lid wrote:
Cydrome Leader kenjka:
Here most vendors have people who could do work, but they want to force
you to use a VAR as well. All most VARs do is try to sell you extra stupid
services you don't need and then botch the order up somehow. It seems like
a stupid way to do things to me, and it's especially annoying when they go
out of business. Try calling Cisco for license enable keys at 4pm on
Friday after your VAR went out of business or changed names. Even if Cisco
sends you new hardware, you have to deal with the stupid VAR to get
license keys again. It's completely stupid and whoever though of that
model needs to set on fire.

Gees!! That's awful!!

Even software companies make you do stupid stuff like find a VAR. Last
time I ordered Vmware, I had to call Vmware to find a VAR that never
returned my calls or emails. Then I had to call back to get the name of
another VAR, then I got a quote for the published price, then I had to
make a PO for the software and support. I didn't even get a piece of paper
or anything. It's completely retarded that I could not just type in a CC
number on vmware.com and download a license key. I had to fill out all
sort of paperwork to download a file from a website.

Well, for VMware we have 2 VARs in Croatia, and me and my colleague
configure what should be ordered for each project, then register project
with VMware (for better discounts) and then our purchasing manager orders
those licences from VARs... We get licences the same or next day...

and office in Croatia that serves 3 major partners, 1 distributor, 1
training centre... Croatia is a small country with 4 mil people, but we have
offices of almost every big vendor here... You'd be surprised, but this
market is very funny, a lot of enterprise boxes are sold here (EMC
Symmetrix, IBM DS8000, HP XP, Hitachi USP, IBM System-z, HP SuperDome,
etc)... Almost everything is done on FC SAN, and nobody even thinks about
iSCSI or NAS systems... )) Like I said, totally funny, nobody asks how
much it costs, all that is needed is that it's working and that it's
expensive...

What do all these machines do- who uses them?

Banks, newspaper companies, telecom companies, etc... Here we call it
enterprise companies, but in US terms this should be true mid-range
companies (from 500 to 5000 employees)...

For HDS here, it seems they have real employees that come out, but simple
stuff like disk swaps is handled by a third party, like maintanence for
SUN and HP unless you have some sort of 4 hour support and a really big
deal problem. I have no problem with this as those techs know their stuff,
I really don't care what company name is on their paychecks.

Well, we have a stock of spare parts for customers that have SLA's signed
with us...

Here is the US major vendors have parts depots, either at
logistics/shipping company warehouses or at warehouses at major airports.

Cool!

For instance, if I want a new fuser assembly for a HP laserjet, it's
probably sitting in a box, right now at UPS logistics (something like
that) in Kentucky . They get the order from HP, print a label and it get
shipped to me, probably within hours. If I need Netapp parts, I think
they're sitting in a warehouse by O'Hare international airport and a
courier or tech can get them to me in just a couple hours, maybe even
less. It works pretty nicely. I'm sure it's a bit slower if you're in some
far away rural area though.

That's really cool way of doing things! Here in Croatia, partner has to buy
spare parts and place it in it's own parts depot... And parts are not
cheap...

The use of computers to make shipping owrk faster is a nice thing. In
these case, like HP and Netapp, they own the parts, nobody has to buy
anything, they're just sitting in the most covenient place possible in
case somebody has to pick them up or they need to delivered somewhere.

Another example of this working out nicely is if you have a server grade
disk fail in a HP server. They send you a new one, and the return label
ships the drive back to super huge contact manufacturing company like
Inventec or whoever for repair or disposal. Sun does the same thing. You
can order 5 different parts and they will all ship back to different
places for repair, or may come from different places. I'm pretty sure
older processor (modules) ship to or from in Canada (probably to/from
Celestica) where they were made.

Of course, Netapp wants you to buy "spares kits" for everything. It's just
extra hardware that has no license. It makes them money, but it's also
nice to be able to have your own spares if you really feel more
comfortable to have them onsite, or don't want to have full service
contracts with them. They'll even sell your system boards- basically any
part you may ever need that other makers won't even sell you.