For every entrepreneur that makes it there are ten that don’t. For every ten that try and fail there are a hundred who had the idea but never had the cajones to do anything about it; for every hundred without the needful there are a thousand who hope the first guy will give them a job. Unfortunately, many end up working for the ten, who for the want of the capital, the experience, the business acumen, or whatever, go out of business.
The fallout of these failures lies around us: unfinished office blocks, acres of empty desks, and blighted careers. Curiously absent from the current economic wasteland is the technology that fuelled the late lamented boom. It, for the most part, has mysteriously vanished. And house prices continue to rise.
It is easy to uncover where some of it goes. A few blaggards believe the instruction to ‘clear their desks’ is an incitement to pillage anything that will fit into the boot of their car. The most preyed upon asset is the notebook computer. No sooner has the chairman said ‘restructuring’ than the notebook computer becomes a bartering tool for expenses, paycheques, and part payment for all sorts of grievances perceived or otherwise. In one company an unfortunate sales person given the bad news reached for the office microwave oven rather than their notebook (mistaking its value, as opposed to confusing it with a piece of high tech computer equipment).
For weeks after the axe has fallen the workstations, servers, networking and back-up equipment lie around, a testament to the battle fought and lost. Unattractive write down values make two- and three-year-old computers even less appealing, and no one left behind has the industry knowledge to dispose of the expensive servers. Eventually, after the systems administrator has bought the DAT drive he wants to hook up to his Marantz hi-fi at home an electronic equipment remarketer offers to take the lot off the financial controller’s hands for a song. And tens, in some cases hundreds, of thousands of Euro in technology investment vanishes in hours.
Very little of it turns up on the Irish second hand market. A significant proportion gets stripped down for parts; another major portion goes into Eastern European and Central American bound containers; and the smallest remainder is advertised for sale in Ireland. And herein lies a major opportunity for the next ten entrepreneurs prepared to stand up and have a go.
The mighty Wall Street Journal reported recently how one of America’s leading MIS managers buys his computers on ebay.com. The substance behind the story lay in his ploy of screwing suppliers using bid prices for kit from the auction website www.ebay.com. In doing so he had saved tens of millions of dollars on his annual capital expenditure. If it worked for him could it work for the little guys?
Ireland’s own ebid (www.ebid.ie) does a line in second hand computer equipment. In among the individuals you can spot the resellers mostly selling desktops and notebooks a little under list price but you can get a bargain. However you really have to go to www.ebay.co.uk to bargain hunt for corporate-strength computing power.
How about a Dell PowerEdge 6300 Quad Xeon server, with all four processors installed, 1GB of memory, 6 hot swappable 10Gb drives, Raid controller card, 100Mb network card, DAT drive, and on and on, for UK£935. Enough computing power to power a small nation for the price of a desktop workstation. Even the most basic small business Dell fileserver — the PowerEdge 600SC — starts new from EUR2699 excluding delivery and VAT.
Crating and shipping a beast such as the one above from deepest darkest England to civilization in Ireland is not simple. You need to know what you are looking for, know what it costs new, and be prepared to put the time in. You may also find it difficult to get support from original equipment suppliers. It is definitely not for the faint hearted. However recent medical research among a key sample group has proven conclusively that entrepreneurs with cajones don’t suffer from heart disease.
(It is worth noting if you are considering going down this route, that, recognising market realities, suppliers including Dell do sell reconditioned returned computer equipment, backed by their warranty and support contracts. Other major players in the Irish second hand market including Materials Asset Management (www.mam.ie); Multis (www.multisgroup.com); and E-Stock (www.e-stock.ie) offer computer kit off their websites much of which is nearly new at reasonably discounted prices.)
08/05/2003
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