"But we can't use you because you are not 'X'"
By joe
- 2 minutes read - 344 wordsBeen running into a bit of this recently. Its usually preceded or followed with some sort of performance requirement, that ‘X’ just can’t hit, or they would need so much of ‘X’ that it blows their budget up. I find it interesting that the IT folks, the ones really worried about their futures due to budget cuts placing pressure on them to do more while spending less, really get our message, and grok what we do, and how we can help them achieve their mission goals while reducing their costs. Even more to the point, with the sale of Sun approved, and the impending … er … changes … to the Oracle “hardware” product line, worries about bricking are driving their customers to seek alternatives. We provide an excellent alternative for high performance high density storage, lower priced, higher performance, and complete freedom from bricking. Those folks get it. But we still do run into the (dwindling) few who insist on ‘X’ to “reduce risk”. Um. Yeah. Reduce risk. Risk is that of bricking. Not of dealing with a small vendor. Large vendors blow up just as easily ( Sun and SGI to name a few). And your brand new shiny proprietary system is now a very expensive brick after your proprietary vendor falls over. I hate to use them as the example, but SiCortex is an example of this. Lots of new customers, right before they were turned off. But those customers are SOL for replacement parts. It sucks if you are a customer of such a proprietary system, and the vendor goes bust. That is risk. If your machines are supportable even if the company goes away? Yeah, that is risk reduction. If you have to hoard spare parts and buy used machines to keep parts available? No … that is risk you are attempting to ameliorate. We have had multiple groups call us up asking if we have any thumpers or thors turned in for JackRabbits, as they want to buy them off of us. Which gives me an idea …