Freedom from bricking

This is one of several memes customers are noting to us. They are worried, what happens if vendor X goes away, can I still get support/fixes/replacement parts for my gear? In the case of some of our competitors, the answer is a resounding and unqualified NO. In our case, our high performance JackRabbit systems, our value priced Delta-V, and our Pegasus deskside supercomputers, the answer is a resounding and unqualified YES. We are going to talk more about this over the coming months. This coupled with pricing seems to be at the forefront of many peoples minds. They need performance at reasonable cost. They need freedom from being bricked (turning their big expensive boxes into big expensive door stops). They need supportability and reliability. Maybe someone somewhere can make an argument that a proprietary (impossible to find a second source for) motherboard, and other parts that are hard or impossible to find on the open market, makes for an Open system. I wouldn’t be so bold, so presumptuous, and look down upon my customers intelligence like that. Open means open, second sourceable. If they call it Open, check and see if it really is. Chances are, it really isn’t.