It seems to me they went for a new type of functionality (this was the surprise) and failed. What is left over from this attempt are things like being able to group control the miners. Perhaps this could also explain the amount of time spent on the backplane.

Checked yesterday, if they delivered by last day in Feb I would have had 98 BTC from my purchases.

This is an exercise in losing money gracefully, if there is such a thing. Not sure being in the refund pile is the safest course of action here. I'm actually surprised they are pushing out miners, thought they would have gone hashfast by now.