undefined | Better HN

0 pointsapendleton2y ago0 comments

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 complaining about why every server in the rack needs a CD drive, which was the norm from Dell), because the kinds of stripped-down, super-efficient hardware designs the hyperscalers were building weren't available to the general public, so this is that: hyperscaler-like technology for people who want to own it themselves.

I think the motivations for why people would want to own their own are probably a mix of financial (at a certain scale there's a tipping point and it gets cheaper), and regulatory/compliance/whatever, like if it's healthcare data, or defense, etc.

0 comments

bigironcto2y ago

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.

yjftsjthsd-h2y ago

> The problem you described has been solved by the large vendors with Hyper-converged offerings for many years

All Oxide has to do to win that market is ship software and firmware that doesn't suck, because there are incumbents but the incumbents are clearly incapable of doing so.

SamuelAdams2y ago

It’s a bit like Apple entering the Bluetooth headphone market. Tons of players, but they all suck for a variety of reasons. Apple announced the AirPods, which pair extremely well with your phone, and they really don’t suck.

count2y ago

The bar really is sooooo low

jeffrallen2y ago

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.

dboreham2y ago

This might boil down to "why does anyone need Stripe when there's Visa"?

mixdup2y ago

Stripe and Visa are two different parts of the same ecosystem though. You can't really replicate Stripe with entirely Visa services

Voultapher2y ago

Genuine question, you mention Hyper-converged, can you point to anything that comes even close to the experience you presumably get from the Oxide offering.

sbarre2y ago

Part of the problem here is that the people who make the purchasing decisions (like this CTO guy) don't care about "the experience" because they're not the ones unpacking boxes and plugging in cables.

They pay other people to do that and they don't really care if it's a miserable time. And if it takes days instead of hours, who cares? Rarely is someone setting up a data center under the gun (unless you're Elmo and we all saw how that went).

Factors like scalability and ongoing support are much more top of mind.

Not saying that Oxide can't address this, and I love Oxide's focus on the experience, but I think this bottom-up approach to convincing customers is going to be a steep climb..

But they seem to be up for steep climbs, so I wish them all the best!

3 more replies

parasubvert2y ago

Dell's VxRail has been very popular and successful. Not perfect, but pretty good, and I think the market leader.

HPE Simplivity has done well.

Also, Nutanix.

2 more replies

hollerith2y ago

Although it might be true that the existing vendors don't provide a good experience, I'm still a little miffed that the OP does not even mention the existence of the existing vendors.

1 more reply

liotier2y ago

Lack of local support does make them a niche player, but everything starts from a niche and those who believe they don't start from a niche disperse their efforts. So, with the hypothesis that Oxyde is smart, the question therefore is: what niche is Oxyde focusing on ?

sanderjd2y ago

I mean, I don't know anything about this space like you do, I'm just an intrigued observer, but my impression is just: They are going to try to compete with those large vendors. Maybe they won't be able to! Such is life, and indeed is the most common outcome for new ventures.

But precious few new ventures have ever entered a market where nobody said some form of "I don't get it, there are already established products in this space, how will this new thing ever get traction?". And yet, lots of new ventures turn out to be competitive with the established players in their market, for one reason and another.

delfinom2y ago

>I think the motivations for why people would want to own their own are probably a mix of financial (at a certain scale there's a tipping point and it gets cheaper), and regulatory/compliance/whatever, like if it's healthcare data, or defense, etc.

Yea, there's definitely a market in defense here. Because even though Azure/AWS offer Govcloud, its inadequate for non-civilian connected infrastructure. This offers benefits of writing "modern software" and deploying it in similar modern fashion while keeping it completely running isolated. Imagine being able to make your command and control operations actually decentralized and not vulnerable to a missile strike on a single datacenter.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse