Esther phrases it very well, and this is a good example. Just saying "oh, anybody smart goes with Cisco" isn't going to win any converts. As professionals, we should be able to justify a bias with facts that explain why a choice contributes to the organization's goals. What's the MTBF, is there 24x7 technical support, do we know of satisfied corporate customers at our level...
I note that while *techie* snobbery is not a good selling point, most managers will take notice of what their competitors are doing, and what other similarly sized organizations are doing. If you can find some numbers showing what other businesses are doing, that'll go a long way. How does NameBrand's market penetration compare to el cheapo? Does El Cheapo even *have* a support line? Does El Cheapo have any satisfied corporate customers our size and are they willing to share the names as references? Will they put support guarantees in writing with a clause that costs them money if we experience downtime? Just asking for a satisfied large corporate customer will knock a lot of cheapo's out of the water... _______________________________________________ Tech mailing list [email protected] http://lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tech This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators http://lopsa.org/
