Comments on: Procurement is good! http://www.kitchensoap.com/2007/09/23/procurement-is-what-can-kill-you/ Thoughts on capacity planning and web operations. Thu, 11 Mar 2010 19:13:25 -0800 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 hourly 1 By: Paul Holbrook http://www.kitchensoap.com/2007/09/23/procurement-is-what-can-kill-you/comment-page-1/#comment-6129 Paul Holbrook Mon, 03 Dec 2007 19:33:17 +0000 http://www.kitchensoap.com/2007/09/23/procurement-is-what-can-kill-you/#comment-6129 Very, very true. Most of the folks I've worked with who actually work with vendors have gone out of their way to be helpful. A good vendor relations operation can also help save you money by watching out for similar purchases, and for equipment that can be had from different sources, knowing who to call and when. ("It's the end of the quarter for Joe, and he's hungry ....") The other key is developing standards for what you buy. Spec out your standard web server box, database box, and so forth - and don't play game trying to buy exactly the right thing for the particular application. Make your standard box good enough for all normal uses, and scale by adding more. Having standard boxes also make it more likely that you will have boxes in the pipeline, on the way, and can, um, 'borrow' them as needed from other projects when the need arises. Very, very true. Most of the folks I’ve worked with who actually work with vendors have gone out of their way to be helpful. A good vendor relations operation can also help save you money by watching out for similar purchases, and for equipment that can be had from different sources, knowing who to call and when. (”It’s the end of the quarter for Joe, and he’s hungry ….”)

The other key is developing standards for what you buy. Spec out your standard web server box, database box, and so forth – and don’t play game trying to buy exactly the right thing for the particular application. Make your standard box good enough for all normal uses, and scale by adding more.

Having standard boxes also make it more likely that you will have boxes in the pipeline, on the way, and can, um, ‘borrow’ them as needed from other projects when the need arises.

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