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Palantir Pricelist (page 27) [pdf]

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Re: Palantir Pricelist (page 27) [pdf]

#41

Post by elblanco »

amalag wrote: post #6

You can't do diddly with an off the shelf install. They get you on the Implementation Ninjas and Support.

Their implementation periods are horrendous. Their marketing speak and sales drones make it sound like a turnkey appliance...like you just drop it in, point it to your database URLS and you're now playing with knowledge management. But in practice there's months of custom backend Java development (the entire tech stack is Java 1.6 or something horrible) to build the connectors and map the data into their backend, then months of ontology management meetings to build up the one-true-model (TM) for all your enterprise needs.

Then months and months of post deployment tweaking and continuous work to keep the system alive and fix issues when some of the data sources change schemas or something.

I've heard things like average time from purchase to full deployment is something like 9 months. But from my time dealing with them I think it's much longer.

Re: Palantir Pricelist (page 27) [pdf]

#42

Post by elblanco »

bane wrote: post #24
nostrademons wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not that out of line for what much other enterprise software costs. A Bloomberg terminal runs about $24k/user/year: http://qz.com/84961/this-is-how-much-a-bloomberg-terminal-co... When I was doing enterprise financial software it wasn't uncommon for contracts to run in the millions per year.

Yeah it kind of depends how you look at it. Is it specialty software that provides some critical function they can't get elsewhere? Or is it Microsoft Office, everybody gets it and it should really be like $150/seat. I should have also added to my original post, this is their GSA schedule. For these specific line-items, the government considers this the "prenegotiated lowest price". This simplifies purchasing. So if…

> raised almost a billion dollars and is valued at something like $9 billion dollars.

And now particular plans to sell or go public. This keeps all their financials private and the fact that they have to keep doing new fundraising rounds every few months does not make me think they're making money. At $9bil valuation, finding a buyer is going to be really tough.

They're a really weird company to deal with too. A bit cultish, the CEO is kind of flake the few times I've met him at their conferences. I get the impression that he's not really running the show, he's impossibly unqualified with zero history in any of the spaces they sell into and no business background of any useful type.

Their offices are nice, loads of free great food, but when people emerge from their offices for lunch it looks like they're on a death march. If you ask any of them if they like it there you'll always get a blank stare and a "I love it at Palantir, Palantir is great" answer.

Combined with the track jackets and sketchy legal history (well worth a read), it's kind of off-putting.

Re: Palantir Pricelist (page 27) [pdf]

#43

Post by elblanco »

hkmurakami wrote: post #39
bane wrote: post #7

For folks who've never seen one of these. 132-33 - Price for a Palantir server, priced per core. $141k per core. Includes 1 year of "maintenance" (support and software upgrades). 132-34 - This is the maintenance for second year on. $28k per core. How many users can a core support? I dunno. But let's say you can serve 50 people off of a 4-core system (you can redo the math for the number of users). You initial purchas…

They sure have chosen their preferred client industries of Government and Financial Services wisely then. Those industries (a) are accustomed to paying that much for their technology, and (b) are very unlikely to leave your platform once you start using your wares, since the difficulty of getting them as a customer in the first place (and how slow they move and how much paperwork / due diligence is required) directly…

there's a fair amount of vendor lock-in in this space as well and Palantir is pretty good at it. They talk quite a bit about open standards and what not. But moving off of their platform and onto one of the competing ones is basically impossible.

They've done a fantastic job at disrupting the link-chart market (which is surprisingly robust) and making it seem like customers are buying something else, but at 2-3x the price of the competition. They hide their sales guys as "forward deployed engineers" and obfuscate their sales process to the point where it doesn't seem like you've ever dealt with the kind of sketchy enterprise sales goon you'd deal with from any of their competitors.

They're very smart.

Re: Palantir Pricelist (page 27) [pdf]

#44

Post by mmcclellan »

hendzen wrote: post #33

If you read between the lines, notice how the "Palantir Gotham Appliance" for 151,042.82 includes "Palantir recommended...database software licenses." I would bet Oracle (or MS/IBM) is getting a hefty chunk of that.

Yeah but it's only $10k a core more. This job posting lists Oracle and PostgeSQL:

http://www.palantir.com/careers/OpenPosDetail?id=a0m80000002...

