In this article, we'll be discussing the value of name brands in IT services, how that value has evolved over time, and where it's going in the future as a result of cloud computing and other new technologies. Before we look to the future of these technologies, it's time to start from the beginning.
The Era of the Black Box
If you aren't huge into the history of this industry, you may not know what a "Black Box" is. Historically, the Black Box refers to IBM's original PCs, and later on its ThinkPad, one of the most prominent laptops of all time. The first PC was the IBM PC, and everyone else was making clones, including names you might recognize, like Dell or HP. The early days of the PC industry were incredibly competitive, with hundreds of players making their own spin on the IBM PC (and later the DOS and Windows PC), but nowadays only the biggest brands in PC manufacturing have survived.
Their survival has locked up the hardware market, in terms of both prebuilt machines and the computer hardware that goes into them. Desktop CPUs, for instance, are dominated by Intel and AMD, while AMD and NVIDIA are the only two remaining desktop GPU companies remaining after they devoured all the others. A large part of how these companies gained the dominance they have is through the power of the name brand.
How IT Companies Utilized This
Name brands are important to think about here, especially when contextualizing the period from the late 80s to the early 2000s where name brands were key to the life of businesses in the oversaturated tech industry. However, the manufacturers weren't the only ones using name brands. Those who provided IT services -- that is, IT service providers -- needed to utilize them, too. They made a brand for their own IT companies and sold only the best name-branded computers and equipment to their customers and partners.
The Black Box Is Dead
But this doesn't matter anymore. Strong name brands still exist, of course -- Apple, Microsoft, Google, etc. -- but that's on a consumer level. When it comes to IT service providers, name brands aren't as big a deal. As more and more people move to anonymous cloud service providers, the names mean less and less. Your data is stored and mirrored on hundreds of thousands of data centers that you've never seen and never will see, most likely.
In the cloud, hardware doesn't matter. All that matters is storage and performance, and any IT service providers who want to survive needs to adapt.
