Server vendors? Pah, they're mere resellers A few days ago Dell announced that they are reselling hyper-convergence solutions bundling software coming from Nutanix and VMware – and possibly others, too. From my point of view this is not a good strategy. Yes, it will boost some sales in the short term, but what is your differentiator in the long term? What is your value …
You may want to keep some spare parts at hand (even if you have an on-site maintenance contract, it's not always fast enough) - but keep them to a minimum - and you want also to keep the maintenance contracts to a minimum :)
You may have some interop problem - you may not yet fit an HP blade into a Dell enclosure, or viceversa. You want to simplify firmware maintenance, even if a software defined world, they're not going to disappear. Same for installation images and the like. Moving virtualized systems across identical hardware means less problems.
Sometimes, even having all the PSUs on the same side of the rack is a welcome "feature".
Today, is quite difficult to differentiate at the hardware level - especially since all the main brands have the systems built at the same factories using the same components (it is true for mobes too, just there they can differentiate with some design and the UI...)
What hardware vendors can offer is coherency and ease of management - from physical installation onward. Other areas can be energy efficiency, cooling, and the like.
It could be that server vendors will just become a part of a bigger vendor selling all the different pieces - maybe Dell made the right move in buying EMC + VMware?
After all there was an early time when in car manufacturing there were different companies making engines, chassis and bodies - eventually they became an "hyperconverged" system and a single company made them all - but if once they made all the components down to the single bolts, later they started to use COTS ones for everything not needing a custom one... much of the same happened in other markets, once you had companies making shutter, lenses, camera bodies, sensors - today they usually converged into a single company.
Is there really any point to scaling out indefinitely on an Intel x86 architecture and all the inconsistencies that come with the different chip iterations, hence just one of the reasons enterprises are attracted to public clouds.
As the IBM CEO aptly put it, "in the market today you see two companies coming together on yesterday's business model and another breaking up on yesterday's business model".
"...Is there really any point to scaling out indefinitely on an Intel x86 architecture ..."
Yes. Everything is becoming software defined and the inconsistencies between chip iterations are becoming less and less of an issue in the virtual era.
Secondly, it's significantly lower price per IOP/FLOP.
Thirdly, it's a lot easier to find the skills to manage x86 environments.
Fourth, if you don't like your vendor, you can switch from HP to Dell, from Lenovo to Supermicro, from Fujitsu to Quanta as your need change.
Fifth, TCO, time to market, delivery, setup, expandability.
Sixth, everything you attach to an IBM mainframe has the IBM mainframe 'tax' - it's all proprietary. When it comes to x86, you can use anyone's switches, anyone's storage, anyone's printers, HBAs, cables and other peripherals.
Seven, only a limited use case of workloads fit on a mainframe. It does certain things very well - at a cost.
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