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To: "Justin T. Gibbs" <gibbs@freefall.freebsd.org>
cc: Amancio Hasty <hasty@rah.star-gate.com>, freebsd-chat@freebsd.org,
        dwhite@resnet.uoregon.edu, Domingo Siliceo <dsiliceo@adam.es>
Subject: Re: Opinions? 
In-reply-to: Your message of "Wed, 17 Jul 1996 12:42:53 PDT."
             <199607171942.MAA12521@freefall.freebsd.org> 
Date: Wed, 17 Jul 1996 12:56:53 -0700
Message-ID: <1431.837633413@time.cdrom.com>
From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com>
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[Finally moved over exclusively to -chat]

> It's actually not the important figure to look at.  Initial hardware and
> software costs are a miniscule portion of the cost of deploying any system
> on this scale.  If you can show that solution X takes less time to install,
> is easier to configure, is easier to upgrade, and requires minimal staff
> training time to use, (along with being robust and fast, etc) you'll get
> people to listen.

I think this is true up to a certain point, yes, but bear in mind that
I'm talking about a small ISP here who's just starting out.  It
doesn't matter what the "big picture" is if the short-term cash outlay
of $20-$30K means you're writing IOUs to your staff for the first 2
months of operation because you can't afford to pay their salary.  I
know *many* ISPs who did or are starting out that way, and a chunk of
change like that is very significant indeed when you're trying to
bootstrap the operation out of your own pocket (as, again, many do
in order to avoid the evil of Vulture Capitalists getting involved).

This represents a window of opportunity for us since once someone's
committed to something, be it for economic or for personal preference
reasons, they're probably not inclined to switch away from a solution
which works and they've already got the staff trained on.  This is
the same rationale which has folks like DEC and HP donating massive
amounts of hardware and software to colleges - get 'em hooked while
they're young. :-)

						Jordan