As someone who was buying hardware in the late 1990s, it is hard to overstate the difference in buying experience between Sun or Digital (DEC) and someone like Dell. The former forced you into a live sales meeting, endless quote revisions, it was a nightmare. I remember calculating the server rails and power cords for a new Alpha server were going to cost more than a shipped/delivered Dell server that I could get the next day.

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AdamN 2 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

Yeah it was so much more accessible to play around with configs and pricing and then all you needed was a credit card.

Even now I think enterprise companies should be more open about what's possible and what the price and delivery date would be without having to talk/chat/email anybody. Even for something like a Juniper $100k+ device it would be kind of cool to configure it.

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sschueller an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

For us dell has become that. Rep changes all the time, what appears to be random pricing and long unclear delivery dates. Instead I can for example go to Thomas Kren and configure my serves online for a fraction of the cost. They have what they list in stock, delivered a few weeks later. Everything is clear and hasle free.

At this point I have the feeling dell just charges you what they think they can get out of you. You push back and the price drops, I don't want to negotiate.

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thevillagechief an hour ago | parent | next [-]

I think this is a case of AI ruining the hardware market. We used to almost exclusively use Dell, but now we've been forced to look elsewhere and go through validating new vendors. The lead-times are ridiculous, and these guys now only pay attention to the really big guys. Not sure I can blame them though, you've gotta do what's best for your business.

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ganoushoreilly an hour ago | parent [-]

Dell was very much moving this way before modern AI explosion. The inconsistency on pricing alone depending on what rep was helping you also became a problem. I could often times call in direct and order via business line cheaper than dealing with my account rep. No reason to jump through so many hoops.

I prefer the "This is the price" model and just make it consistent. I can't wait until AI helps us remove multiple layers of middle men across Sales in general.

Just let me buy it and move on.

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dabraham1248 an hour ago | parent | next [-]

> I can't wait until AI helps us remove multiple layers of middle men across Sales in general.

Based on how things are moving, I think it's more likely that AI will _replace_ the layers of middle men (with layers of "middle AI"), then that those layers will be _removed_.

	▲	warkdarrior 36 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Of course, the process (of squeezing the customer) is the point. The implementation of that process, with either human account reps or sales bots, is irrelevant.

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fooker 27 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

> I can't wait until AI helps us remove multiple layers of middle men across Sales in general.

Monkey's paw - now you have to deal with a layer of bots.

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bombcar an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

That’s exactly what enterprise sales is. Call for pricing, tell the absolute upper limit you can spend, and pay.

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nunez 17 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Yeah, and then Dell more-or-less turned into that. Companies get big, customers and sales get more complicated, process gets more calcified.

SUNW would probably still be around if the whole x86 commodity pizza box revolution hadn't happened OR if they had pivoted away from SPARC earlier and went heavily into x86. Example: buying from IBM doesn't sound too different from buying from Sun, but they're still around because mainframes will be around until the Earth implodes (probably).

(I think that their channel/partner programs along with their professional services org are big reasons why Dell is still a key player in the datacenter space. You can buy Dell direct, and the sales process is still "good" as far as enterprise sales goes, but bigger players usually get their Dell kit through distributors/vendors with Dell professional services handling architecture, build-out, enablement, etc. I'm not sure how much energy SUNW invested in this, as they were before my time, but this combo is a major revenue driver for them.)

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fidotron an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Sun commercial sales reps, at least in Europe, were astoundingly slimy.

I had a colleague where almost his whole job consisted of beating them in sheer sliminess, and at this he was good. I don't think we ever paid 30% of the prices they'd start at, but the process of achieving this was disgusting, and there was still the sense everyone was being screwed.

So when we could move to Dell we did.

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arethuza an hour ago | parent [-]

I'm sure I have a memory of someone at Sun UK telling me about how they managed to run up a £30K bar bill at an event....

	▲	fidotron an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Yeah that fits. I was in London (though not the City) and it was definitely that sort of scene. Thinking about it, we moved to Dell as part of the run up to IPO, and I suspect had we not done so Sun would have been much harder to deal with afterwards. What I recall from that time is Sun were very happy they'd sold a huge pile of servers to be the core of Interlink, and a whole load of people went off to work on that.

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jmclnx an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

And that is the "thing". Every failed mini company had the same exact issue, seems customers had to beg and/or go through hell to purchase equipment. Never mind that the hardware was more expensive than what you cold buy from companies like Dell.

IBM is not much better than what I hear, but somehow they keep surviving. Probably because of their mainframe business.