Re:RE: MIcrosoft Blackmail

Allow me to add a true experience to the thread.

We had an Oracle Sales Droid who believed he could pull a significant number of $$ out of us by playing hardball in a similar though not identical manner, somewhere between 10 and 15 million of them. Well, we had him & his manager in for a discussion on the subject. Both were well aware of some of our current and future projects that would make use of a database & they knew what that DB would be, but when they arrived in the conference room a "carelessly" left signed purchase req was on the table saying that we wanted to use SQL*Server as the DB for one of the Internet projects. It was only there for a couple of minutes, but...

Lets just say the negotiations went very well.

Dick Goulet

____________________Reply Separator____________________
Author: Steven Lembark <lembark_at_wrkhors.com>
Date:       9/26/2002 5:53 AM

> Remember, sales-dweebs can say anything they want. If your
> sales-dweeb-conversation person rolls-over for this MS sales-dweeb, then
> it's your companies fault.
> And remember, it's a two-way street. The sales-dweeb can say anything he
> wants to you, but you can call also - including telling him to stick the
> .NET where the sun don't shine.
> It's like what Dr. Phil says - you can't be taken advatage of unless you
> let it happen. The sales-dweebs push, and you are supposed to push back
> if it is not in your companies best interest.
> Hope this helps.

Remember also that M$ is used to being the only person you can deal with. They are very, very unhappy that now you have alternatives that run the same products (e.g., Oracle, DB2 on linux) and have a well-known, preferred desktop (e.g., OS/X). This makes their sales reps exciteable and prone to playing hardball as they watch their sales bonuses go up in smoke. The recent spate of high-profile licensing clashes hasn't helped any, so they are in an even fouler mood.

If you want them to shut up and play nice(r) then I'd strongly suggest having a few prominent G3's around on desktops and at least one server (say file + print running Samba) with an RH or SuSE sitcker on it next to the NT boxes on your rack. See if that helps them understand your point of view...

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Steven Lembark                               2930 W. Palmer
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