[2168] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: Low end users
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Dave Crocker)
Wed Jan 29 00:41:53 1992
To: Richard Mandelbaum <rma@tsar.cc.rochester.edu>
Cc: HORN%athena@leia.polaroid.com, com-priv@psi.com
In-Reply-To: Your message of Tue, 28 Jan 92 20:47:21 -0500.
Date: Tue, 28 Jan 92 21:40:43 -0800
From: Dave Crocker <dcrocker@Mordor.Stanford.EDU>
Let me stress the importance of Richard's explanation about the
source of cost for a service, especially an infrastructure service.
Support and administration are killers. They eat away at operating
margins at a phenomenal rate that simply is not imaginable to anyone
(or at least THIS one) until they participate in developing or
operating one.
While not trivial, the actual costs of the relevant technology usually
are highly manageable and subject to reasonable styles of optimization.
Optimizing (i.e., minimizing the cost of) support is hugely difficult.
Dave
