From: jsue@ncsa.uiuc.edu (Jeffrey L. Sue)
Subject: Re: DEC Support?
Originator: jsue@troon.ncsa.uiuc.edu
Organization: The Dow Chemical Company
Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1992 14:24:51 GMT

In article <DGRAY.92Nov18233610@menudo.uh.edu> DGray@uh.edu writes:
>In article <1992Nov19.121523.8216@brt.deakin.edu.au> dougcc@brt.deakin.edu.au (Douglas Miller) writes:
>
>   >DEC "support" will not even talk to you unless you have one of their
>   >outrageously priced service contracts.  
>
>   More "outrageous prices" --- care to justify these assertions?
>
>Okay, How many manufacturers are getting $10,000 for a 1.3 gig drive?
>How about $2000 for a single hard drive controller?  $8,000 for a 351
>meg drive?  (I would point out that an 8 meg RAM card costs $8,000,
>but I understand SGI has even higher prices than that.)  These are
>what I call outrageous prices.
>

Are we talking SCSI drive prices?  If not, then the comparison is invalid.

DEC's SDI technology was an extremely good strategy for allowing new 
technology to be introduced without requiring changes to user programs
(unlike another three-letter vendor we all know).  Yes, they did charge
quite a hefty price for SDI peripherals.  There wasn't really that much
of a reliable alternate vendor for us to turn to (SI was definitely *not*
reliable at that time).  However, as soon as a reliable vendor did come
up (in our case, MTI), with peripherals that worked and were supportable,
DEC quickly brought their prices down to match the competition.  We've been
paying much less than $10,000 per GB for some time now.

As for DEC's SCSI-disk prices:

In my June 1992 price list, DEC's price for a 1.38 GB RZ58 was more in
the $5,000 range.  Yes, this was still outrageous, but not nearly as
crazy-sounding as the $10,000 price quoted above; also, DEC has taken
steps to get "better" prices by making that same disk $2,975 (list) as
of Nov 2nd.  $3,000 may still be a bit higher than some other SCSI
disks, but it is definitely not outrageous.  My feeling is that if my
local DEC sales people can get within 10-15% of a known, respectable
vendor (ie., not just two people working out of a garage), then I can
justify that extra percentage by them having *local* sales people who
are nearby and fairly easy to contact.  In our case, the local DEC
sales office is very dependable... your mileage may vary.

>   If you think any vendor nowadays has any margin left on hardware sales that
>   they can use to subsidise other parts of their business, then you have been
>   asleep for the last five years.
>
>Never mind that other vendors *ARE* doing this.  On site service is
>another matter, but I can't think of another company who will not halp
>you out with a problem on the phone.
>

As for their support organization... well this is hit-and-miss.  I have
been very successful with some of the sofware support people.  Other times
it has failed dismally.  However, I think this has improved much in the
past year or so.

Hardware support is more difficult to gage for me.  We just don't call
for hardware support all that often.  Don't get me wrong, this is
*good*!  But service during problems is definitely a necessity as well.
Do you get what you pay for?  This is a long-term answer.  Sometimes you're
bound to get a dud.  As for cost:  well, if you buy "standard" price - which
includes a warranty - you pay $400-700 extra.  If not, you get what you
pay for.  Many of the smaller companies do not have as large a support
staff nor as large of an install-base.  They can afford to provide that
kind of service because of this.  I'm definitely *not* knocking them.  This
is what America is all about.  I believe that the small business person is
filling a great need and we'd be a *lot* better off without them.

I do know that the 24-hour return policy of most of these smaller
companies will not fit into all of our business situations.  Some
(workstations) may be able to survive with this kind of "maintenance".
Other systems are too critical.  We gage our purchases based on this
criticality.

Jeff
-- 
-----
Jeff Sue   
 - All opinions are mine -       (and you can't have any, nya nya nya)
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