I.T. Cost Saving Pitfalls

Cost Saving Mistake #2 - Buying Expensive Network Hardware From The Wrong People.

In this scenario a customer consulted with his traditional network support firm and made the wise decision to purchase a Barracuda Anti Spam Firewall. The customer then received a quote from the support firm who earlier in the year became an authorized reseller of the Barracuda product.

The customer however thought he would save a few dollars and he asked an employee if her husband, whom he had heard was "in the computer business", could give him a price on the same Barracuda device.

Unfortunately for the owner being "in the computer business" is not a universal quarantine on the level of say being UL approved. But this was something the owner would not learn until after his company had wasted a lot of money.

But first the owner did get to feel good about his decision as the husband of the employee was able to sell the Barracuda at a lower cost than the authorized reseller. However those good feelings only lasted until the owner learned the Barracuda device was not able to receive its scheduled update. Being an online hardware Anti-Spam solution the Barracuda receives updates much like and Anti-Virus software package does and that service is provided from the manufacturer to registered users.

With those magic words "registered users" we have our first sign of a fly in this ointment. You see the employees husband had sold the Barracuda below market value as he had sourced it from an unauthorized reseller. When it came time to renew the updates the owner found out by calling the manufacturer that his device that he had just paid handsomely for was not registered to his firm and that he could not receive updates.

The owner of course called the employees husband, the one in the computer business just a few months earlier, to find out that he is "no longer doing that" and that he would not be able to help with the problem.

It did take one more call from the owner to the manufacturer to verify that he had indeed just wasted over one thousand dollars but the manufactures policy was quite plain and simple and that was they did not support products that were obtained second hand and that were not registered.

One last call to his traditional Network Service Provider was enough to get him back on track. Within a few days a new Barracuda device was purchased and installed by an authorized reseller and the company was once again enjoying the protection of being behind one of the best Ant-Spam devices on the market today.

To comment on this story, see our Computer Service Blog.

Or read more real life IT mistakes follow these links:

Cost Saving Mistake #1 - Switching ISP's On Your Own.
Cost Saving Mistake #2 - Buying Expensive Network Hardware From The Wrong People.
Cost Saving Mistake #3 - Wasting Money By Trying To Pinch Pennies On Toner.

Andy Wendt
 Xponex Web and Media Services
 andy@csn1.com