[Beowulf] SGI and Sun: In Memoriam

[Huw Lynes]

On Thu, 2009-04-02 at 10:49 +0200, Kilian CAVALOTTI wrote:
> On Wednesday 01 April 2009 17:48:56 you wrote:
> > A point I
> > didn't make in my blog post on this stuff is that the academic side,
> > while a nice market to play in, isn't terribly profitable.  You have to
> > give "killer" discounts to play in many cases.  Which in the case of a
> > low margin commodity business, is, in a real sense, a killer.
> 
> But aren't those killer discounts paid back in image building and 
> advertisement savings? It would make sense for companies to invest in some 
> academic partnerships/projects, to make the buzz, and build up an image of 
> performance, reliability and trust. Something along the lines of: "see, this 
> prestigious university/institution is using that company's product line, and 
> they must know what they're talking about, so I should do it too."

Also it's not like big discounts don't exist in the corporate world.
Back when I worked for $multinational our group rates with Dell were
astonishingly cheap. 

-- 
Huw Lynes                       | Advanced Research Computing
HEC Sysadmin                    | Cardiff University
                                | Redwood Building, 
Tel: +44 (0) 29208 70626        | King Edward VII Avenue, CF10 3NB


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