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 _______________________________________________ Beowulf mailing list, Beowulf@beowulf.org To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf