Web Giants Design Their Own Hardware, Made to Order

choi

Shira Ovide, Web Giants Bypass Big Hardware Firms. Wall Street Journal, Feb 12, 2015.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/face ... quipment-1423684802

Quoe:

“Now, Facebook is expanding its assault [on servers] by introducing its own designs for the networking equipment that funnels data among its computers and between Facebook’s computers and the Internet.
Computer servers and networking equipment are two of the three core components [the third might be software] of the behind-the-scenes data centers * * [reaction:] H-P has begun offering servers without its proprietary software, which some customers complain keeps them locked into systems.

“The threats to Cisco and H-P are a boon to Taiwanese computer-server makers like Quanta Computer Inc., which has remade its business by catering to the computing demands of Web giants. Broadcom Corp. is selling more of its networking chips, displacing custom-designed Cisco chips in some cases.

“Facebook’s mission is to make hardware less important, boosting the role of software that can be quickly updated to meet changing technology trends or to respond to a spike in users.

My comment: It is about why US Web giants prefer Taiwanese-made lower-end servers, but from the standpoint of American companies rather than from Taiwanese one (the latter have been narrators so far).