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Ask Slashdot: Do You Trust When a Vendor Tells You To Buy New Parts?
Nerval's Lobster writes "Roughly 85 percent of IT managers polled by Forrester said they would hold onto networking infrastructure longer, but vendors retire products prematurely in an effort to force customers to upgrade. In a response that may seem familiar to anyone who's ever been pressured into buying a maintenance contract—either by an enterprise vendor or a major electronics retailer—over 80 percent of the 304 respondents said they don't like the misrepresented cost savings, new fees, and inflexible pricing models—but buy the products anyway. One of the survey's interesting points is that IT decision makers aren't willing to contradict the vendor. The uncertainty seems to come from the fact that the vendor may in fact be right—and a customer who contradicts what they're saying may end up shouldering the blame if the equipment goes south. It's the 'you never got fired for buying IBM' argument, applied to the networking space. The problem, of course, is that the vendor often works for its own agenda. Do you upgrade when the vendor (or reseller) suggests you do so? Or do you stick to your own way of doing things?"
And, let's face it, whose money you're spending.
Nearly all HP kit has it even a lot of Cisco kit does (though they make you jump through hoops to use it). Buy good kit I've replaced cisco 6500's bits over the years that were bought in the 90's and just got tech refreshes not bad taking a 10/100 with a few gig ports to 10ge over 14 years.
No sir I dont like it.
percent off list, and since you're looking at a new rollout anyways, do they still think you need new hardware even if it's a competitor's?
If they say yes, you can probably believe. And might save a few quid on the rollout to boot :)
Here's a related question. Do you trust when a car manufacturer tells you to buy new parts?
Specifically, the maintenance schedule in the owner's packet that comes with a new car. For example, at 60,000 miles:
1) Replace engine coolant
2) Replace HEV inverter coolant
3) Replace manual transmission oil
4) Replace automatic transmission/CVT/eCVT fluid
5) Replace differential oil
6) Replace engine drive belts
7) Replace radiator cap
8) Replace transfer case oil
Are all these necessary, or is the dealer trying to squeeze more money from the owner? I've heard various mechanics coming down on both sides of this question. Does the differential oil really need periodic replacing? Do you need new drive belts if there's no visible damage?
(Also: Do you replace the engine oil and filter every 2000 miles, or is this just another way to squeeze money from the consumer?)
HP will extend the warranty on any business class system they sell for a minimum of 5 years beyond the initial 3 year warranty, at the end of 8 years it probably IS more cost effective to replace the system (hell, the HP 3000 series boxes were supported for over a decade after end of sale). For networking I love Cisco chassis based switches, Cat 6500, 4000, and 4500 series switches have all lasted at least a decade.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Stop golf course meetings and let real IT people in to meetings as well.
We needed a caddy anyway.
I guess you didn't even read the summary, or you'd realize we're talking about infrastructure and not toys or luxuries.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Here's a related question. Do you trust when a car manufacturer tells you to buy new parts?
Specifically, the maintenance schedule in the owner's packet that comes with a new car. For example, at 60,000 miles:
1) Replace engine coolant
2) Replace HEV inverter coolant
3) Replace manual transmission oil
4) Replace automatic transmission/CVT/eCVT fluid
5) Replace differential oil
6) Replace engine drive belts
7) Replace radiator cap
8) Replace transfer case oil
Are all these necessary, or is the dealer trying to squeeze more money from the owner? I've heard various mechanics coming down on both sides of this question. Does the differential oil really need periodic replacing? Do you need new drive belts if there's no visible damage?
(Also: Do you replace the engine oil and filter every 2000 miles, or is this just another way to squeeze money from the consumer?)
You're talking about consumables. What the vendors are doing is the same as a car manufacturer telling you to buy a new car because it's out of date - regardless if it still works or not.
I'm sure most of us have dealt with sales reps over the years, and seen all sorts of claims of bigger/better/faster/cheaper, but they're often unsubstantiated by anything.
We had a scenario with a vendor a while back where functionality we were relying on wasn't going to be in their next version until a year after it was too late for us. (Add on component we'd been using for years.)
So, we basically forced them into extending support since the only reason we couldn't upgrade was because of their inability to deliver functionality we already had.
Then they spent the next year constantly asking us when we would be upgrading, and conveniently trying to forget about the signed contract they'd given us to extend support and telling us we were about to become unsupported.
You need to work with your vendor, but you sure as hell don't need to take what they tell you at face value without something to support it.
At the end of the day, most of the salesmen (because that's what your rep is) are more worried about their commission check than anything else, and will certainly mislead your or pressure you to do something which doesn't really benefit you.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
If you don't want to upgrade every 2-3 years you could always:
- You're a small shop with no money and the equipment is doing business critical work: Carry a spare and possibly arrange in redundant configurations
- You're a small shop with no money and the equipment is doing nothing critical: Possibly carry a spare
- You're a large shop with 'too much' money and the equipment is doing business critical work: Carry spare(s) and arrange in redundant configurations
- You're a large shop with 'too much' money and the equipment is nothing critical: Carry spare
All too often:
- You're a small/large shop with enough money and the equipment is doing critical work: Ignore advice to have a spare/redundant configuration, scream blue murder when it breaks. (And usually after a big outage like that, once its all up and running, they *still* ignore the advice to have spares).
http://blog.nexusuk.org
"We'll be happy to fix it unless it's broken."
It could be worse. The definition of "lifetime" may be "lifetime of the registered owner", in which case Cisco would dispatch a ninja assassination squad as soon as you open a warranty ticket.
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