Calling all NANOG'ers - idea for national hardware price quote registry

Mailman List Mirror (Read Only)
1

I don't know about you, but how many times have you wanted to know the
price of hardware vendor a, vendor b and vendor c's product offering
only to find out that you have to contact one of their sales reps, give
them all your contact & company info (I'm sure you know the drill)
listen to a sales spiel (or two, or three) maybe a webinar, or
conference call or..etc. before finally getting a quote some time later?
Only to then be bothered by endless follow up sales calls?

Wouldn't it be great if there was an online, updated daily, website that
listed real quotes oraganized by region in the country and company size?

That way, if you wanted to, say, know that latest prices for 2TB fibre
channel SAN enclosures from company A and company B you pull up the site
and boom, you have a nice fairly accurate idea of what you'll pay for a
company of your size and location?

I think so. Here's what I propose. I will design and host a web site
to organize just such info. What I will need from all of you out there
is your real time quotes (anonymously submitted is just fine, black out
all the relevant personal/company info) and just include some general
info on location (state for instance) and rough size of company.

I'll take care of the rest. Comments?

  Matt

2

(answering the second part first)

to organize just such info. What I will need from all of you out there
is your real time quotes (anonymously submitted is just fine, black out
all the relevant personal/company info) and just include some general
info on location (state for instance) and rough size of company.

I'll take care of the rest. Comments?

Do you plan to include the current going price on eBay? :slight_smile:

That way, if you wanted to, say, know that latest prices for 2TB fibre
channel SAN enclosures from company A and company B

Now, did you want that as all 144G drives, or all 72G, or some shelves
10K RPM 72G, some shelves 7200RPM 72G, and some shelves 5400RPM 300G ATA?
And if you have a mix, do you want to license the HSM product with that,
and if so, how many gigabytes do you want under HSM management?

And one vendor offers redundant heads as separate 3U blocks, while the other
has a 5U chassis that you can buy either one or 2 controller cards, and the
price points are such one vendor is cheaper if you want each head to manage half
the storage and be able to pick up the other half on fallover, but the other
vendor is cheaper if you want both heads able to talk to all the disk all the
time. And did you want that with just FC connections, or with iSCSI too?

Oh, and you can have up to 7 of <these> attached, unless you have a <those>
attached, in which case you can have 5 <these> and one <those> or 4 <these>
and 2 <those>. You know the configurator drill.. :wink:

Sure, go for it. :slight_smile:

3

Wouldn't it be great if there was an online, updated daily, website that
listed real quotes oraganized by region in the country and company size?

Yes, it would be great, however it won't work.

I think so. Here's what I propose. I will design and host a web site
to organize just such info. What I will need from all of you out there
is your real time quotes (anonymously submitted is just fine, black out
all the relevant personal/company info) and just include some general
info on location (state for instance) and rough size of company.

I am sure that this will violate teh company-wide NDAs that are generally
signed when you enter into a business relationship with vendors. Most
vendors of size require this type of agreement, although most engineers
are not privy to the agreement itself.

I forsee the following proplems:

1) Vendors do not want their pricing available for all (including
competitors) to see

2) Vendors would require that list prices be used

3) You would still need to go to the vendor to find out what level of
discount they are willing to give you, and then negociate the best
discount you want.

4) Different companies of similar size are able to negotiate different
levels of discounts, depending on the specifics of their relationship with
the vendor. You're likely to get a better percent when you buy quantity
400 of "B" router/switch/SAN than quantity 2.

5) Purchasing companies would be less likely to want to divulge this
information, as it could hurt their competitive advantage. If they are
getting a 75% discount, and their closest competitor is only getting 50%,
they have a lot better advantage.

6) Such a list is likely actually cause companies to have to pay more.

That being said, I would personally LOVE to have the information. I would
not be able to participate because of the NDA that we have signed, or risk
loosing my job.

-Sean

4

I don't know about you, but how many times have you wanted to know the
  price of hardware vendor a, vendor b and vendor c's product offering
  only to find out that you have to contact one of their sales reps, give
  them all your contact & company info (I'm sure you know the drill)
  listen to a sales spiel (or two, or three) maybe a webinar, or
  conference call or..etc. before finally getting a quote some time later?
  Only to then be bothered by endless follow up sales calls?

