Yeah, that's definitely a very different style. In an office with 6 PCs, exactly who is ever going to run the management application for that switch? Do any of the staff at that location even have a clue what any of that information is for? I'd be surprised if any of my clients even cared about it at all, to be honest.
1. I will be responsible for the management, as I am the contractor for that office ( typically ), until they get large enough to get their own on site tech.
2. No, which is why they hire me.
3. The purchaser does, I make sure they understand their options before they make their decision. Now, they may base their decision off my recommendation, but that's their choice to make still, I am not responsible for that.
I have yet to come across a small business office that could not be well served with one or two reliable 16-port switches, of the sub-$100 variety. If they have more than 32 nodes, then they will likely have some on-site staff, and then a managed platform might make sense. In my opinion, the "managed switch" is providing no additional value at all if no one ever uses the management interface. It certainly isn't going to forward packets any differently, unless it implements QoS and there is a demonstrated need for it on that LAN.
As I mentioned, I take care of my clients until they get large enough to need an on site tech. Managed switches allow more control over the network, which makes all kinds of sense in an unsupervised enviroment.
Yes, very different styles. I try to implement only what my customers can afford, without using bargain-basement equipment. Saying "$1000 is a tax right-off (sic)" sounds like something someone who had never run a business would say :-) Whether you can write it off or not, it's still $900 more than you had to spend. If that $900 pays for a new copier, or part of someone's salary, or anything else, it's doing a lot more good for the business than the management interface in that switch.
I have very few clients that plan on staying small, therefore, buying equipment "just to get by" until they get larger doesn't make any sense. I set them up and I set them up right, so when they do become large, they don't get growing pains. The few clients I do have that don't plan on getting large I still recommend a managed switch ( I don't stress it as heavily ). It's just too damned handy, and truly, 5-600 bucks is a good investment on network equipment, and as mentioned, is a tax write off.
After being a contractor for as many years as I have been, I've stopped worrying about cost. It's not that it's not important, far from it. However, it's more important to get the right equipment setup the first time around, instead of piecing equipment together as they get larger. I had a customer that I thought would never need a 10/100 managed switch with a few gigabit ports, but I set them up with it anyway ( I even told the customer that they probably wouldn't need it, but they decided to go with it because I recommended they do so ), only to find that, a year later, they were using even the managed features of the switch ( voip situation that I was not a part of ). Since they went VoIP, and I wasn't able to supply them with that, I'm not their contractor anymore. However, I still get referrences from them. ;)
It's all about making the customer happy, and I find customers are happiest even when they have to swallow a big pill up front, as apposed to later. _______________________________________________
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