DS, >>>but stand by my conclusion that DELL has no real
product differentiators, no intellectual property, and is vulnerable to competition.<<<
I completely agree with you. Boy, liable to get a lot of hate mail from Dellheads, though, huh? Something like a thousand posts over there in 24 hours?
The thing with Dell's main competitor, Compaq, though, is they keep swallowing companies almost as big as they are, with no apparent (to me) or logical reason (except to get BIG). Why else did they buy DEC, for the rights to VAX, VMS reseller and maintenance? OK, alpha, but who buys those? Then they bought Tandem in the same year. Now rumors about AMD!
At least Michael Dell is a winner, in Dell's defense. But their servers, e.g., have no IP quotient as you say, whereas companies like SGI and IBM, and, OK, Compaq, are doing some pretty neat stuff to enhance scalability, security, RAS, I/O, etc. OK, Cisco thread.
I like Cisco's growth through buying small companies approach. Just right.
Tony |
