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Why a one-room West Virginia library runs a $20,000 Cisco router

arstechnica.com

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Re: Why a one-room West Virginia library runs a $20,000 Cisco router

#111

Post by intended »

MattBearman wrote: post #97
nikcub wrote: post #8

I have first hand experience with this, although in Australia. My first job was working for a IT development and solutions shop (this is over 17 years ago) where they won the bid to rollout the internet and network gateways across a large number of Australian government schools. We were doing similar work for private school at the same time, and the process for the public and private school could not be more differen…

I've seen examples of this all over the UK as well, when ever it's a Government tender the quotes were always much higher than they need to be, and they always HAVE to have the most expensive, 'enterprise' equipment, whether they need it or not. I've never understood it myself. Governments are funded by tax money, and the people involved in these companies that love overcharging the Government pay taxes. Congratulati…

Its the level of management and attention to detail your organization can afford.

At some point people will probably need to fully fund and empower an independent audit organization staffed with the kind of detail oriented savants that will start cutting through a lot of fat.

As has been mentioned above, there are many times that people end up doing work only because they are wired to try and do it cheaply/well.

The rest of the time no one is at the helm.

Re: Why a one-room West Virginia library runs a $20,000 Cisco router

#112

Post by someperson »

nikcub wrote: post #8

I have first hand experience with this, although in Australia. My first job was working for a IT development and solutions shop (this is over 17 years ago) where they won the bid to rollout the internet and network gateways across a large number of Australian government schools. We were doing similar work for private school at the same time, and the process for the public and private school could not be more differen…

This is outrageous. Borderline corruption (especially the people in-charge of the tendering processing basically getting kickbacks)

Aren't there any avenues to get people fired over this? Talk to a investigative journalist maybe?

Re: Why a one-room West Virginia library runs a $20,000 Cisco router

#113

Post by vacri »

trout wrote: post #65

Visualizing this conversation.. IT Director to Sales Guy: "We just got $20M in grant money for getting broadband across the state. Can you get me some numbers?" Sales guy to engineering team (partner or internal): "Hey I need lots of boxes. They've got 1300 sites." Engineering team: "Ok.. what do they need?" IT Director: "Pretty sure my network guy says everything has to have redundant power supplies and at least 1 e…

That is also a valid point - if the way your system is set up, it would cost more than the difference to send someone out for the survey to verify a cheaper model is enough, just throw in the higher model. Though in this particular case, it's clearly not what happened.

Re: Why a one-room West Virginia library runs a $20,000 Cisco router

#114

Post by intended »

damian2000 wrote: post #33
jessaustin wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is bullshit. They could have put the network engineer from the Department (the guy who confirmed he had not requested dual power supplies) on this for a week, and he would have had a solid estimate for far less. Put him on it a month and he could have had an itemized order with the exact models to order from Cisco or from any of its competitors. If he were busy with other duties, any other network engineer in th…

Agreed - it sounded like the Cisco guy just spec'd up the absolute maximum needed for one or two locations, then just decided to roll out the same spec across all 1000+ locations, obviously trying to maximise sales. Cisco was probably shocked when the government approved it all.

I saw it differently.

To me this looks like a situation where something was said verbally, and then no confirmation or follow up was given.

Wanting to get the quote out, Cisco just made it and sent it. They assumed that it, and any other issues, would get sorted out when the quote got reviewed.

The client slept. Cisco said "Good job sales team".

It is always the job of the buyer to know what he is getting, for what he is paying.

Re: Why a one-room West Virginia library runs a $20,000 Cisco router

#116

Post by arethuza »

vacri wrote: post #110
arethuza wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In case you think all European transport projects are wonderfully run: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/scotland/9345650/No-s... About £1 billion for a tram line where the end points are about 11 km apart in a city that has excellent taxi and bus services....

If you don't want it, ship it to Melbourne! We've been gagging for a light rail link to the airport, which is about that distance away. Unfortunately the too-powerful taxi cartel and the Melb airport corporation keep blocking it because they're making too much moolah.

