Price Gouging?

bbrown

Stretching through a large part of my career, I have spent close to 20 years in the area of hardware/network intergration. My former NSC was a vendor for the well-known top-tier brands. My current NSC does not handle hardware, but one tasks that typically falls to me i sto review a customers intended server purchase and configuration to confirm it meets our requirements. While my main focus is the configuration, I will give the pricing a sanity check if it's supplied to me. The pricing on many items can be easily checked on the internet with several major suppliers. I typically find the pricing provided by cleint's vendors to be in line with what's available from the online vendors. There are times when I may be able to suggest different configurations that may actually reduce the cost. The way I look at it that more budget available for NAV.

This brings me to the reason for this posting. I thought hard about the title but I not sure what else to call it. I am looking at a system proposal supplied to one of our customers. The hardware is high-end IBM stuff that shows up as "Call for Pricing" on the internet. But I can sanity check the pricing on the Microsoft server software (Windows, SQL, & CALs) and it's in the quote at 20% to 25% over list price. Yes, list price. As in the prices on the MS site.

This kind of shocked me. I haven't seen anybody selling this stuff at list for years. Never mind quoting a 20% markup. What are other people seeing out there in this area?

davmac1

I usually configure their needs using Dell who has good prices on hardware and software.

I gave up on IBM years ago because they did not service their own servers - they contracted it out to third parties. If that has not changed, then there is no advantage to going with an IBM hardware solution.

Now that SQL Server 2008 is 64 bit only for production servers, they could get the runtime SQL Server license when they buy NAV. This would also give them the SQL Server upgrades as long as they keep up with their NAV maintenance. (The older versions - NAV only supplied the 32 bit version.)

bbrown

This is not about "how can I do this cheaper". It's about an apples-to-apples comparision and a vendor that is way off the pricing common in the market.

I would agree with your point on IBM. I think the premiim for IBM doesn't bring enough advatage over Dell and HP. I used to work with IBM hardware and they were very good systems.

I don't agree on the SQL licensing. You need to take individual site requirements into account. Runtime is not always the best options.