[dijit]

Same.

I think it brings an interesting point actually.

"Who will buy these", the obvious answer is anyone with a need, but the "standard pizzabox" server is ubiquitous for the same reason that x86 and miniPC's outcompeted mainframes.

((controversial take warning))

Mainframes are objectively better at high uptime and high throughput than rube-golderging a bunch of semi-reliable x86 boxes together, yet, the ubiquity of cheap x86 hardware meant that the lions share of development happened on them.

People could throw a pentium 2 PC in a corner and have it serving web traffic, and when things started growing too much you could add more P2 machines or even grab a Xeon 4socket machine later down the line.

This isn't possible with mainframes, and thus, people largely don't mess with them.

The annoying thing is that this kind of problem has some kind of stickiness effect. If you need a server, and then another, you buy them as you need them and if you're already 20 pizza boxes in; it's a pretty big ask to rip them all out and moving to a different vendor entirely than staging replacements one after another.

So I guess their target audience is the "we don't want to touch cloud" organisations that have a good IT spend that are willing to change vendors?

I don't think I've worked for any of those.

(FD: I'm actually a fan of the Oxide team, and the concept, and I would buy into the ecosystem except I have needs that are at most 3 servers at a time)

[bpt3]

The target audience as I understand it is companies that have gone cloud-only or close to it and are big enough where moving workload on-prem makes financial sense.

They can migrate to an Oxide "cloud" without too much difficultly as opposed to procuring, installing, and maintaining the rube goldberg machine you mentioned.

They also attract interest among the "we don't want to touch cloud" organizations where trying out $1M in hardware is a rounding error, but I don't know how much traction they'd end up getting.

[panick21_]

The great market is people who were never in the cloud. Those still exist in large numbers.

People coming back from the cloud is a future growth market, but there is plenty of non-cloud stuff in many places.

[ipdashc]

A great point regarding mainframes, but isn't it somewhat irrelevant given that Oxide's computer is x86 and mainly (...only?) intended as a VM host? And I assume most people are running things in VMs nowadays, so you can "just" migrate over images to the new system (I know it's not that simple, but it's also not quite as complicated as, I imagine, porting something from a bunch of bare-metal x86 boxen to a mainframe).

Also, I'm given the impression that Oxide prioritizes user experience - their website shows off a clean UI and they presumably have modern, easy-to-use APIs. Mainframes, in contrast, seem like a whole different world - if I convinced my company to move to a mainframe, who would even operate it? I know modern mainframes are closer to "normal" servers than their old reputation, but still, I'd imagine it's pretty esoteric stuff, and IBM is famous for not being the cheapest to work with.

I do find it pretty funny that their business model seems to be reinventing mainframes, but I feel like there are important distinctions too. Hopefully they do well (I'd also love to have access to this stuff, but yeah, same "needs that are at most 3 servers" deal).

[zozbot234]

Mainframes are the original VM host. Oxide racks seem closer to midrange computers from a RAS (Reliability, Availability, Servicing) perspective, but that's pretty much to be expected to begin with. They also have a lot of scope for improvement and are kind of a natural candidate for eventually intruding on that market.

[supriyo-biswas]

> So I guess their target audience is the "we don't want to touch cloud" organisations that have a good IT spend that are willing to change vendors?

Companies do modernization/migration projects from time to time; I guess one way to solve the audience issue is to find companies that have such a planned event and try to market a “better” alternative.

While I’m also a fan of Oxide; my primary concern is whether they can actually get companies to ignore the marketing that comes out of cloud services.

[cdaringe]

Not very controversial, tbh. Your observation is essentially that there is momentum on a current platform, which yields availability, pricing, and general convenience benefit. It’s borderline indisputable!

The market is complex. Those who will buy will be those who find that the existing ying doesn’t snap perfectly into their own business’ yang. They’ll be at the margins first (the post references a lab for instance, not a booming tech company), then over time less so.

[actionfromafar]

I guess if you have big pile of pizza boxes, buying an Oxide could feel like buying Oxide Family Pizza and going from there. Maybe you don't migrate everything at once.

[tryauuum]

governments maybe?