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Priced across the OEMs, negotiated on your side
You get the most capability your money can buy, and what arrives is what was specified. We work out what you actually need, then put the quotes side by side, so you are paying for capability rather than for whatever was easiest to quote. We carry no quota with any OEM, so nothing about the recommendation is vendor-funded.
- Fee
- Fixed fee for the exercise + GST · kit at a minimal markup, shown
- Our markup on the kit
- Minimal, and on the quote
- Runs for
- 2–4 weeks, typically
- Output
- A specification and a like-for-like comparison
The job is simple to state: the most capability for the least money, and what arrives being what was specified. That means the requirement written down before anybody bids, at least three comparable quotes put side by side, the negotiation run on your side of the table, and the delivery checked against the order.
We carry no quota with any OEM and take no rebate or referral fee from one, so nothing about the recommendation is funded by the vendor. Where we supply the kit ourselves, the markup is minimal, realistic and shown on the quote as its own line. If you would rather contract with the seller and pay them directly, that works too and nothing is routed through us. Either way the cheapest answer is one we can actually give you, including the answer that you should buy nothing at all.
Discount is the part everyone focuses on and it is rarely the biggest number. In our experience the money is here, roughly in this order:
- Specification. The most common overspend is buying a tier up “to be safe”: a firewall sized for ten times the throughput the line can carry, storage bought on a growth curve nobody has revisited since 2021, switches with licensing for features that will never be turned on.
- The licensing edition. Software is usually where the avoidable money sits, because editions bundle things you already own elsewhere. Paying twice for the same capability across two vendors is normal and almost never noticed.
- The support tier. Four-hour on-site on every device in the estate is an expensive default. Some of it needs that. Most of it needs next business day, and a few things need a cold spare on the shelf instead of a contract.
- Timing and term. Quarter-end is real, and so is the cost of a five-year commitment to a product roadmap you have not read.
- Competitive tension. A specification written before anybody is invited to bid is worth more than any amount of haggling afterwards: it is what makes the quotes comparable in the first place.
- The renewal nobody diarised. Auto-renewals at list are the quietest overspend in most estates, and the easiest to fix once someone writes the dates down.
Switching, routing, wireless, firewalls and the licensing attached to them: the enterprise names a mid-market estate realistically lands on, the challengers that undercut them, and the value tier that is genuinely good enough for a branch.
The interesting question is rarely which brand. It is whether you are buying a controller-based architecture you will still want in five years, what the licence does when it lapses (some vendors stop forwarding traffic, others merely stop updating), and whether the support contract covers the failure you are afraid of. We design the network on the network side and then price it here, in that order.
Servers, hyperconverged nodes, storage arrays, backup targets and the endpoints people work on: the global server and storage OEMs, the specialists worth a look for a particular workload, and the Indian manufacturers where the workload suits them and the landed cost is better.
Two things we will always ask before a quote is worth reading. First, whether this should be bought at all or run in the cloud: the honest answer is sometimes on-premise, particularly for steady predictable load, and we will say so even though it is the less fashionable answer.
Second, what the real utilisation of the current kit is, because a refresh sized on the last purchase order rather than on measured load repeats whatever mistake was made last time.
Productivity suites, virtualisation, backup, database and endpoint security: the platforms most estates already run, the alternatives worth pricing against them at renewal, and the Indian vendors where they are a genuine fit rather than a patriotic gesture.
Licensing is where we earn the fee most often, because it is the part nobody enjoys reading.
Two findings recur. A productivity suite sitting on a tier that was bought for one feature, where four cheaper licences would cover it. And a virtualisation estate whose renewal economics changed underneath it when the vendor changed hands, with nobody having modelled what the alternatives would cost. Neither is a reason to panic. Both are a reason to do the arithmetic before the renewal rather than during it.
Sometimes it is, and we would rather say so than pretend otherwise.
If you need one purchase order covering kit from six vendors, credit terms we cannot offer, or a single organisation contractually on the hook for the whole stack, a good reseller or a large SI is the better buy. In that case we will help you choose one, review what they propose, and check the quote against the specification, which is a smaller job, and the one worth paying us for.
What you walk away with
Yours to keep, and to hand to anyone else, including a provider that isn't us.
Talk to us about thisWritten against what the estate has to do, not against a vendor’s datasheet. You can take it to anybody.
The same requirement priced across OEMs, with the differences that matter called out and the ones that do not ignored.
What is negotiable, what the list price means, and where the quote has room in it.
Every support contract, licence and warranty with its date, because the expensive renewals are the ones nobody diarised.
Asked before you ask
The ones that come up on nearly every first call.
Talk to us about thisDo you take any commission from the OEMs?
No. No quota, no rebate, no referral fee: nothing reaches us from the vendor side, which is the reason the advice is worth anything. What we do earn, where you ask us to supply the kit rather than buy it yourself, is a minimal markup that appears on the quote as its own line you can question or take out by contracting with the seller directly. What sits inside a distributor’s own price is built through a chain of its own and we will not pretend to see all of it. What we can hold to is that none of it comes back to us as a kickback.
How can you get a good price if you are not the one buying?
Price comes mostly from a specification written before anybody bids, from three comparable quotes rather than one, and from knowing which parts of a quote have room in them. None of that requires us to be the seller. Where a distributor relationship genuinely gets you a better landed price than buying direct, we will point you at it and take nothing for doing so.
Can you support the kit afterwards?
Yes, and that is a separate decision from who sells it to you. Support runs under a managed services agreement priced on the estate. We will also happily specify kit that somebody else supports: the two do not have to be bought together, and the assumption that they do is one of the reasons estates get expensive.
We already have a preferred OEM. Is this still useful?
Usually yes, and often more so. Single-vendor estates are where specification and licensing drift accumulate quietest, because there is no competing quote to make anything look odd. The exercise then is right-sizing, edition, support tier and renewal timing within that vendor, which is where most of the money is anyway.
Do you handle procurement paperwork and delivery?
We can run the process: specification, RFP, comparison, negotiation, and checking what arrives against what was ordered. The contract and the payment are between you and the vendor. That is the point of the arrangement rather than a limitation of it.
Not sure this is the one you need?
Tell us the symptom, not the service, and we'll say which of these applies, or that none of them do. A reply within one working day, from someone technical.
The rest of what we do
Most engagements start with one of these and grow into another.