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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.
