[jeswin]

Very large hosting/cloud providers will eventually build their own hardware. Even if Dell is involved, it's going to be in a supporting role and won't yield the kind of profits X-many server sales will. And besides, support contracts will also be of lesser value. This and Open Compute is not good for Dell-type of shops. Compound that with Microsoft building PCs in a shrinking PC market, the problems are numerous. Dell can't make a Windows PC better than Microsoft.[1]

All this also because these companies have never really tried to attract the best talent by paying above market compensation. It's fine.

[1] The kind of detachable GPU configuration we saw in Surface Book is harder to pull off outside of MS. Doable, but MS will have the advantage of getting inputs directly from the DX12 team.