Will HP Dell IBM become the outcast of the cloud computing age?

Beijing time, December 18, the United States "Wired" magazine Network edition recently published a signed Hoffman, Jason Hoffman, the article, said that just as the container changed the shipping industry to store and transport physical goods, Modern data centers have also changed the way we store and transmit digital products. Now, with a huge amount of data to deal with, many companies have started building their own servers and data centers instead of buying servers or renting storage space from the three major server manufacturers, HP, Dell and IBM. In the server market, HP, Dell and IBM are out of business.

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Container and modern data center

In 1956, the first modern container ship sailed from Newark, United States, to Houston. The idea now sounds simple: a freighter carrying large containers rather than small crates makes it easier for people to transfer goods to trains, trucks or directly into factories. The container shipping system took years to build, refine and execute. However, once put into use, the global shipping industry has undergone profound changes.

Containers have revolutionized the shipping industry because they make it easier to transport large quantities of cheap goods between ports. All of a sudden, small crates and porters who depend on cargo for a living have become irrelevant. In the long journey from one factory to another, goods can be kept in containers, saving a lot of time, money and manpower.

Today, a similar shift is taking place: this time, we are shipping digital products, not physical products. What we see is not the physical factory, but the rise of the digital factory.

A more popular name for a digital factory is the data center.

Those small crates and hard-working porters are like Dell, HP and IBM, the former data center server manufacturer. Many companies used to buy servers from these three giants to store and transfer digital products, but now they choose to build their own servers and data centers.

And why? Because this is more conducive to greater efficiency. In terms of the impact on different businesses, the rise of digital "data factories" resembles the rise of real factories. In other words, big companies will build their own digital factories. Those "crates" will become the history of the past.

We have seen this change taking place. Small-scale server clusters have not been able to meet the needs of technology giants such as Facebook, Google (Weibo) and Amazon. As a result, they have started to build their own faster, larger, more flexible "data factories". Such data centers can handle much more data than server vendors have long been able to solve.

A few months ago, Diane Bryant, Intel CIO, shared some interesting data in media interviews to further support this view. In 2008, she said, Intel's 75% server chip revenue came from three major server manufacturers: IBM, Dell and Hewlett-Packard. In 2012, Intel 75% 's server chip revenue came from eight companies, not the three giants.

Four years ago, most companies bought servers from the three giants. But the statistics Bryant shares show that the market is changing. Hewlett-Packard denies the validity of the numbers, claiming that HP, Dell and IBM together still occupy a 73.9% share of the market. However, if you look closely at the development of the data center, you will find that Bryant's data confirms the impact of the server industry.

The three development trends of the server industry

Under this kind of influence, the server industry appears three big development trends:

1. The size of each company has become as large as the three major server suppliers. Today, because of the huge amount of data that exists, a company needs a number of servers that are close to the entire business of a vendor. If Dell has 2 million servers and your company needs 1 million, and your needs suddenly occupy half of the server's business, then it would be unwise to do business with middlemen. You can ask Google that the company has ranked fifth in the top eight server vendors listed by Intel. The search giant itself does not sell servers, it simply needs so many servers to run its business, so it is necessary to build its own servers and data centers.

2. Companies making parts are being merged and standardized. Another trend we see is that fewer businesses are producing server parts. We now have only three major manufacturers, such as Intel, Samsung and TSMC, and only two major hard disk manufacturers, such as Seagate and Western data. This unprecedented consolidation makes it easier for companies wishing to build their own data centers to realize their aspirations, because integration means more standardization of parts. Companies are able to pick the parts they want from all three parts manufacturers.

3. Commercialization of server parts. Once, the server itself was the commodity. But now we see that the server parts have been commercialized. The sale of these server parts, such as motherboards, network interface controllers, and chips, indicates that the market has changed. It shows that businesses are building their own servers and data centers, rather than buying servers from others or renting storage space from someone else's data center. More importantly, Intel has begun to cater to this trend by providing quality assurance for individual parts.

What we see now in the servers and data centers is exactly the same as the factory and container change shipping industry 50 years ago.

Shipping containers Change the way we store and transport physical goods. Modern data centers have changed the way we store and transmit digital products. Before the advent of the data center, computers and servers were the center of our industry, just as the small crates were the center of the shipping industry before the advent of containers. But now, many companies are starting to build personalized data centers.

What does all this mean? It means that large enterprises will build and manage their own data centers. Small businesses will need to lease storage space in larger data centers. This is a new "cloud computing Service". This idea will maximize our efficiency and push our economy to a higher level.

(Responsible editor: The good of the Legacy)