Last project I could have spent that money to pay for 3-4 additional full time engineers for 3 years and built a better solution with open source because I still had to devote 2 plus myself to do integration. And then didn't have overpriced SMS for the next decade and licensing headaches and afford to keep at least 1 of the engineers indefinitely.
Is there room in this space for a new no-nonsense vendor? Someone who cuts out all the goddamn middlemen and just asks what hardware you want, how you want it configured, and quotes you a frickin price without all the bullshit?
We sell incredibly complicated systems that necessarily interact with many other complicated systems. We don't work natively with all of them, and sometimes we need to do custom work. Not to mention that we need hardware in many geographical areas, yet still need to work when the virtual space doesn't line up with the physical space.
It's not as easy as "am I buying the small, medium, or large solution". Before you invest tens of millions of dollars into this one product, you need someone from the vendor to analyze your infrastructure and tell you if our product will work, and then how many you need to buy and where you need to put them geographically, and then how many hours of custom programming it will take to get everything working with the other systems.
That's far outside any definition of "salesman" I've ever heard. These people are project architects and their speciality is solution design. It's not a three-tier SaaS solution.
We'd actually love to be able to give you an "add to cart" price, but the reality is that most of our systems are configured to your specific requirements (with the exception of the FreeNAS Mini, which you can just add to cart on Amazon) instead of just "off the shelf".
It's actually not about trying to figure out how much is in your wallet, I assure you. In fact, we have one of the most transparent pricing processes in the biz. For example, we tell you your end price on our storage systems before a Reseller/VAR is even involved. We also fought the concept of having "list prices" for years, since we all know they're completely fictitious. However, it's something our F500, Gov't, and University customers almost always require so that they can measure and compare their discount.
Nonetheless, we do try to make the design process as quick and painless as possible for you, and regardless of whether or not you give us another shot, the feedback is always appreciated.
Cheers!
The problem is if you only need one or two servers that's too small for most vendors to bother responding. If you're buying 10 or more it can work well.
Fuck you. Sell me boxes and tell me how much they cost. But they won't.