Biggest ripoff vendors ?

I've got some service invoices that make my eyes water, I think the worst offenders are Cisco, IBM, SAP and Oracle.

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What makes those vendors a rip off? If you want and need enterprise level devices and services there is reason why they are so large and successful.

Zartanasaurus

What's worse than the hardware costs is the "professional services" cost from the resellers. I know the game and it's good money if you can get it, but $5K to stamp an attribute on a handful of AD objects with a script that took 30 minutes to write is just silly.

CodeBlox

Try $4k for renaming a queue in IPCC :P

Essendon

I'll add HP to that list. A one day consulting exercise on Data Protector setup cost my previous employer about $2k. 8 hours = $2,000...yikes!!

But then again, enterprise level devices/services are going to cost a lot of money.

instant000

To paraphrase a story I heard about a skilled handyman who charged $1,000 to fix something simple:

The customer had a broken (whatever).
The man comes in, looks at it for a few seconds, then tightens a screw. About five minutes of work.
The customer receives a bill of $1,000 for five minutes of work.
The customer complains, asking why it was a $1,000 charge, when all the worker did was come in, look at it for a few seconds, then tighten a screw.
The customer requests itemized charges.

The man presents the itemized bill:
$1 - To tighten the screw
$999 - for knowing which screw to tighten

DevilWAH

a 5K to do a quote to do a quote for a AD upgrade (1500 user single site 2 DC's)

that's right a quote to quote a quote

yer confused me to.

they also wanted £2500 to update a DNS entry on one of our servers they managed! I don't mean plan the change, or tec review it, just to long on and carry out the process of changing the IP address of an existing server. Oh and I would need to be there to let them on to site and let them use my PC to do it. We had no remote access in.

Essendon

This promises to be an interesting thread!

About7Narwhal

IBM. You buy the support and warranty for numbers I wish I had in my bank account, then get told you cannot service the device yourself else it voids the warranty. They come in, make 2 seconds worth of changes (that I could do with my novice level server experience) then charge more on top of the support and warranty costs.

Zartanasaurus

Essendon wrote: »

I'll add HP to that list. A one day consulting exercise on Data Protector setup cost my previous employer about $2k. 8 hours = $2,000...yikes!!

But then again, enterprise level devices/services are going to cost a lot of money.

$250 an hour isn't really that terrible.

jmritenour

EMC, at least for some products. Avamar & Data Domain pricing are ridiculous. Their reasoning is you save *so much* money on backup storage with their deduplication methods that it more than offsets the price, but I'm not so sure.

instant000

If it wasn't obvious from my prior post, my point is that it is not necessarily a rip-off to get an expertise that you may not have generically.

Now, what I somewhat disagree with is the setups where you're not allowed to service the product yourself (even if you know what you're doing) because it would void the warranty. Of course, the standard vendor defense in that case would be that it was agreed to from the beginning.

EV42TMAN

I've heard horrible things about IBM service. At my old job, one of their clients is a research hospital. They HAD an IBM cluster and almost each time the IBM service techs came out they physically broke components on the cluster and they charge the client for the privilege. Once the maintenance contract was up they bought a new cluster from my old employer.

Zartanasaurus

instant000 wrote: »

Now, what I somewhat disagree with is the setups where you're not allowed to service the product yourself (even if you know what you're doing) because it would void the warranty.

Depending on the vendor, they will let you DIY, but you have to pay the same price to have one of their techs come out and "certify it" so it's under warranty. Y'know, because it's no good if the priest of HP doesn't come out and sprinkle holy water on the SAN array.

it_consultant

I get the most complaints about support contracts. Cisco will sell you things at a 60% discount then murder you on the next smartnet renewal. IBM is just as bad with their professional implementation services - they will give you about a month of the good people, then off to India you go.

shodown

Some of the prices in here do seem high, but as a professional services provider a lot has to go into making sure the customer gets a good experience for example.

1. HIGHLY trained staff, who understands the customers business requirement
2. Websites to find us.
3. Sales staff to reach out to you
4. Admin staff to ensure people get paid, paperwork, facility
5. Internal and external software to make the process easier
6. Did your management sign a T&M or fixed cost. All of these things factor in.

All of these things go into professional service cost. So seeing a bill for 250 a hour pays for a lot more things than someone coming out to fix a box or doing some scripts.

Master Of Puppets

it_consultant wrote: »

I get the most complaints about support contracts. Cisco will sell you things at a 60% discount then murder you on the next smartnet renewal. IBM is just as bad with their professional implementation services - they will give you about a month of the good people, then off to India you go.

Totally agree. I like Cisco technologies and equipment but their prices are too high, IMO.

About7Narwhal

EV42TMAN wrote: »

IBM service techs came out they physically broke components

I have seen this, or they will power off a device without asking or need. Nah, it's fine. That box was only a live system supporting an active environment. Go ahead and power it off to replace a drive in the array…

Zartanasaurus wrote: »

Y'know, because it's no good if the priest of HP doesn't come out and sprinkle holy water on the SAN array.

Also see this a lot as well.

DevilWAH

I have to say professional services are priced to give a much better profit margin over managed services. For a few reasons.

One, work is not garanted so you have to get money to cover engineers down time. If you don't have work for thy you stll have to pay there wages. For this reason a lot of support companies back of specialist PS services to be specialised companies, introducing another link and so extra profit step.

Two there is more aperture work and people involved in ad hoc work especial the admin side, and you need technical staff who can deal with the unexpected so more staff costs and time needed per task.

Support combines want customers to go for managed services, it allows them to plan staffing needs and technical requirement, and provides a steady income, so they want MS to be a attractive alternative to PS.

I would expect to pay £800 to £1500 a day for planed consultency, and upwards of this for emergency support not covered by a support contract.