[84574] in North American Network Operators' Group
RE: Calling all NANOG'ers - idea for national hardware price quote registry
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Matt Bazan)
Fri Sep 16 17:49:16 2005
Date: Fri, 16 Sep 2005 14:48:43 -0700
From: "Matt Bazan" <Mbazan@onelegal.com>
To: "Sean Figgins" <sean@labrats.us>, <nanog@nanog.org>
Errors-To: owner-nanog@merit.edu
=20
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-nanog@merit.edu [mailto:owner-nanog@merit.edu] On=20
> Behalf Of Sean Figgins
>=20
> Most of the vendors I know of like to wine and dine the VPs. =20
> If a NDA gets violated, the vendor will not be forced to stop=20
> dealing with the company, just get the employee that violated=20
> the NDA to be fired.
> Companies are getting very, very picky about this kind of=20
> information getting out. And, if your company is publically=20
> traded, I am sure that some consultant will claim this is a=20
> violation of Sarbanes-Oxley.
>=20
I can see your points here. But, I think there still is value to the
medium and small companies that are not bound by these types of
agreements.
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> > > 6) Such a list is likely actually cause companies to have=20
> to pay more.
> >
> > Not sure about the logic here...
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> Logic goes like this: Company is seeing that it's prices are=20
> getting out.
> Company stopps giving the good discounts to anyone, as they=20
> will have to give them to everyone otherwise...
>=20
Not sure I buy that line of reasoning. Hasn't happened in the myriad of
other consumer product lines that have open pricing. In fact, just the
opposite happens. Open pricing drives pricing down - not up. This is
exactly the type of culture these hardware companies want. When you
have closed pricing - in any industry - the buyer is always at the
disadvantage. It's time to open this up.
> If you are already doing business with a company, and just=20
> want to have some incremental additional devices or services,=20
> then you probably don't have to talk to a sales guy much to=20
> get a quote from him.
>=20
> If you are shopping for the best price, and don't care about=20
> support costs, or technical specs, then go shop at CDW, or=20
> dell.com. Their prices are published.
>=20
Actually, not the case. CDW and Dell (and all the others) only publish
their prices for the low end gear that they sell. Anything else
requires a call to a rep and establishing a relationship.
Matt
