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They might have had list pricing but I never saw that page. Not just a page for pricing, they had an entire webapp for configuring and ordering systems. You c

by shpxnvz 16y ago

They might have had list pricing but I never saw that page. Not just a page for pricing, they had an entire webapp for configuring and ordering systems. You could go in, select a server or workstation, configure it (CPUs, memory, disk, etc...), with the price updating as you went, and (IIRC) purchase it online. Not all at dissimilar to the Dell online purchasing process, actually. This was around ten years ago, and they removed the capability not too long after that. That was clearly an attempt to diversify their sales process away from just the salesman, but for whatever reason it failed and they gave up. List price or no, they obviously weren't content only having the process that you insist is just how it's done.

Nrsolis 16y ago
Hey, companies try new things all the time and then retreat when they realize that it's counter to the direction the rest of the organization wants to go. I'm willing to bet that some people felt that moving to an online sales model was a good idea. I just think that a lot more people felt otherwise. AAPL tried to license their platform for a little while. That died too. My point (to get back to the original discussion) is that selling $1M+/unit equipment is fundamentally different from selling boxes that cost $2K. The OP shouldn't be surprised that the price isn't listed b/c that probably indicates that the whole pricing exercise isn't a neat process and involves more $$$ that they would be willing to part with. For a lot of other organizations, price is (very nearly) no object since they are often the only suitable customer for whole classes of product. Since they're the market, THEY set the price. If you're a Telco or CableCo, you are squarely within the market for high-end $1M+ routers. If you're a financial exchange, you're in the market for ultra-high performance OLTP systems. Lockheed doesn't sell fighter jets to school systems. I doubt a vice principal would find it insulting that they couldn't order one via a webpage. That's what "qualification" is: determining whether a customer has a use for your product and the budget (more or less) to purchase it. Qualification isn't about making snap judgments about a customer; it's about making sure you're allocating finite sales/engineering resources across the most likely purchasers.
- KC8ZKF 16y ago
  Of course I'm not surprised that million dollar machines aren't sold that way. Sun had $3000 Netras, too. And lots of inexpensive workstations. These are what I was talking about.

by shpxnvz 16y ago

Nrsolis 16y ago

Hey, companies try new things all the time and then retreat when they realize that it's counter to the direction the rest of the organization wants to go. I'm willing to bet that some people felt that moving to an online sales model was a good idea. I just think that a lot more people felt otherwise. AAPL tried to license their platform for a little while. That died too. My point (to get back to the original discussion) is that selling $1M+/unit equipment is fundamentally different from selling boxes that cost $2K. The OP shouldn't be surprised that the price isn't listed b/c that probably indicates that the whole pricing exercise isn't a neat process and involves more $$$ that they would be willing to part with. For a lot of other organizations, price is (very nearly) no object since they are often the only suitable customer for whole classes of product. Since they're the market, THEY set the price. If you're a Telco or CableCo, you are squarely within the market for high-end $1M+ routers. If you're a financial exchange, you're in the market for ultra-high performance OLTP systems. Lockheed doesn't sell fighter jets to school systems. I doubt a vice principal would find it insulting that they couldn't order one via a webpage. That's what "qualification" is: determining whether a customer has a use for your product and the budget (more or less) to purchase it. Qualification isn't about making snap judgments about a customer; it's about making sure you're allocating finite sales/engineering resources across the most likely purchasers.

KC8ZKF 16y ago
Of course I'm not surprised that million dollar machines aren't sold that way. Sun had $3000 Netras, too. And lots of inexpensive workstations. These are what I was talking about.