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From: tim@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu (Timothy L. Kay)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.dec
Subject: Re: DIBOL alternatives?
Message-ID: <10591@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu>
Date: 6 May 89 20:54:41 GMT
References: <10547@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu> <1850@td2cad.intel.com>
Reply-To: tim@cit-vax.UUCP (Timothy L. Kay)
Distribution: usa
Organization: California Institute of Technology
Lines: 56

>In article (Timothy L. Kay) (that's me) writes:
>>I might be consulting for a company that is running a large
>>application written in DIBOL.  They want to upgrade from their 11/70
>>platform.  DEC proposes a Micro Vax.  The prices are outrageous.  They
>>charge about $8,000 for each incremental 10-user license.  They charge
>>about $11,500 for each disk drive!

In article (John Marek) writes:
>I wouldn't jump too fast on the "prices are outrageous" bandwagon.  The 
>company probably paid $200K for their 11/70 if they bought it new.  An MV3300 
>even with DEC drives and the VMS license is probably less than $100K.  

First, let me thank John Marek for his response, which was for the
most part very helpful.  I must take issue with the above comment,
however.

First of all, while they may have paid significantly more for their
11/44 (I was wrong when I reported that they have an 11/70), this is
no excuse for DEC charging extremely high prices by today's market.
The going rate for hard disks was indeed very high a few years ago.
Now, however, disk drives can be purchased for about $5/MB.  This
means that the above 800 MB should cost about $4,000.  To charge five
times as much seems like gouging to me.

It is easy to avoid paying DEC for disk space, though, as there are
many vendors that make alternatives available.  What really gets me is
that DEC is charging a per-user licensing.  When I buy a carton of ice
cream, I pay the same amount of money whether one person or twelve are
going to eat from it.  For somebody to charge varying amounts of money
for the *same* product just because I use it in a different manor than
somebody else is ludicrous.

And, when they bought their 11/44, they didn't pay a per-user license
for their RSTS/E.  It demonstrates that DEC is only recently suffering
from IBM-itis.  However, such policies make it easy for me to
conclude,

	I will not buy a product from DEC unless there is no
	alternative.

Fortunately, DEC has no differentiator that we are concerned about.
With respect to DIBOL, I have found a company

	DISC
	11070 White Rock Road, Suite 210
	Rancho Cordova, CA 95670
	916-635-7300

(Thanks, John Stampfl, for alerting me to them!)

which will allow us to discard our ("outrageously expensive") DEC
alternative in favor of Suns or MIPs.  The price for a complete system
could end up under $20,000 rather than around $80,000.  I'll bet it
will perform better, as well.

Tim