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

From: owner-nanog@merit.edu [mailto:owner-nanog@merit.edu] On
Behalf Of Sean Figgins
> Yes, it would be great, however it won't work.

Couple points. This is true typically in only the largest enterprise
quotes. For the vast majority of medium and small business quotes NDAs
are rarely used. And hey, if they are , that's why the process is
anonymous :wink: Besides, in today's crap economy, is a vendor really
going to come down on a client for violating an NDA and throw away $$$$?
I personally don't have experience with this but I'm willing to bet that
most NDAs are more bark than bite.

I forsee the following proplems:

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

I know! That's the best part. Just what the airlines used to say back
before the Internet - remember? My prediction is that once the info
gets out there's no stopping it.

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.

Sure, that will be in the quote.

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.

Well, that's why you don't get the VPs permission ;-). Anonymity!!

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

Not sure about the logic here...

anonymous :wink: Besides, in today's crap economy, is a vendor really
going to come down on a client for violating an NDA and throw away $$$$?
I personally don't have experience with this but I'm willing to bet that
most NDAs are more bark than bite.

Most of the vendors I know of like to wine and dine the VPs. If a NDA
gets violated, the vendor will not be forced to stop dealing with the
company, just get the employee that violated the NDA to be fired.
Companies are getting very, very picky about this kind of information
getting out. And, if your company is publically traded, I am sure that
some consultant will claim this is a violation of Sarbanes-Oxley.

> 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.

Well, that's why you don't get the VPs permission ;-). Anonymity!!

Oh goody, even more reason to get fired... Given enough ammo, and you'll
get fired, even if the VP does like you.

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

Not sure about the logic here...

Logic goes like this: Company is seeing that it's prices are getting out.
Company stopps giving the good discounts to anyone, as they will have to
give them to everyone otherwise...

If you are looking for answers to RFPs, then you probably want a little
more information than just price anyways, and will want to talk to not
only the sales rep, but also someone from their engineering team, or at
least a sales engineer.

If you are already doing business with a company, and just want to have
some incremental additional devices or services, then you probably don't
have to talk to a sales guy much to get a quote from him.

If you are shopping for the best price, and don't care about support
costs, or technical specs, then go shop at CDW, or dell.com. Their prices
are published.

I digress, though. This really hasn't much to do with network operations,
so I'm gonna stop.

-Sean

You might want to be careful there... A friend of mine moved from Company A to Company B and told his new employer what discount he had been getting from Vendor C (suggesting that new employer could get a better discount) . Vendor C promptly sued him for breach of NDA. AFAIR, the case was settled, but Company B had some fairly high legal bills...

The range of discounts that different customers get is quite surprising and often seems to change mainly upon negotiation skills and not necessarily amount of equipment purchased.

Warren.