Try some history leassons
"Why is it the Danes have to always bring up the Vikings?..."
Well I see that your knowledge of Nordic history, and thus also a big chunk of western europe is about as big as your knowledge of Unix solutions. It clearly reflects a world seen from only one perspective from someone sitting on a little island.
"We do a POC for every major project. I wouldn't care if you'd been supplying solutions to us for ten years, I still wouldn't go with vendor benchmarks as a guide, I'd expect you to prove your solution. Maybe we're just less guillible in the UK."
Yawn. You sure live in a perfect world. In the world I live in customers don't want do do POC. It is almost always me who has to insist on a 'verification test', Pilot or POC call it what you want. Sure I am honest enough, to put the real cost to the customer. And if there is excess capacity they can usually lend it for free. But I can't give them the manhours for free. So they get what they pay for, but then they can also be assured that there are no hidden costs.
"I never pay for any POC, it is always at the vendor's expense. "
Ok, now you are just plain naive. Do you really think that the cost of the POC isn't added to your final price, either up front or later in some way. You have never been involved in doing pricing on contracts I can see, or been involved in negotiating prices with vendors. Again Welcome to the REAL WOLRD (tm). Your naivity is IMHO shocking.
"If they are not willing to put their kit up on at least try-before-you-buy terms we don't buy."
Now that seems sensible, as mentioned above I will normally lend excess capacity to our customers for test etc, either for a symbolic price or for free. Often it's simply just extending the overprovissioning factor on their current test system, which basically is a simple little change for me, but would be quite costly for the customer. Hence it's good business for both of us.
And that is what my business is all about.. making sure that both parties make good business.
I have never understood the 'We get the vendor to bleed', and if we can get him/her to loose money then HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!. You are undermining your own investment. IMHO just plain stupid.
"I see now why EDS are beating you hollow."
EDS haven't got a presense in the country. And what do you think this will cost HP in Itanium business that they themselves star
t to underbid their own platform ? Now every time we have to go up against EDS, we have to use either POWER or x86, and try to talk the customer away from Itanium.
I just talked to a former college of mine, and it seems that the place where I used to work, now have booted HP as services vendor on their own hardware. The rumor is that EDS is trying to take share, and HP is paying the price and becoming a box mover only where I used to work. But I suspect that perhaps the real reason is that last place I worked we picked up all the 'good ones'
from when EDS closed down their operation in Denmark, so there is a lot of personal bad blood in the busines against EDS. Are EDS still on strike in the UK btw ?
"If you asked me to pay for a POC I wouldn't even bother telling you where to go, I'd just reject your proposal and go with the competitiors that were willing to fund a POC."
Damn you remind me of a place I was hired in many many years ago, true story. The Business system owners were p*ssed at the IT depardement, cause the IT department that were responsible for selecting the Infrastructure seem to come up with the most expensive solution every time x5 more expensive than the competition. And when it then was implemented they never reached the the number of transactions that they had in the POC, that were run. Turned out that one vendor was very well liked by IT. They always did the POC's at the vendors site in Southern France, good food good wine and the vendor was allowed to RAM the Base, and generally sweet talk IT.
In comes Freelancer Cowboy Jesper, no POC in Southern France this time, But a serious analysis of the RFP, and elimination of the 'we want this vendor' parts and an ajustment of the political availability demands to something that was inline with the business needs, changed the attitude in the project from "Get the vendors to work for us" to "we need to know ourselves". Then a TOC analysis of the incoming proposals, performance calculations, X visits to reference customers later without the vendors present. Result the 'other' vendor was selected 5M £ in savings later, IT was furious but the business was happy. An upgraded version of that system still runs today, but there are still people there in IT that holds a grudge, cause I took away their expensive toys.
So POC's where you pitch one vendor against another is not such a golden solution as you think.
"Especially not ones that poke holes in IBM FUD - wouldn't want the customers to see those, would you!"
What a rant.. and btw. you have only been able to find one benchmark that partially poke a tiny hole, so what's up with the plural form.
"You did. In many posts here covering everything from Xeon through SPARC to Itanium. "
Let me learn you one thing young man. There are nothing that are certain, there are only probabilities says the former student from The Niels Bohr instutute. U do know that quantum mechanics come from Denmark rigth ? I actually have a friend who is the grand something from Niels Bohr, he btw. works for IBM, in the US :)=
But it's pretty simple when you have a vendor that does sweep all the benchmarks, be that from SAP,SPECINT to Oracle app performance, then probability is that it's also faster in the REAL WORLD. But keep up the POC's.. must do great things for your project plans.
"In fact, you always are the first to start pushing selected benchmarks and claiming that they somehow PROVE that Power has better real World performance. "
Ehh.. Selected benchmarks ? again.. POWER7 is cleaning house, it wins every damn benchmark it participates in. Sure this is just some grand Illuminati IBM conspiracy....
Again, you don't understand that your rude manors, lack of perspective and "it's the world against me" attitude puts people at odds with you. I have no problem discussing things like Poulson release dates, and digging up evidence that it will actually be a shipping products, actually supporting the person that I perhaps am disagreeing with, and disproving people who claim that particular product is foilware. Why? Cause if discussions are done in a polite manor and civilized tone with the goal of enhancing the knowledge of both participans, then the road, and the knowledge gained, is more important than than the end result. But hey 10 years and you might come to the same conclusion, but I have my doubts that you will see the light.
"Read my posts. I work with Integrity and pSeries, mainframe, Wintel and Lintel and some SPARC still. Don't try and pretend you have a better view of the World than anyone else because I am sure there are readers here with twice as much experience as both of us put together, and they and I are working in live environments..."
Well I haven't really seen you just remotely displaying any what so ever skills on POWER and what a solution stack on that platform is able to do. Again all you can do, when it's not HPUX or Itanium is to link to HP's TheRealStory. Hardly a sign of skills. I've had UK Cowboy bodyshop consultants in that claimed to have 10 years of Oracle experience, that couldn't even start up a database, but funny enough when I get people in from Norway, Sweden or Denmark they can actually deliver what their CW claims that they can do. And I am pretty sure that I have a longer track record with actual Itanium hardware than you have :)
But there are always people better than you. I've learned my lesson, back when I thought that I was the master of the world, but then again I've been debating on the internet for 20+ years, my "I know everything and flame everyone" period was over 18 years ago. But I also know that I've tried more than most. I've been in enough real life tough IT critical situations. I've seen project managers running to the toilet to throw up. I've seen DBA that had to rush to the toilet so as not to soil themselves, I've even had people having to pop nitro due to chest pains, where we had to ship them to the hospital, cause they couldn't handle the situation. Not where I work now cause things are more structured here, but other places I have.
All the facts on IBM software .. bla bla second-hand car salesman.. bla bla..
Damn. You sound just like Barnes in Platoon. "Now, I got no fight... with any man who does what he's told. But when he don't, the POC breaks down. And when the POC breaks down, we break down. And I ain't gonna allow that... in any of you.".. Cause the POC is my meal ticket, and I like it.
And I don't do sales, well I keep my clients happy, so that they will buy more.. hey wait.. And the last second hand car I bought was actually from a nice guy my wifes sisters husband, an good old design classic Citroen XM 2.4 TD estate.
// Jesper