On Wed, 13 Oct 2010 21:21:16 -0700, Ron Hawkins wrote: >I really struggle with the fact that you think that the cost of goods for a >disk drive assembly includes the disk drive and nothing else. Would you >argue with David Bowie or Amazon about the price you pay for a CD that you >can buy at Fry's for 20 cents. They're making 5400% mark-up on the cost of >materials. Surely the jewel-case isn't worth $5-10.
I don't recall stating what I believe. I fully understand there has to be markup. I believe I've also stated that I don't know how much it should be. I don't know what's reasonable. I've just related the revelation of discovering what retail is on the commodity compared to what we're being charged by the vendor. If it were for my own personal use, I'd find another vendor. This is for an enterprise storage solution. I don't have enough information to make a valid comparison there. And yes, I would argue that charging more than 20 cents for a David Bowie CD is price gouging, but do we really want to go there ???? >Perhaps you would be happier with a service model where you get charged per >minute every time you call the Salesman, SE or CE, and the salesman charges >you for a quote if you buy storage from another vendor. > >Back before the EMC/HDS price war in 2000 the mark-up on cost of goods - >what we pay for the hardware - was quite high, but I think you would be >horrified to know what it dropped to by 2001. It was certainly never 500%. >Only Mainframes CPUs have that sort of markup. > >I agree the way you state the price differential makes for pervasive >argument, but by excluding even basic costs like shipping and installation I >feel that it is a tad misleading. No, I wouldn't. This is what it is. When we negotiate for these solutions, we get the best price we can get for both hardware and support at the time. When we go shopping for an upgrade or replacement, we use past experiences, desired capabilities and industry research to guide our decisions. I absolutely understand your point(s). You have to be able to recover your costs, fund future projects and earn a profit. What markup does that require ??? I have no idea. My only point in joining this discussion was to share the fact that it is now easier to make a comparison (or judgement, if you prefer) since they're loading these arrays with commodity disk. I believe it was you who floated the idea that disk prices don't change between host platform. This really doesn't address that observation, but it does point out disk prices do fluctuate. Maybe not by host, but certainly by the cabinet you plug them in to. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
