Rollins: Can it get to be 10% to 15% of the server market, which is not really a niche anymore? It probably can. But I think it needed the catalyst of Dell's input to get there. Now the last issue needed to really drive the market is going to be some form of standards. Right now you've got multiple flavors of blade structures. Usually new product categories don't really take off until you've got a standard and it has not emerged yet. You can lead, but you've got to have people follow, and I think right now everybody is saying, "Follow me."
InformationWeek: Do you feel your competitive position may be as advantageous as you've enjoyed in some time? Is that due to specific missteps that your competitors have made?
Rollins: I think on the PC side, with IBM exiting, we're seeing that this is something they had hoped they could do for some time given the fact that the hardware is not all that profitable. Some of the reasonable minds in this industry are suggesting that it's just not worth it to stay in the PC business and lose money. IBM is the first to admit it, and I think there will be others. The first one out looks the smartest, rather than the last one out, but I'm not predicting who the next one will be.
But we actually make a lot of money in PCs. We are the low-cost producer with the best margins. So for us, this is very good news.
HP has done a very nice job of cutting out costs in trying to integrate two big companies. But at the end of the day, if you look at where they are now versus where those two companies were prior to the merger, they're really at the same place: The same businesses that were making money still make money, and the same ones that didn't still don't.
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