[Info-vax] Rumor of EMC shopping itself to hp

[David Froble]

mcleanjoh at gmail.com wrote:
> It's all a question of where decent money can be made.

Oh, yeah, and that's our problem.

> It's not like the 1980's when there was plenty of money to be made
> from both hardware and software.  The profit margin in PC's has
> collapsed as people have switched away from PCs in various forms to
> phones for their social interaction.  The disk market is suffering as
> a consequence of that shift but also the move to solid state as a
> storage medium (think USB).  Software sales are falling due to Linux
> and (again) mobile phones.  Hardware and software have become
> commodities, much like cans of Coke.

Yes and no.

Commodity software, browsers, email, open office, and such is cheap or 
free, and is where much of the usage is.

As for the hardware, if it's good enough for the commodity software, 
then it gets the volume, which spreads development out over many more 
units, which makes it cheaper, and it gets the development money.

However, there are still some needs where commodity just won't do the 
job.  For the software, it's not cheap, and a user either knows this and 
is willing to pay for what he needs, or, he keeps trying different 
commodity software, which never really does the job, and increased labor 
costs are incurred.

Monitoring and control software for a nuclear power station, yeah, they 
know what they need, they know it's going to cost, and they are happy to 
pay for quality.  (The alternative can be VERY expensive ....)

With the software, it's doable.

If you need better than "good enough" hardware.  You're screwed.  The 
development money is not available.  The development people are not 
available, due to lack of money.

The thing is, (I'm going to blame the bean counters), there are those 
who don't know the difference, and only see the different costs.  So 
they insist on the cheapest solution.  Thus, the "good stuff" doesn't 
sell, therefore doesn't get developed and marketed.

One of my favorite quotes is "when you're sitting in the space shuttle 
ready to lift off, be comforted to know that everything under you was 
procured on a low bid basis".

:-)