Re: Palantir Pricelist (page 27) [pdf]

#45

Post by fishcakes »

bane wrote: post #7

For folks who've never seen one of these. 132-33 - Price for a Palantir server, priced per core. $141k per core. Includes 1 year of "maintenance" (support and software upgrades). 132-34 - This is the maintenance for second year on. $28k per core. How many users can a core support? I dunno. But let's say you can serve 50 people off of a 4-core system (you can redo the math for the number of users). You initial purchas…

The alternative to Palantir - an alternative enterprise bespoke system or one built by the companies' or Gov's IT department - costs a whole lot more (25x) and often doesn't work! Palantir is a great value.

Re: Palantir Pricelist (page 27) [pdf]

#46

Post by mmcclellan »

sz4kerto wrote: post #17
bicknergseng wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"per core"

kdb, a database engine I consider extremely simple compared to Palantir costs $50k/yr/core.

simple but competent for time series. and the 32-bit version is at least available for free now.

Re: Palantir Pricelist (page 27) [pdf]

#47

Post by fishcakes »

elblanco wrote: post #41
amalag wrote: post #6

You can't do diddly with an off the shelf install. They get you on the Implementation Ninjas and Support.

Their implementation periods are horrendous. Their marketing speak and sales drones make it sound like a turnkey appliance...like you just drop it in, point it to your database URLS and you're now playing with knowledge management. But in practice there's months of custom backend Java development (the entire tech stack is Java 1.6 or something horrible) to build the connectors and map the data into their backend, the…

That is simply FUD – Palantir guarantees to customers that their software is working within 90 days AND has generated results. They offer a refund if not. Their homepage said this for a while!

Re: Palantir Pricelist (page 27) [pdf]

#48

Post by dfc »

hendzen wrote: post #33

If you read between the lines, notice how the "Palantir Gotham Appliance" for 151,042.82 includes "Palantir recommended...database software licenses." I would bet Oracle (or MS/IBM) is getting a hefty chunk of that.

I think it is Postgres.

Re: Palantir Pricelist (page 27) [pdf]

#49

Post by Spooky23 »

nostrademons wrote: post #18
bane wrote: post #7

For folks who've never seen one of these. 132-33 - Price for a Palantir server, priced per core. $141k per core. Includes 1 year of "maintenance" (support and software upgrades). 132-34 - This is the maintenance for second year on. $28k per core. How many users can a core support? I dunno. But let's say you can serve 50 people off of a 4-core system (you can redo the math for the number of users). You initial purchas…

Not that out of line for what much other enterprise software costs. A Bloomberg terminal runs about $24k/user/year: http://qz.com/84961/this-is-how-much-a-bloomberg-terminal-co... When I was doing enterprise financial software it wasn't uncommon for contracts to run in the millions per year.

I was involved in a Oracle Financials implemention a few years ago. Forget about the Oracle part... the IBM/Tivoli garbage used to monitor the IT systems cost about $1M in licensing alone!

Re: Palantir Pricelist (page 27) [pdf]

#50

Post by elblanco »

fishcakes wrote: post #45
bane wrote: post #7

For folks who've never seen one of these. 132-33 - Price for a Palantir server, priced per core. $141k per core. Includes 1 year of "maintenance" (support and software upgrades). 132-34 - This is the maintenance for second year on. $28k per core. How many users can a core support? I dunno. But let's say you can serve 50 people off of a 4-core system (you can redo the math for the number of users). You initial purchas…

The alternative to Palantir - an alternative enterprise bespoke system or one built by the companies' or Gov's IT department - costs a whole lot more (25x) and often doesn't work! Palantir is a great value.

I presume you're talking about the DCGS-A system. Palantir has done an expert level job confusing the public on this.

That system definitely has problems (it's terrible and sucks in many places), but it's a system of much larger capability and complexity than Palantir.

Comparing Palantir to it is like comparing a wheel to a an entire transport system. Palantir could comfortably fit in as a single capabilty in DCGS-A (and probably do a better job than the stuff currently filling in that role), but it could never replace it.

It's basically just a federated search, mediocre map and halfway decent link-analysis tool. But ask it to do anything even remotely outside of those three things and you're basically dead in the water as it doesn't offer anything relevant to all the other millions of things DCGS-A provides. DCGS-A is more than just some analytic tools.

The reason it's not part of DCGS-A is very political and complex and as much Palantir's doing as the Army's, but the answer is that the components that are on DCGS-A that basically do what Palantir does were selected because they're cheaper over the long run, even if a bit clunky. For example, on the client side, there's presently a forward looking mandate from big Army to drop flash and java clients (because they're an IT administrative menace). Palantir's front end is Java.

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