Horizontal or Vertical? Its Neither. I'm just tired of it.

If there is one thing that history has taught us, it is, things are never just one way or the other. It is always a combination of this and that. Take cars for example, you can either have a true sports car like Lotus, Ariel Atom, Zonda, some Porsche's or a excellent luxury car like Bentley, Rolls-Royce or even Maybach. Your choices are pretty limited at the extremes.

Then there is the vast middle from Acura to VW. This is where the money is made. So what does all this mean to being Horizontal or Vertical?

In the world of computer hardware, there are two camps - the infinitely horizontally scalable camp and the bigger is better camp. Many online companies like MSN, Yahoo, Google etc. built their computing capacity using what are known as commodity servers - 1000's of them. Meanwhile the large businesses have few very big boxes, traditionally called the Mainframe.

These two approaches seem like extremes. i.e. similar to the cars example. There is not much money to be made at either ends, in comparison to what can be made in the middle. In addition, the pendulum swings from one to the other depending on the 5-year period you pick to argue in the last 20 years.

Horizontally scalable systems started because of a need - a need to create a large computing environment for the least amount of money. Over a period of time, one is going to realize that this is like transporting goods with a bunch of minivans hitched together and from a management and flexibility perspective its a nightmare to navigate. Especially when once faces hardware obsolescence.

Vertically scalable systems on the other-hand started by someone - usually a large corp - wanting to gain a business advantage over competition. Money was no object then. It is like a Freight Train with a lot of lugging capacity but can go only on rails and not as flexible.

But what most companies need are pick-up trucks. So there is not much to gain financially in a trail of minivans or Trains on tracks. But we sure need them both for specific purposes. Moreover, over a period of time, the Minivan trail is going to realize that it is much cheaper and lot efficient to run trains for certain purposes.

So high-end hardware manufacturers like HP, IBM and SUN should not change their strategies a whole lot like for e.g. what SUN is currently doing. That would just cannibalize their own future at the expense of some short-term gain. This makes them lose focus. Get them into unfamiliar territory and make them struggle. So please define your competence and try to make the best of it. That is how you outshine and outlast others.

Companies like Verari and Rackable come and go. They may even make a quick buck in the process. Their business models are not sustainable in the long run. Currently the pendulum is swinging towards the horizontally scalable end of the spectrum. It sure will swing back - give it 3 to 5 years. Quick money is made by keeping the markets volatile, not focusing on the long term. I'll be around and hopefully make an update to this article - one way or the other. Why not?