What If Yoda Ran IBM? 205
Esther Schindler writes to mention that one IT leader who came from big business found himself in quite another world when he transitioned into a smaller business, specifically with respect to the amount of attention from their vendors. He presents an amusing approach with a familiar twist. "Not only are the IBMs of the world leaving money on the table, they're also risking future sales. The IT leaders at small organizations will in many cases be employed by larger organizations someday. Why alienate them? Vendors could engage IT leaders in small organizations now and build brand loyalty. How could they make such a business model work? Let's imagine (with apologies to George Lucas) what Yoda might do if he were running a large consultancy."
Yoda didn't face Wall Street (Score:5, Insightful)
Yoda doesn't have a chance.
Leaving money on the table is not always bad (Score:5, Insightful)
These build a healthy industry in which you can play. Complete dominance of an industry is unhealthy (look at Old IBM or M$). Having competition gives you feedback which is vital for the long term success of a company. Trying to be all things to all people dilutes your business strategy too. Far better to leave some opportunites unexploited.
finally! (Score:5, Insightful)
But.
The only people running Os/400 are huge financial institutions who's annual I.T. budget ranges in the Millions of dollars. I can't get a copy of OS/400 to play with. Just can't do it. Not unless i want to spend a month's salary on it. Even then, i can't really DO anything with it (maybe have one connection to the database at a time).
Now take linux/mysql. I use this combo ALL OVER THE PLACE. Any time i need to throw a database down, its a linux box with Mysql. Every. Single. Time.
Why?
Because i grew up playing around in redhat, suse, mandrake, and gentoo boxes and I feel like i know linux inside and out (although i'm sure i don't). I have complete confidence in myself to order some hardware, install a distro on it, and have a database up and crunching within a day.
I have NEVER tried this with an IBM product because i simply CAN'T! I can't risk that significant of a portion of my budget for a toy that I may or may not be able to get working in time.
I guess it works the same as what happened to my beloved coke machine today. They upped the price to $1.25. Nobody drinks coke anymore except the people who are REALLY addicted to it.
Bastards.
newsflash: (Score:5, Insightful)
Big Co. pays more attention to potential customers who actually have money to spend with them. Also, some products are out of reach of small companies.
Wah. If you don't know that a 17 year old, dressed scruffily, who hasn't shaved for 5 days, will receive less attention at a Mercedes dealership than the nattily dressed 40-ish man, you just don't live in the real world. Sure: the 17 year old could be Bill freaking Gates, or a rockstar. Or might become one some day, but will have been so soured on the treatment received that they vow never to buy a Mercedes.
But frankly, almost all of the time, talking to the 17 year old is a waste of time at best, and at worst you lose the customer that is really ready and willing to spend money with you because you've ignored them.
Y, it sucks. So it goes. You might argue that one of the ways that Microsoft got as popular as they did with CIO types is because everyone uses them at home, so 17 year olds that get their start troubleshooting home computers go on to CIO jobs and stick with Microsoft because they know it. But, frankly, if that was all of the answer Apple would rule the world--everyone in a certain generation used them at school, but it did not help their adoption in enterprise.
btw: can we stop linking to CIO mag, please? It has the absolute worst S/N ratio of any online mag out there, and the article content generally isn't that good either.
Coke? (Score:2, Insightful)
"I guess it works the same as what happened to my beloved coke machine today. They upped the price to $1.25. Nobody drinks coke anymore except the people who are REALLY addicted to it."
Upped? Let's see, Coca-Cola was introduced in 1886 at $0.05. In today's money, that's $1.09. Wow, a whopping 15% price increase over a mere 120 years! Yow!
They kept the price the same for 70 years [209.85.173.104] despite hugely fluctuating costs.
Wait, that's price per serving. Initially Coke was sold in 6 ounce servings. So in today's money, it would actually be $2.18 per 12 ounce can. So it's really 44% cheaper per ounce than 120 years ago. You were spoiled by them keeping the price at exactly 5 cents for 70 years, but after they started raising prices, they actually tracked slower than inflation, overall.
Yes, I know big numbers are scary, but it's called inflation, and it's not just the Coca-Cola company being mean.
Re:$25,000 for disaster recovery? (Score:5, Insightful)
The economics of consulting firms are such that you have to charge about 3 times the payroll cost of your staff to cover your costs and make some money. So, if you have a reasonably experienced consultant, who makes $120k a year (which is lowish in the bigger markets), you need to bill that person at $360k a year. Figure 70% utilization, or about 1400 hours a year, and you have to bill the guy at at least $250/hr. That's the economics of the big firms. The only ecosystems in which those firms can deliver value commensurate with their cost are the large client organizations. Hence, they quite rationally focus on them. I won't offer an opinion as to whether they can in fact deliver to that value - that depends on the team, the people, and the problem.
This leaves a significant market out there which can be served by sole proprietor consultants for $100-150/hr. The author needs to go find himself one of those folks, and quit whining. If he had a business head on his shoulders, as he insists that he does, he'd be able to figure that out. Since he can't, I'm not sure I'd view him as likely to move up in the world to those larger firms, and I suspect that the vendors have figured him out as a weak player. I have never had trouble getting vendor focus when working in small firms, so it isn't impossible.
Idiot (Score:3, Insightful)
He has what is a small to medium business and wants the 900-pound gorilla of the consulting business to cater to him? Turn this around. What is wrong with all those small to medium consulting businesses? Are they too small for his company to pay attention to them?
Hypocrite.
Re:Yodanomics (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Leaving money on the table is not always bad (Score:5, Insightful)
1. They have expertise in the kinds of hardware you'd find in a huge corporate datacenter. Your local small business probably doesn't need an EMC SAN, but a credit card company would. When this kind of stuff breaks you need major help in a major way - and you pay them in gold.
2. They can handle enormous projects and be a single-point-of-accountability. Just write an eight-figure check to IBM and your problem goes away. And you have somebody to sue if it doesn't. Not just anybody can burn through that much cash and actually deliver something.
Often big companies are a big waste to deal with, but in the right circumstances they are the best choice.
For example, I've had two occasions to have to work with a consultant from Oracle. Both times they were insanely expensive, but both times they were worth the expense. It just doesn't make sense to have that kind of detailed expertise on-staff at all times, but when you really need them it is amazing who they can dig up. I saw one fix an extremely obscure file corruption on a VAX-based database product that hadn't been sold in about a decade. I consider myself fairly skilled in tinkering with software, but I wouldn't have known where to begin. They got it up and running in what seemed like a few hours, and educated some of our staff on what they did. They also gave a few recommendations that kept the problem from recurring. In the end they were well worth their price.
If you're a small business you're almost better off finding somebody local - not necessarily a single person, but a small IT firm that will take care of you long-term. IBM doesn't hire people from your neighborhood - they'd burn your budget just flying people in. You just have to be careful that you don't end up with somebody without the discipline to solve your problems for the long-term (tossed-together solutions are just asking for trouble).
Re:Why not in C? (Score:3, Insightful)