> A giant red flag was when they decided they couldn’t compete in the commoditized x86 server market
In general I would agree it’s not great to compete in a commodity segment if you can focus on differentiated products. You can make the same amount of cash from high-volume low-margin product or a low-volume high-margin product, with the latter generating sizeable IP you can also generate money from.
The split between HP and HPE is one example: HP gets the high-volume no-added-value segment and HPE tries to rebuild what was systematically killed by its descent into generic x86 hardware. They have very little headroom there, as HP/UX is on life-support and their high end has been stagnant for years.
The user experience for random x86 servers is utter garbage, especially at the low- to mid-tier.
Bug-riddled firmware, weird licensing schemes for some features, IPMI is complete crap. Salespeople stuck in the 90s who can't get their head around the fact that I want an HBA for my ZFS, not some convoluted "RAID solution".
Updating firmware is an adventure. Middlemen who all seem to think you'll be running Windows, again, stuck in the 90s or 2000s.
I'd gladly pay a premium for something better here.
In general I would agree it’s not great to compete in a commodity segment if you can focus on differentiated products. You can make the same amount of cash from high-volume low-margin product or a low-volume high-margin product, with the latter generating sizeable IP you can also generate money from.
The split between HP and HPE is one example: HP gets the high-volume no-added-value segment and HPE tries to rebuild what was systematically killed by its descent into generic x86 hardware. They have very little headroom there, as HP/UX is on life-support and their high end has been stagnant for years.