[theologic]

I was there. Ambra was an attempt to:

1. Get out from the blue tax 2. Have and alternative procurement path 3. Set up a channel where we might not cannibalize ourselves. 4. Free outselves from some of our rigorous engineering processes

It was basically a fail fast experiment, which is popular today. It was set up with the thought process that we wanted it more virtual and not to disrupt the core business. It became obvious pretty quick that it brought its own set of risks, and so we moved into Aptiva. It is good to try and fail and get out.

Actually, the Lenovo acquisition was a bit of a war. There was some visionary leadership from the most senior level of Lenovo that saw the core USA as extremely valuable, and allowed them to win arguments. While their long term goal was to move the core to China, they were careful to make sure they kept a lot of the USA team engaged, and many key USA individuals did move or travel constantly to China.

However, I wasn't a part of the company when it was sold, so most of this is top level feedback from my friends that did go.

[Theodores]

Thanks for chiming in. I vaguely remember the press trolling IBM for Aptiva too.

Where were the Ambra machines sourced? Were they special clones like Compaq (where the BIOS was different), decent commodity clones like Dell or were they generic clones like everything off-brand?

I never understood what the value proposition was. Was it a bit like a supermarket own brand where the customer kind-of guesses that the brand leader makes them, much like how Americans know CostCo Kirkland diapers are made by Huggies?

[theologic]

The value prop is that we could launch a Dell (Gateway) channel by offering leading edge systems, and look for unique features, and live in the other guys holes. The team wasn't stupid, and they had a matrix of where they felt that they could put some products into the ecosystem that could occupy some space that Dell (Gateway) didn't have clear products. If I remember correctly, there was also some thought that we could cut off Dell in EMEA. (Europe.) Dell was far stronger in the USA at the time.

Being this is 30 years ago, I can't remember an exact matrix on some that wasn't my core product. But they had a strategy.

This was early in my career, but I happened to be in a pivotable position that got me access above my pay grade. (I have this weird background in both marketing and engineering, and as somebody that can speak both, I turned into basically a language translator in many meetings, then I was sent out as PR person to the magazines.) I did not work for the Ambra team, but they had an impact on my work, so I got to be involved a enough to see the edges.

I'm not going to have the exact numbers, but I remember that we stated that we were going to have no more than 8 IBMers involved with the thing. The Taiwanese clone market was just starting to take off, and we were starting to outsource to Taiwan. If I remember correctly, it was the Phoenix BIOS, who we had already done a deal with for our Consumer PC line. (Actually, it was co-development.)

As I already wrote, the final bit is that the guys had done some anonymous bid work, and had gotten some very aggressive bids--better than what we were getting. So, they had the impression that they could take a lot of cost out of the system. Also, we wanted to take out Dell and Gateway, but not impact the core IBM brand. Compaq was considered the real comp. HP second. Dell was this annoying "can't stop them because they always win the bids" company. Gateway was on the fringe, and more of a threat to our consumer brand, which was small at the time. But it was free TAM.

So, there was an impression if we followed the Dell/Gateway model, leading tech, very competitive pricing, and full page ads, with some systems that lived in the space, we could start to cannibalize the their TAM.

Now, you don't want to read back into history. The Dell then is not the Dell of now. But, buying behavior was stronger with Dell than the group anticipated. It just was tough to get the velocity growth they wanted. I think we launched in EMEA first, maybe because that is where the VP that ran the thing was from, and then it was rolled out in the USA. However, it just did not see the growth, and I remember there were some quality issues that the small group couldn't handle, but this is pretty foggy.

I will also state that the Round Rock team (and even Gateway), was incredibly tough competition in this arena. I would say that the team did not appreciate this.

However, it was never a massive corporate push for RTP--the home of the PC and PC Server. It was a "let's try this and see if we can learn something." I do remember most of us in the core PC team to NOT get involved as it wasn't pitched as being our core business. If I remember correctly, we did help share some information on parts that we procured to help them.

Its not Costco as the models are so different. As I have run a distribution business before, and Costco is really a marvel to me. My disti business was to the VAR channel, but my sister group used Costco and Walmart. Costco is absolute maniac about delivering value to their customers with quality. Really, it blows me away. They had a bunch of brands, and Sinegal said they could combine them all under Kirkland, turn it into a quality brand to drag up the entire Costco brand. He is so freaking brilliant, and I would argue unique to a company that had a distribution business that wanted to position themselves in the consumer's mind. I would argue that Costco never used their branding to indicate a "secret way" to get a better brand. I think that Costco is keen on making sure that Kirkland IS the brand, which is different than Ambra.

Thanks for asking. I don't think we ever did this type of post mortem at the time, and thinking through events always seems to generate learning for myself as I type it down.

[Theodores]

In period, in the EU, Dell and Gateway 2000 operated out of Ireland using the 'Double Irish' tax fiddle:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Irish_arrangement

At the time, customers had no idea that this was why these tech companies were operating out of Ireland. All they knew was that you got a lot for your money, and, more importantly, the latest tech. However, you might have to wait 28 days for delivery. It was important to the business model that Dell had not one single employee in the UK or other EU countries apart from Ireland, so it was call centre for everything before the web came along.

