On Sat, 2006-01-14 at 10:46 -0800, Mithun Bhattacharya wrote: > As for the monetary angle: > 1. They are selling the box without any hard disk for $160 Assuming > they throw in a decent sized hard disk it will probably be more close > to $300+ for a 200GB disk space ? That is approx Rs 13000 - I would be > very surprised if that would be anywhere close to the cost incured by > the manufacturer.
Generally, MRPs, SRPs is what the market will bear w/o breaking the company's finances. It is not necessarily cost + x% markup. > 2. They have just come out in the US market I would be surprised if > they open shop in India anytime soon. > What I quoted was an example rather than an only solution. A Google search "embedded linux nas devices" lists out a few products in the market. Some of them may be available in India. See www.raidzone.com for some cool stuff. > > Besides, the raw cost of the hardware, you have to figure out the R&D > > cost, Tech support cost, SLA cost, Product liability insurance (in > > case > > someone decides to sue your Co.), Marketing/Sales cost etc. These > > costs are non trivial. > > Yes those costs are there but then arent we talking about a full > fledged business in place ? I would prefer we try getting it running at > the enthusiasts level and then think how to make money. If nothing else > we can have people using ultra cheap NAS solutions without any > corporate liability in the picture. You buy the hardware and manage > your own NAS > > The only thing that is stopping me from going ahead is trying to figure > out a plan where the R&D is makes business sense to some one. Without a > proto type it will be all talk and nothing concrete. If a reliable > prototype can be demonstrated making the finished product is a lot > easier. Agree with your point about prototyping. For a prototype, even if you source off the shelf chassis, raid cage etc. the cost would be around $200+ compared to a desktop chassis @ approx. $30. Dual swappable power supply raises the ante. If you add the cost of the motherboard, memory, and HDD I think you will be close to the price points of the commercial NAS products. This only addresses HW - add to that your software R&D cost. If you have the wherewithal then it is certainly worth a try. > There "are" quite a few reliable ways of earning money in the > opensource world. RedHat and MySQL seem to be doing ok AFAIK and they > do provide SLA and Tech support. IMO, the "solution/product" is thing that customers are paying for i.e value for money. Most don't care if it is based on open source or closed source. If you can do it with open source well and good. If your primary interest is in doing this for yourself and a few friends/clients then put together a PC in a tower case with 5/6 SATA/ATA HDDs and do software RAID in Linux, run SAMBA/NFS, administer it with webmin. -- Arun Khan Linux is like a wigwam - no gates, no windows, apache inside ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Splunk Inc. Do you grep through log files for problems? Stop! Download the new AJAX search engine that makes searching your log files as easy as surfing the web. DOWNLOAD SPLUNK! http://sel.as-us.falkag.net/sel?cmd=lnk&kid=103432&bid=230486&dat=121642 _______________________________________________ linux-india-help mailing list linux-india-help@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/linux-india-help