I've resigned myself to it being one of the things I get paid to do.

  Wouldn't it be great if there was an online, updated daily, website that
  listed real quotes oraganized by region in the country and company size?

No way that would ever happen. Companies especially in this market,
thrive on making deals in a vacuum. Availability of that sort of
imformation would force them to be slightly more competitive (and
have slightly more integrity)
  
  I think so. Here's what I propose. I will design and host a web site
  to organize just such info. What I will need from all of you out there
  is your real time quotes (anonymously submitted is just fine, black out
  all the relevant personal/company info) and just include some general
  info on location (state for instance) and rough size of company.
  
and all zero folks who aren't bound by disclosure restrictions could
participate!

The more effective and less time-consuming way to solve this problem
is a discipline called "vendor management".

matto

--matt@snark.net------------------------------------------<darwin><
              The only thing necessary for the triumph
              of evil is for good men to do nothing. - Edmund Burke

5

Ah yes, and don't forget that you can usually get rewarded for the time
that you have to spend listening to the sales pitch by squeezing out a
lunch or dinner or two out of the sales guy. That's a big motivation
there... Plus the amount of time that it gets you out of doing to other
sapects of your job!

Well, maybe not all plusses there.

-Sean

6

This isn't an price list or an NDA problem. This is what I call a "vendor
BS management" problem.

I too hate webinars, conference calls, "breakfast forums" (Who the hell
thought that one up? Someone who has never been called out in the middle
of the night, probably) and other sorts of BS.

If you're in a market where there is some competition, just tell the sales
rep that if he wants you to jump through the hoops listening to the
marketing BS and wasting your time with webinars and powerpoints, where
you're force fed their propaganda, you ain't interested, you'll go
somewhere else, and thanks for calling.

I find it either a) re-focuses their mind to actually *listening* to you
(now there's a shock), or b) they don't get it, and you can then ignore
them (e.g. present a wall of voicemail, and fail to return their calls
talking about "synergy" and similar BS) while they make even bigger fools
of themselves, or until they give up.

Yes, I know that option (b) sounds a bit rude, but they have shown you
discourtesy by not listening and insisting on ramming marketing down your
throat. The fun part about (b) is that if you do call them back after a
few weeks, they have become so desperate, they will usually listen to you.

The hardest part I find is dealing with companies with a high turnover of
account management and pre-sales, where you seem to have to break a new
salesman in every few months. That's almost as annoying as the webinars
themselves.

Cheers,
Mike

7

Date: Fri, 16 Sep 2005 13:23:29 -0700
From: Matt Bazan <Mbazan@onelegal.com>
To: nanog@nanog.org
Subject: Calling all NANOG'ers - idea for national hardware price quote
    registry

I don't know about you, but how many times have you wanted to know the
price of hardware vendor a, vendor b and vendor c's product offering

Many a times...

only to find out that you have to contact one of their sales reps, give
them all your contact & company info (I'm sure you know the drill)
listen to a sales spiel (or two, or three) maybe a webinar, or
conference call or..etc. before finally getting a quote some time later?
Only to then be bothered by endless follow up sales calls?

Would that be the plain "list" quote or a special quote ?

Wouldn't it be great if there was an online, updated daily, website that
listed real quotes oraganized by region in the country and company size?

Nope, management would sure like to have leverage when negotiating the
final price - but hey, they would like to have leverage on almost
everyone ;D. From an *operational* standpoint I only want to know in
what price range I should be thinking for vendor A, B and C.

Because I need to weigh my feature list against the price list and
them I also have to weigh them (a bit later) against the budget.

Each vendor knows the list prcies from it's competitor usually, you as
a customer can sometimes get that list rather easy, or you have to ask
a rep for it. You get either a PDF with all their offerings, some lame
XLS configurator sheet or whatever, just depends on how you ask them.

Up till now, when I asked a rep at a vendor or a distributor, it
usually was a matter of giving an e-mail address and hinting at what
type of stuff I was looking at. That would get me enough information.
Now if I mentioned that the price was a bit steep, then they're in
their right

[ ... ]
I'll take care of the rest. Comments?

Keep It Simple Sir.
Listprices would be something everyone can use. And if vendors have
issues with their listprices being public, then why set them in the
first place !?

  Matt

Regards,
JP Velders