There may have been more to the Dell business model of customisation. In the UK, if you order a bespoke product, then you don't have the normal rights to just return it if you don't like it, you are stuck with it, and at the mercy of customer service.

I don't know if Dell played this card because they always had that refurbished gig going, where you could get good kit with a few dents and scratches. Nonetheless, there was very little manufacturing going on, it was just a screwdriver operation, final assembly of what amounted to knock-down kits. You did get the latest and greatest though,

Regardless, compare with the original IBM model where they made PCs in Greenock, Scotland. Undoubtedly you know more about this than I do. However, as I understand it, the original Scottish factory made typewriters before the PC came along, and IBM were incentivised to choose Scotland in the post war years, when the British government were quite serious about bringing industry to Scotland. Shipbuilding had gone on the Clyde, and with it steel and the outfitting and everything else that goes with shipbuilding. There was also an emotional reason for Greenock, Watson had Scottish ancestry.

The product that came out of Greenock was really good. To this day people want those keyboards that came out of there. The Trinitron monitors came from Sony's plant in Bridgend Wales, which they originally opened in the 1970s to make TVs, again with the usual government incentives. Sony also supplied Dell and Gateway 2000. Now all that has gone, RIP Trinitron, we loved you...

I am sure there was more to the supply chain, since, in period, semiconductors were made in Silicon Glen. However, these tended to be things like DRAM chips, where vast fortunes would be spent building a fab for it to be pretty much stillborn.

I am curious as to how 'vertically integrated' the IBM operation was, since hard disks were also made by IBM in Scotland. The IBM PC story is told as 'using commodity off the shelf parts', but IBM PCs were not a product of a screwdriver operation.

It is shocking that the UK have done so badly at tech. However, how was IBM supposed to compete against those tax fiddlers operating out of Dublin? Why did the EU allow Ireland in the UK when they were not taxing the big corporations? The Irish shot themselves in the foot with this as they ended up with house price inflation and very high personal taxation.

The UK also had a lot of tech in the M4 corridor, this being the motorway out of London that goes all the way to (drumroll...) Bridgend. Reading was the prime spot with Compaq, SGI, Microsoft, Oracle, Sybase and plenty of others setting up shop there.

In Reading there was an industrial estate that housed most of them, with their own private motorway. If you were on the train going past you imagined this as being a full on mini-Silicon-Valley, however, not a lot was going on in those impressive headquarter buildings. I am sure Sybase was just a couple of guys hassling the few customers they had for whatever license fees they could get from them, as for Microsoft, there was nobody writing code there, you just had product managers for things such as Microsoft Golf. Same with SGI, just a very big building with nobody in there. It all looked impressive from the train, however, it was just a Potemkin Village.

I am in genuine disbelief regarding how the UK messed up with tech given the advantages of a reasonably educated population, a reasonably high standard of English, access to the EU market, access to the former colonies, an army of 8-bit coders (from the BBC Micro project) and access to capital (London).

[theologic]

Ah, you are dredging up memories.

I've done both marketing and engineering. I managed a group at RTP responsible for a part of the engineering for PC, Thinkpads, and the Server group. While I had people go to Greenock, I never went personally. So, in some sense, I don't feel like I can give an adequate impression and background.

I will tell you that our team out of Greenock had a big impact on manufacturing, and some real live wires. I remember being at home on the weekend, and have a VP of manufacturing hunt me down to say words that normally IBMer wouldn't say in that I was bringing down his line. It really was the stereotypical Scottish Soccer fan type interaction. In this case, it turned out that it wasn't my group. After I left IBM, I ended up supplying tech to all my IBM competitors. I observed what I thought was basically all of IBM processes in their processes. Similar terminology that I know started at IBM. While we did see some people move, a big part of this was the supplier base.

We did do a lot of work with outside resources. For example, we "qualified" power supplies, but we basically did co-engineering. Part of our problem in that we would significantly change everybody's product, then they would sell it to Dell or Gateway. This was a very quick path to get your processes into the comp as the suppliers would "suggest" things that they had learned at IBM.

The hard drive issue is a bit more subtle. IBM was not the original supplier to our own PCs--and they had a melt down with a massive recall. I don't remember us making hard drives in Scotland. I remember Mainz, Rochester MN, San Jose, and Fujisawa. The PC client group took almost exclusively Fujisawa products. The server group worked to take San Jose/Rochester server products. Rochester was the 5.25 and then 3.5" lines for AS/400, so they were at first leading with the PC server group. I will relate that I think HDDs were always the #1 reason for Quality No Ship (QNS), mainly due to shock specs, which got better over time.

As to the delivery of tech in the UK. I would state that it is similar inside of the USA. Try as many want, tech seems to be focused in the New York, Bay Area and in Puget Sound. While I was in RPT, and this state killed themselves to get tech (including 3 incredible Universities right next door), for some reason it never turned into a tech hub. Without research, I would state that there is also an element of chance or luck that gets a region going, and can't be planned for. However, maybe your just pointing out that UK never even gave themselves any chance, which I am just not close enough to understand.