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From: mercury@ut-ngp.UUCP (Larry E. Baker)
Newsgroups: net.micro.pc
Subject: Re: IBM does an impersonation of itself
Message-ID: <3562@ut-ngp.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 22-Jun-86 13:57:58 EDT
Article-I.D.: ut-ngp.3562
Posted: Sun Jun 22 13:57:58 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 24-Jun-86 03:28:31 EDT
References: <17600001@hpccc.UUCP> <11200002@ztivax.UUCP>
Organization: University of Texas at Austin
Lines: 52
Summary: Comment on Unix/unknowns comment

In article <11200002@ztivax.UUCP>, david@ztivax.UUCP writes:
> Example:  A small consulting company has three engineers, each of
> which bills time to customers for PRODUCTIVE work at $150,000 per
> year.  One engineer has to waste half time keeping a small UNIX
> machine going.  The little machine (70% VAX performance for 7% cost,
> tho not AT&T), cost the company the cost of a nice REAL VAX every two
> years.  That is alot of dough for a small company.  And real money it
> was, too.
> 
> In business, you usually cannot AFFORD to fight the "system".

Point concieded, with qualifications.

Buying a "REAL" VAX does not necessarily imply that this engineer won't
end up spending just as much time keeping *it* running.  Admittedly,
he has a much larger (user) base of experience from which to draw,
but knowing Unix... he wouldn't end up saving *that* much more time.

This company could have hired some far less expensive administrator
to keep up their system; if they're blowing 75K a year by wasting
one of their valuable engineers (read: resouces), then the money
they lost is not due to the fact that the machine needs so much
"more" time for upkeep, but that they are managing their time -- and
their company -- badly.

I think they could have bought a 35K/year system administrator;
if they are actually bringing in 150K/engineer per year, they'd be
about 35K ahead.  And have a well-managed system, since their SA
wouldn't be splitting up his time all over the place.  With the money
they save here, they could probably buy yet another no-name brand
machine, if they needed the added resources.

I might also point out that, if they're *not* bringing in 150K/year
for all three engineers, that is, that engineer #3 is going to be idle
half his time anyway, then they haven't lost anything. 

Unfortunately, you do have a point about fighting the system.  I don't
think that in this particurlar case your example holds up, but I agree
that, for the most part, it's more cost-effective in the long run to buy a
solution that a lot of people are using rather than one that only a
few know about and may not be around forever.

-- Larry --

Larry Baker               Net/UUCP:  mercury@ut-ngp.{ARPA, UUCP, UTEXAS.EDU}
UT Austin                            ihnp4!seismo!ut-sally!ut-ngp!mercury
Computer Science          Local:     baker@walt.UTEXAS.EDU
-- 

Larry Baker               Net/UUCP:  mercury@ut-ngp.{ARPA, UUCP, UTEXAS.EDU}
UT Austin                            ihnp4!seismo!ut-sally!ut-ngp!mercury
Computer Science          Local:     baker@walt.UTEXAS.EDU