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HP Giving Away Mainframes?

Posted by Hemos on from the piece-of-what? dept.

Erbo writes "No, that's not a misprint--Hewlett-Packard is now giving its most powerful hardware away. But there's a catch, of course...they'll be wanting "a piece of the action" in return. Could this be the next step after the "free PC" business model? Will it carry HP by leaps and bounds into the 21st century? ZDnet has the details. "

1 of 19 comments (clear)

  1. Where does the revenue come from these days? by bagel · · Score: 4
    It's pretty amazing the way things are working out. Years ago, hardware manufacturers gave away the OS, usually with source, because they really didn't care about it, the OS was only there to make the box run. Then Microsoft came along and showed how they (as a relatively small [!] software company) could make mega-bucks from the OS. So everybody closed up the OS, without realising they weren't making any more money that way, and customers got an inferior product.

    Then, companies realised they could make more money by using a quality, free OS like Linux, and could even give away free copies of their own product (like Sun and Solaris 7). Closed companies like Wintel start to get worried... Consumers (especially the clever ones) start to get excited...

    Then, and this is the important bit, the same hardware manufacturers realised they weren't getting enough revenue from selling the boxes that had done them fine for decades. Too much competition, E-business is everything, open protocols give you no competitive advantage, etc...

    Enter: The 'Services' company. You don't need capital, even an office, all you need is an idea! Witness 'Amazon' and the like, great (on the whole), modern companies that are providing things the consumers really want! Only problem is, they're making all the money and the hardware/software vendors are losing badly.

    HP are onto a great thing here, I hope it works for them and they don't abandon it when the first few startups take advantage of the offer and then disappear...

    Now, I need to think of a way to get one of those shiny boxes on my desk... (Under my desk? Beside my desk? In a massive room all to itself? :)