> We would LOVE getting out of that part of our business [...]
That's a common theme when I meet with some unique companies that are still building out their own stacks of kit and just enough software to keep their consumption patterns consistent. It is about necessity some years but often comes down to the assembly line methods and sunk investments.
I'm curious how much variance you guys have / tolerate or if you ever see reaching VMI (maybe you are already there?) procurement levels?
Market wise, it isn't too outlandish to expect many of the "super highly reliable" options to have a future that is a spectrum of DIY + software (100% roll your own) all the way up to a full experience (status quo). Today, that roll your own option is a progression of hardware compatibility lists to reference architectures but there are only a few companies that go beyond that.
I'm curious to hear how much you see as "too much money" to keep your team from getting out of the rack/stack/burn/test/QA/QC/deploy. Do you plow the "too much money" less "build pods cheaper" into a value that can be compared an opportunity cost for the labor involved?