I don't know what an "absolute type of planner" is, but I consider myself an engineer and a pragmatist. I'm well versed with realities. In reality, with business, there's no such thing as "priceless", only risk, and risk is, generally, quantifiable. With enough data, it's easily quantifiable.

I admit that, having an affinity for startups, rather than more traditional small businesses, I have a greater affinity for risk. Ironically, perhaps, I'm usually the voice of risk-aversion with respect to IT infrastucture, so I don't believe it affects my overall understanding.

I recently pointed out to an interviewer who was trying to convince me that it was worth spending half a megabuck on a petabyte from Netapp because it was "business critical" instead of 1/10th that amount for DIY, that, just like the DIY solution, Netapp does not indemnify the business against loss. One isn't buying insurance, only a bunch of technology.

Sure, "works the first time" is worth something. Is it worth the cost of a whole, complete, extra server on a order of qty 6? If the infant-mortality rate on servers is anywhere approaching 1-in-6 and they're being shipped somewhere that the replacement time and/or cost would be prohibitive, I'd still probably rather just order 7 servers instead.

That's my main problem with paying a vendor for "reliability": it's a very fuzzy, hand-wavy assurance. Paying for reliability with more hardware has data and statistics behind it, which is an engineering solution.

Risk is not quantifiable based on your insight into most businesses. You provision and despair.

I can't understand either of these two sentences, not even who the "you" is supposed to be.

I'd hope for a more substantive reply, if anything.