Philosophy of Buying Network Equipments

Undoubtedly, ICI’s job as a company is to help our customer buy high quality network equipments. The only correct way that we could do this job well is to 

imagine that we are our customers, and we are buying these equipments for our own use, then what shall be our criteria to the network products and the sellers?

The most important stream of current trend of ICT industry is that the customers are the main contributors and knowledgeable stake holders nowadays. Enterprise sales forces used to be very professional and well respected, providing key information about system planning and constructions. Nowadays their job is much simplified, as well weakened, to be an official “gate keeper” for the customers.

If ICI is building a whole new network, what shall we do, and what shall we care? --- Total cost of ownership (TCO)

As a network equipment user, we already did sufficient research of all viable network brands and solutions, and know most technical details of different brands, products, and prices. What’s left is that we wish to find a knowledgeable and honest dealer to help us validate our thoughts, and possibly deal with them at last, if their prices and services are good enough to us.

1. New or Used?

By default, we will buy brand new, Cisco or other mainstream brands’ original products if there is not any other inevitable cause for us to consider the used or compatible options. We don’t buy used ICT equipments for production network for 2 reasons,

1. Most used equipments’ prices are not really low, compared with the eroded quality and longevity.
2. Most used equipments’ performance or capacity/power consumption rate is much outdated.

2. Brands?

By default, we will buy mainstream brands for easier independent support after the equipments are commissioned. Even if the SI or dealer goes down after our project accomplished, it’ll be much easier to get support of spare parts and documents in expectable future.

3. Vendors?

Among the mainstream sellers that we could access, we will choose the 2-3 vendors with lowest prices for quotation for the finalized BOM. We will evaluate these vendors’ attitude, professionalism, knowledge, price and support commitments, together with our investigation information about them.

4. Support?

After we concluded the deal with the vendor, we will call for the vendor’s consistent support in the inspection, commissioning, documentation and support. We expect this vendor would openly share their knowledge and neutral suggestion with us, and really help us lower our TCO, because under current economic environment, we wish to make every dollar we spend in infrastructure really worthy.

------ Generally, we wish that we could find a silent and strong helper for long term cooperation, because we are a serious buyer and user of network equipments. We hate bragging, unprofessionalism, cheating, tricks (especially on quality), etc. We need professional care and real help, thus we could sleep well every night.