[lightedman]

“There’s not a reason Dell can’t do exactly what they’re doing,” Bryson said.

I find that quote interesting. As someone that worked for Dell, I can figure out why - they're heavily-invested in the support side of things. They're too busy with that and their current consumer and business-class offerings that realistically the server market segment they're already in doesn't exactly overlap with Super Micro, and most likely never will outside of some buzzword AI marketing.

[paulmd]

Dell also can’t do what supermicro does because it would eat their margins. The dirty secret is that supermicro is making headway because they’re a lot cheaper than dell or hp. If dell/hp start to compete on price they don’t really gain any additional marginal business to speak of, but they do lose margin on all their current contracts (who presumably want to get the discount too).

The “companies become too stagnant to disrupt their own revenue streams” isn’t just a trope about leadership vision, it’s a very real financial phenomenon. Customers don’t like open price discrimination and often it’s better to keep your best customers than to chase after new ones and push all your margins downwards.

See also: the gpu market.