Re: [SAGE] to buy or not to buy service contracts

[John Jasen <jjasen@realityfailure.org>]

On Fri, 10 Jan 2003, Jenn Sturm wrote:

> I've always bought service contracts for expensive equipment, but we're 
> in a strange situation here where it's just not clear if that's the 
> right path to take. We were offered a 32-processor SGI Origin 2000 for 
> $100K, with a $50K service contract. The machine is remarketed, which 
> I'm reluctant to go with, but it will perfectly fit a hole in our line 
> up of machines and enable us increase our resources on the cheap (we 
> already have a cluster--the Origin 2000 will serve a different need).

SGI had several levels of hardware support, last I looked. You may be able 
to shave quite a bit off that by choosing a lower grade of service.

Or, if you already have a lot of SGI equipment under contract, 
you may be able to chip away at it.

And finally, as a third option, maybe an SGI reseller will be able to help 
you? When I was looking, I was able to cut the hardware support costs by 
~20%.

-- 
-- John E. Jasen (jjasen@realityfailure.org)
-- User Error #2361: Please insert coffee and try again.