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Technology Stocks : Dell Technologies Inc. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: edamo who wrote (133930)	6/22/1999 10:46:00 PM
From: James Wamsley	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 176387

i don't believe dell offers a hardware/software/continuing support package... Shouldn't they? and why not? They certainly would seem to have the resources thru internet support, special web pages, etc.

To: edamo who wrote (133930)	6/23/1999 12:34:00 PM
From: rudedog	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 176387

ed - I had a clear example of this last month. A smallish catalog direct marketer (about $20M in sales, 50 employees) wanted to move their catalog to the web and become an e-marketer. The CEO was a big fan of DELL and MSD, and had built his computer infrastructure on DELL equipment. So he went to DELL first to see if they could help him. His needs were simple and he understood how to express them. He wanted his current catalog translated to web pages. He wanted on-line shopping capability like he saw on many commercial web sites. He wanted customer transactions handled in a secure way and the proceeds put in his bank account. And he wanted on-line customer service. He saw all of these things on the DELL web site. He spent about a week finding someone at DELL who understood what he wanted, but there was no way for him to "buy the package" from DELL. He was referred to a variety of consultants for the pieces he wanted. None of these folks wanted to take responsibility for the whole job, least of all DELL. He would have either had to manage the job himself or hire yet another team of consultants to integrate everything. Finally, the bill to do everything was over $250K with a time estimate of 4 to 6 months to get everything completed and on line. He had wanted to spend about $100K for the work. So he called IBM. Within the week, IBM had a team on-site to discuss the desired new system and do a site survey, The team was knowledgeable about both e-business and direct marketing. While the engineer was looking at the existing installation, the account manager was developing a list of requirements. They even brought a demo of a similar system they had developed. Less than a week later, he had a quote from IBM for a turnkey job for less than $85K, estimated delivery time 1 month. IBM made no attempt to sell IBM hardware, in fact said that the minor additional hardware needed to develop the web presence should be DELL also, to maintain a common hardware platform and minimize maintenance issues. They set up the financial transactions, worked with the customer's bank to do the linkages, set up the ISP, and, when it was all done, offered to maintain the site 1ncluding upgrades, backups, user administration, and other routine maintenance for less than $400 a month. IBM delivered the system in a little over 3 weeks and it was fully debugged and running a few days later. What did I get out of this story? DELL got the hardware sales, with a minimum investment. But IBM got the account.