hard to overstate the difference in buying experience between Sun or Digital (DEC) and someone like Dell. The former forced you into a live sales meeting, endless quote revisions, it was a nightmare. I remember calculating the server rails and power cords for a new Alpha server were going to cost more than a shipped/delivered Dell server that I could get the next day.
    1. jmclnx · · focus · HN ↗
      And that is the "thing". Every failed mini company had the same exact issue, seems customers had to beg and/or go through hell to purchase equipment. Never mind that the hardware was more expensive than what you cold buy from companies like Dell.

      IBM is not much better than what I hear, but somehow they keep surviving. Probably because of their mainframe business.

      1. bch · · focus · HN ↗
        And Redhat[0], and professional services a la Accenture[1].

        [0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;IBM#2010s%E2%80%93present" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;IBM#2010s%E2%80%93present

        [1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Accenture" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Accenture

        1. esseph · · focus · HN ↗
          Their old services arm was Kyndryl which they spun out as its own thing
      2. esseph · · focus · HN ↗
        &gt; IBM is not much better than what I hear, but somehow they keep surviving. Probably because of their mainframe business.

        Imagine every bank you know going through tech modernization and maybe 70% of those are now using Red Hat OpenShift.

        They own Red Hat (OpenShift kubernetes, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Ansible Automation Platform) AND HashiCorp (Terraform, Nomad, Consul, Packer, Vault, etc.) now, on top of their previous mainframe, services gigs, global financing arm, and calling everything they sell &quot;watson&quot;.

      3. jhallenworld · · focus · HN ↗
        I seem to remember IBM had a way to buy their stuff online, but not anymore apparently. I&#x27;m sure this was back in the System x days.
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