Looking for a SAN consultant that isn't selling them..
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@Dashrender said:
This is Dell - perhaps you don't want to run away from them because you know their hardware is good or even great - but these 'people' who are trying to sell you their solution just need to be fired and a new team who will sell you what you tell them you want can be sub'ed in.
Dell specifically has a process for getting neutral (non-reseller) advice on Dells from a Dell partner with access to Dell resources. Dell has actually come out as pretty passionate about making neutral advice available for their products.
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@JasonNM said:
It's not dell, It's a re-seller that sells from most manufacturers not just dell. They account executive's (two of them) are the one's making the recommendations.
At a reseller, realistically, all decision making is from sales people (account execs or whatever they call sales people.) Some places call their sales people engineers in the hopes of hiding this, but in this case it sounds like they are completely open that they aren't giving you any advice at all and just trying to sell stuff. At least they are up front that you shouldn't be listening to them
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@Breffni-Potter said:
@JasonNM - If you don't go with NTG, if you engage another consultant, have them sign an agreement which prohibits them from reseller agreements or sales on your behalf, you'll need the right legal phrasing but for any prospective consultant, lay that out up front.
Even then, make sure they aren't a reseller. The problem with a reseller, even when paid directly and engaged as engineers, is that they generally (not always, but have some empathy to try to see it from their side) if they make any recommendation based on needs rather than on reseller margin they are basically announcing that they are screwing all of their other customers by giving bad advice (opposite advice, in fact.) Even if they do it subconsciously, they are likely to favour solutions that they wouldn't be scared if their other customers found out about.
Ask yourself this, If the reseller's other customers found out that they had given you good advice that was completely the opposite of what they sell to others.... would they be upset? If so, likely they won't want to give you good advice even if you are paying for it.
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Plus going to a company whose business is not to give good advice but to sell product for advice is fundamentally flawed. There is no reason to assume that they have any expertise around architecture.
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@JaredBusch said:
@Breffni-Potter said:
@JasonNM - If you don't go with NTG, if you engage another consultant, have them sign an agreement which prohibits them from reseller agreements or sales on your behalf, you'll need the right legal phrasing but for any prospective consultant, lay that out up front.
While I do completely agree with this in general, as it is how we run our company, just because someone is a reseller, should not rule them out. It should reduce they value of their input, but if you are getting competing information, they can still be a value.
Resellers, IMHO, have tons of value. But at different stages of the process. You shouldn't get the broad guidance, like system design, from the resellers. Not where they are in a process to influence design. But once you are down to system specifics or needing to compare two products of similar types getting resellers involved (as long as their is oversight to keep their sales people from bring misleading and causing problems) is very good. Resellers need to be part of a good IT supply chain, but not a replacement for the IT skills themselves.
