project customers

Radek Polak psonek2 at seznam.cz
Sat Apr 10 20:11:14 CEST 2010


Dr. H. Nikolaus Schaller wrote:

> Definitively. Such "projects" usually have 2-3 years planning phase
> (from the idea through convincing management, getting a budget,
> selecting suppliers, negotiating prices, finally making a purchase
> order etc.). And then typically 3-5 years deployment where
> replacement, spare parts etc. must remain available and devices must
> remain compatible to any infrastructure that comes with the project.
> So for successful "project business", one must either provide a
> product that is available for 5-7 years or at least a consistent
> roadmap/upgrade plan. This is completely different to a consumer
> market where the buyer just wants the best product available today.
> And then comes back after 2 years and wants to have a new one, most
> likely from a different brand and 100% incompatible.

I have to aggree from my own experience. Our company is doing HW and SW for 
Czech Railways. We are still running 600 small 486 devices running MSDOS (we 
had 1200 of them just a year ago). And we are also still developing new SW 
products for these devices.

It is very important that the device is supported for 10+ years in this area. 
It is also important that the operating system and HW is stable and not 
changing under your hands. You install it once and it must work for those 10 
years.

Regards

Radek



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