Dell’s innovation to the computer industry was build to order, selling computers direct, and later online in short streamlining the buying process. IBM, Sun, Digital, and SGI we’re at a whole different level, and they were at that level because of their capabilities.
They could’ve have potentially changed the game (like Apple) and competed against Microsoft and Intel, but they were fixated on selling basically to the corporate level which was in hindsight not a good decision long-term, and eventually it cost them all, their loss was immeasurable because of the hardware and more importantly operating system capabilities they had in house.