As far as I am concerned you can have it for £1 billion plus shipping costs....

[NB We will have a spare aircraft carrier going "cheap" as well...]

Re: Why a one-room West Virginia library runs a $20,000 Cisco router

#117

Post by hiddenfeatures »

Maybe I should get myself checked, but is anyone else thinking about the big opportunity here?

You wouldn't need more than your average crow bar to get into this thing. I bet they don't have a decent alarm system (if any).

Seems like a relatively low-risk, high-reward situation to me.

Re: Why a one-room West Virginia library runs a $20,000 Cisco router

#118

Post by intended »

trout wrote: post #65

Visualizing this conversation.. IT Director to Sales Guy: "We just got $20M in grant money for getting broadband across the state. Can you get me some numbers?" Sales guy to engineering team (partner or internal): "Hey I need lots of boxes. They've got 1300 sites." Engineering team: "Ok.. what do they need?" IT Director: "Pretty sure my network guy says everything has to have redundant power supplies and at least 1 e…

> Somewhere, someone didn't slow this project down to do due diligence

In it a nutshell.

If anything, there should have been multiple flags raised.

1) A ball park figure should have been estimated on what this should cost, broken down by equipment type.

2) That should have made it clear that switches would be fine for multiple use cases, and the overall estimate should have dropped. *

3) Back and forth with provider as haggling over components proceeds. Massive attention to detail would be shown here.

4) First quote received from Cisco. Due diligence proceeds, issues raised. Customers says NO, just to buy negotiation room. (fine they have a grant, maybe not so aggressive)

5) Updated quote, go back to 4 if issues.

6) Quote acceptance. Now monitoriing of execution.

There should have been many opportunities for flags to have been raised, even before the quote was received. And most definitely after it would have crossed the ball park figure.

* It looks like the clause for redundant power was what tripped it up. Someone said we need X, and then somehow it became the TRUTH for all routers/switches.

So its entirely possible (if not likely) that Cisco said "based on your constraints, these are the only components which match your requirements", and the Government bought it.

Which is face-palm/head-desk territory.

Re: Why a one-room West Virginia library runs a $20,000 Cisco router

#119

Post by pbhjpbhj »

vidarh wrote: post #28
redshirtrob wrote: post #11

I'd like to know how much of that $5 million savings would have been burned up in the capacity studies. My guess is a lot. Given the choice between a fixed cost and an unbounded cost (being the capacity study referenced throughout the article) I'm not surprised they went with the fixed cost. I'm not saying WV didn't get swindled, but I can sure see how this might have happened: WV Rep: Do we really need these $20k ro…

Here's a capacity study for you: E-mail all the IT managers, and ask them: - How many users do you have? - What is the total size of the community you serve? - Do you need new equipment? That would have quickly revealed that many of them had so few users that these routers were total overkill, and had so few potential users that even 100% simultaneous usage in some cases would not max out the capacity, and that some…

Wouldn't the central procurement already know the max capacity of the lines (DSL, fibre, whatever) that had been installed, already know what routers/switches were in use and already know the populations being served? That's pretty basic audit information that I'd expect could be pulled up from a central database lickity-split.

Eyeballing those figures should be all you'd need - but yes if there was no central record of past procurements an email survey (or better yet online using a survey system) would apparently be pretty quick.

Re: Why a one-room West Virginia library runs a $20,000 Cisco router

#120

Post by gritzko »

Well, just another me-too story. When I was somewhat younger I had to "deploy" one Cisco product which was definitely a result of an "incentivized" sale. That sweet sweet setup involved login-password authorization (assisted by a Cisco router) where the user had to type in "public" and "1" as a password because... the enterprise actually had no end-user accounts and absolutely no possibility to introduce them...

As far as I understand, such an incentivized sale was a common practice. Once the management somehow achieved consensus (i.e. the right balance of risks, benefits and favors), engineers were left with making things appear OK.

I am inclined to think that Cisco made a strong bet on this kind of a business model at some point.

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