Date: Wed, 17 Jul 1996 12:56:53 -0700 From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com> To: "Justin T. Gibbs" <gibbs@freefall.freebsd.org> Cc: Amancio Hasty <hasty@rah.star-gate.com>, freebsd-chat@freebsd.org, dwhite@resnet.uoregon.edu, Domingo Siliceo <dsiliceo@adam.es> Subject: Re: Opinions? Message-ID: <1431.837633413@time.cdrom.com> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 17 Jul 1996 12:42:53 PDT." <199607171942.MAA12521@freefall.freebsd.org>
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[Finally moved over exclusively to -chat] > It's actually not the important figure to look at. Initial hardware and > software costs are a miniscule portion of the cost of deploying any system > on this scale. If you can show that solution X takes less time to install, > is easier to configure, is easier to upgrade, and requires minimal staff > training time to use, (along with being robust and fast, etc) you'll get > people to listen. I think this is true up to a certain point, yes, but bear in mind that I'm talking about a small ISP here who's just starting out. It doesn't matter what the "big picture" is if the short-term cash outlay of $20-$30K means you're writing IOUs to your staff for the first 2 months of operation because you can't afford to pay their salary. I know *many* ISPs who did or are starting out that way, and a chunk of change like that is very significant indeed when you're trying to bootstrap the operation out of your own pocket (as, again, many do in order to avoid the evil of Vulture Capitalists getting involved). This represents a window of opportunity for us since once someone's committed to something, be it for economic or for personal preference reasons, they're probably not inclined to switch away from a solution which works and they've already got the staff trained on. This is the same rationale which has folks like DEC and HP donating massive amounts of hardware and software to colleges - get 'em hooked while they're young. :-) Jordan
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