[There's a reason that Yoda is the unofficial mascot of SBS. Size indeed matters not.] Small Biz and Mac's revisited - THE OFFICIAL BLOG OF THE SBS DIVA
Sun, Jun 1 2008 6:49 bradley

Small Biz and Mac's revisited

http://money.cnn.com/2008/05/29/smallbusiness/macs_small_biz.fsb/

I remember reading in a Mac online journal about this firm that went to Mac's after their 25 person firm got a proposal for $100,000 to roll out a Windows network.

 When I read it the last time the ONLY thing that $100,000 price tag could be would be a fully licensed external MOSS/SharePoint portal with unlimited SQL per processor and Cals up the wazoo.

The conclusion we came to at the time was that someone hadn't a clue and that they should have been quoted a SBS 2003 + an external SharePoint hosted collaboration environment.  Heck even if they'd gone a "normal" Windows server setup, there's no way a 25 person firm could get a bid that high.

http://msmvps.com/blogs/bradley/archive/2008/04/10/why-would-a-small-business-not-use-leopard-server.aspx

Ah yes, there's my "there's no way it would cost $100,000" post from before.

I would love it if this firm posted the actually bid they got.  I'll bet there's a fully publicly exposed MOSS/SharePoint 2007/SQL server licensed up the wazoo in there.

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# re: Small Biz and Mac's revisited

Sunday, June 01, 2008 11:04 AM by Vlad Mazek

This is going to come out wrong, and you know I love you dearly, you're my favorite CPA in the whole wide world.

But this is why you shouldn't be talking about the industry you don't actively work in.

The issue with talking with SMB customers, especially the growing ones with more than a few employees is that they have very ambitious growth plans and at times they want to make huge investments that will grow the business from 20-25 to 200-250. We often deal with customers that have just a few employees but just landed a huge contract and need to make sure they comply with all the requirements of that contract - that is strict uptime, failover, backups, etc. The high end stuff that it takes to serve high end customers does cost a lot of money.

We've sold a lot of six figure and even seven figure infrastructure projects to much smaller companies than that.

It's hard to judge what is a fair price when you don't know the criteria that went behind it.

Not typed with an once of meanness.

-Vlad

# re: Small Biz and Mac's revisited

Sunday, June 01, 2008 4:12 PM by bradley

Ergo why I said "I would love it if this firm posted the actually bid they got."

And not for one minute do I think a growing company could service that same growing company needs with a Apple server.  Not without a Windows server stuck on there for the accounting app.

Show me the bid.  Until such time you haven't a clue either.

Not typed with an ounce (not once) of meanness either.

I know my bidding process and quotes as I get many growing firms ask me to look a them and ensure the consultants know what they are bidding on.  Many of them screw up the cals and the SQL licensing.

# re: Small Biz and Mac's revisited

Monday, June 02, 2008 4:15 PM by Paul Brian

What difference does it make? They're using Macs now - the consultant blew it.