On Apr 14, 2006, at 12:58 PM, Orth, Lonny J CIV N62306 wrote:
Out of curiosity, was Apple even given the chance to bid on the NMCI
contract that Dell has ever-so-apparently won?
Dell didn't win the contract, the company, EDS, that won the contract
prefers Dell machines. I doubt Apple had a chance regardless of
cost, the contract most certainly specified Windows as the OS.
Another side issue is that the existing machines become the property
of EDS (or at east part of the contract in some way), they either
maintained Win2K on them or replaced them with machines with machines
that could run Win2K -- the deck was stacked one way or another,
Apple would have had to replace all the machines and train all the
users. I doubt Apple could win because there would have not been a
second source, isn't that a requirement for the big contracts. I was
told that the stock price of EDS dropped after they won (I didn't
bother to look). Now with the Intel based Mac Mini Apple might have
a chance, but Windows and the Navy seem married for life.
Has Apple ever demonstrated an ability to support 400,000 machines
all over the world at secured sites? This means placing cleared
people on site at every site. Apple and Dell are not support
companies, they both sell hardware, and Apple sells software, some of
it produced in house (EDS is ranked as one of the largest services
companies on the FORTUNE 500 list, ref. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Electronic_Data_Systems>).
I asked an online contact why the school were he works only teaches
Windows, it's a business school and he said because the business
companies want people who know Windows.
Contrast that to people who format their Windows machines every six
months because of the viruses and worms or people who have said no
more extortion (yearly license renewals for anti-virus, anti-spyware,
and firewall software) and now use a Linux machine for web browsing
and email. The vast majority live with what they have because (a)
they don't want to buy new hardware and software, regardless that
they will soon anyway, (b) they use Windows at work, (c) they believe
that everyone they know uses Windows, (d) they plain don't have a clue.
Something to think about -- you get two worm generated emails to two
different emails addresses that you believe only one of your
customers has. When you suggest that his machine might have a
problem, he indigently replies that that is impossible as he is
running Windows 98 with the latest Norton and there is no way his
machine is infected. If you are a small company you don't argue with
your customers.
Only a few people switch to Apple OS X, I know a lot of switchers
because I work with engineers and scientists who primarily switch
because OS X is Unix and is a lot more user friendly then Linux
(Linux is like a user manual written by an engineer). Of the
switchers I doubt any of them would have switched if I wasn't using
OS X at work.
The real trick when you sell highly reliable hardware is to also be
able to sell them on contacts that specify a certain number of years
of replacement--say the contract says the company will repair the
hardware on site for five years, can Apple do that?
Side note: in the 1U market what's the failure rate after three years
(not counting Xserves), I have a rack with a 70% failure rate in 2
1/2 years, either the power supply or mother board giving out, these
are AMD Opteron based (had to be somewhat close to what our customers
would/could buy and the performance was better than the Xserve
available at that time) with a 2 year hardware warranty. I'm justing
hoping Apple has a nice Intel-based Xserve when we next get to buy 1U
servers, operating systems issues are one thing but high rate of
hardware failures has to count for something.
michael.
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