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Unix vs. NT ... was Re:(ASCEND) analyse RADIUS logs

Jason Nealis <nealis@babylon.erols.com> wrote:

>I agree, Why is it when Ascend comes out with a new toy, It's always 
>on NT first, Considering the mass of their user base is most likely homed
>in on UNIX I would tend to think they would offer this first. Is NT that 
>much easier to code for ? I think Not.

I think there are several things going on here.  Not the least of which is:

The suits listen to the marketing surveys and correctly deduce that 90%
or even 95% (or more) of the people who will and do buy their equipment
use Win95 (or some other end user M$ product).  They gear up their end user
stuff to produce for that market.  As much as I don't like Win95 this is
a sound approach if you want to sell lots and lots of product.

Now the suits either:

  1) get confused,
  2) don't understand,
  3) don't realize, for one reason or another,
  4) or choose to ignore,

that they supply two different types of customers.  The "end user"'s which
use M$ in large numbers and the ISP type customer where M$ isn't as pervasive.

They fold the ISP group into the end user group.  After all M$ is that 95%+.  
The ISP group is numerically puny.  They probably don't even realize that most 
ISP type consumers don't use W95 for much of anything, if they use it at all 
(and if they do use it it's quite often because they have to, not because it's 
their first choice).  

While an ISP will spend larger amounts of money on (in this case) Ascend
product than one "end user", they are out-spent by the numerically more dominant 
"end user".

"End user" being the consumer of the Pipelines and the NetWarps.  The number 
of $'s flowing into Ascend is dominated by the "end user" not by the ISP
(not that the ISP $'s aren't significant).

And after all, if you are and ISP and want Ascend you'll buy some "doggy dirt"
machine to run NT so you can configure the Ascend equipment ... no big deal.
And their bottom line is very good so they reason that their business model
must be pretty accurate.

At least that's my impression of what kind of thinking is happening inside
a number of COTS vendors (Commercial Off The Shelf).  They are capitalizing
on the "mass market".  As sad as I think this is I completely understand it
and would be doing the same thing if I were selling COTS products.  It's where
the money is.  I'd like to think that I'd recognize the dichotomy of my 
customer base but, it cost money.  So much for Business 101.

Paul
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