It's all been done before but HP and Microsoft have picked an excellent time to do it again. Their new competition promises a total of $50,000 (retail price) of new computer hardware and software to the two entrants most desperately in need of an IT makeover.
Of course the day after the winners are announced all of the losing contestants will receive a personalized phone call from Microsoft offering sympathy and an invitation to evaluate Essential Business Server running on HP equipment. Why the heck isn't IBM doing this kind of stuff with Lotus Foundations server on X-Series hardware?
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Interesting contest. I can see that most companies in the SMB space would love to have $16K-$32K US of free hardware/software. However, Foundations has a much better story to tell. Sure, they win the hardware, but tell me about the ongoing support and upgrades that will need to be performed. Is there a backup and recovery product included? Two copies of MS Office are nice, but how about the ongoing licensing? Is there a web server/mail/VPN/etc. included?
So, while the contest is fun, the Foundations sites get way more value for their money.
Hi Gregg,
I agree the HP/Microsoft prizes are only the tip of the iceberg for the winners. My point is that HP/MS will have invested $20k ? (cost price) for the prizes plus the administration costs and will walk away with x,000 SMB leads for selling SBS/EBS. Foundations DOES have a better story to tell but if IBM doesn't have the contact details for these contestants then those guys will never hear the story. Nothing wrong with what MS/HP are doing - my question is what is IBM doing to counter it?
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