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

To: rudedog who wrote (51412)	7/15/1998 11:07:00 AM
From: Lee	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 176387

Hi Rudy,..Re:<<Sevice vs Consulting>> Re: The big bucks are in planning and design services where DEC is absolutely the NT leader. This corresponds to what some of us term the consulting business? This is also the area where I was concerned that Dell would be disadvantaged because of the CPQ/DEC merger. Although I understand that MD has a plan going forward, from what I've read, the plan is mostly concerned with the service type business that you say is less than 25% of the overall business. Going forward, where do you see Dell's activities given that the enterprise business is the growth area and also that IBM, CPQ and HWP have in-house, so to speak, consultants? The contracts with Wang and others seem to be strictly for service based activity. Could Dell diversify laterally, as in bandwidth semis for example, and become a supplier of preference for all Level 1 type systems? This would be a divergence from the others and allow for expansion of Dell's major manufacturing capabilities. A further advantage might be the avoidance of sticky performance issues where highly technical consulting personnel are involved. Maybe they want to buy somebody like BRCM? Just curious Lee

To: rudedog who wrote (51412)	7/15/1998 11:31:00 AM
From: K. M. Strickler	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 176387

r, I didn't realize how much money went into support! If the big $ is in planning and design, wouldn't (couldn't) DELL get into that phase fairly easily, as that is a 'brain powered' application, and DELL certainly has the 'where-with-all' to capture the interest of some 'brains'. As for the 'exchange' business, was DELL even competing at that time? Once a 'seat' is installed, how often are changes to the system made? Would this be considered 'old news' because there is no more spending required for the 'seat'? >>> The 5 year cost of ownership is now about 12% hardware costs, about 35% support costs. <<< Is the support cost at startup or spread out? If spread out, what is done under the heading of support? If startup, and I am installing a 10 system network, engineered to go to 1000 systems, does the 35% apply to just the 10 system order, or do I have to pay another 35% when I add the other 990 systems? >>>In the old days, the equipment was not as reliable as the equipment of today Unfortunately not true. Base level hardware reliability has risen somewhat for PC class machines (especially servers) but is still several orders of magnitude below the 'big iron'. S390 and VAX systems routinely show availability of 99.95 and many are set up for 99.99. The best managed PC based systems (using RAID, failover networks etc.) are at about 98.5. <<< Now this is an interesting point. When I worked for IBM, there was a thing called 'scheduled' maintenance. The Customer Engineers had a saying that 'Maintenance would be performed at your (the customers) choice or the machines choice, your (the customers) option.' At which time a maintenance schedule was generally established. I spent 5 1/2 days per week in 'scheduled' maintenance interspersed with 'crash repair'. Scheduled maintenance for small systems is NOT! Heck, what would you do? (I suppose, back up the system for one thing!) Now the 'system availability' figure of 99.95-99.99 represents the time 'outside' of the maintenance allocation. >>> The problem is not hardware, it is the ability to keep the system up during routine operations. Every time a device is added to the configuration, or a driver is upgraded, or the network topology or security is changed, the system must be taken down and restarted, and the whole system loses performance while the changes propagate. <<< Don't the big systems have the same problem? Again, when I worked for IBM, these changes were made and tested during the 'maintenance' allocation of time. On today's system, time is no longer allocated hence when a change is made it has to be made at the cost of lost production. The new 'plug and play' concept might make these changes more transparent, but still there would be some system loss as the software reconfigures around the new device. >>>It will be at least another 2 or 3 years before these systems can begin to approach the minimum standards that S390, VAX, and other 'big iron' achieved routinely in the mid-80's.<<< If you counted the 'scheduled' maintenance in the overall time frame, what would the 99.99 decrease to? I usually got 4 hours per week on my System 360's for maintenance, and 4/168 is about 2.3% of the available time which would drop the 99.99 to 97.69 (99.99-2.3) which compares quite favorably to the 98.5 you mention. ( 98.5 vs. 97.69 ) In either case, they sure run better that the originals! Regards, Ken