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<p>Hallo Geoff,</p>
<p><br></p>
<p>Donnerstag, 2. April 2009, meintest Du:</p>
<p><br></p>
<p><span class=rvts6>>> Also it's not like big discounts don't exist in the corporate world.</span></p>
<p><span class=rvts6>>> Back when I worked for $multinational our group rates with Dell were</span></p>
<p><span class=rvts6>>> astonishingly cheap.</span></p>
<p><br></p>
<p><br></p>
<p><br></p>
<p><span class=rvts7>GG> There was one university I worked for that Dell sold a medium-sized (approx</span></p>
<p><span class=rvts7>GG> 100 nodes) cluster complete with myrinet networking for a loss just to get</span></p>
<p><span class=rvts7>GG> the bragging rights (for promotional purposes, of course).</span></p>
<p><br></p>
<p>Probably your Dell sales guy told you "we made a loss" - but what he meant is "i made negative margin". This in fact doesn't mean that Dell as a company is making a loss. Probably there aren't many people within Dell who can get to the numbers if (or at what price level) Dell is making a loss. </p>
<p>
<br>That is very complex as it has to do with factories working under 100% load, discounts on quantities of parts, shipping costs that you can combine...etc. </p>
<p>
<br>And often you know about a loss after you did a deal... not before ;-)</p>
<p><br></p>
<p>For small companies it is pretty simple: 0% margin means 0% profit - if you do a lot of those deals you go bankrupt. ;-)</p>
<p><br></p>
<p>Jan</p>
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