Of course, a package that can fix a large and diverse range of problems will cost you. Even a 10,000-node installation may run upward of $1 million.
List price of the suites we tested in our comparative review (see "How Suite It Is") starts at $67 and goes to $125 per node, and that doesn't always include maintenance contracts. We found a disconnect between this price range and what readers want to spend: Only 12 percent of respondents say they'd be willing to spend more than $50 per node, and a minuscule 2.4 percent would go above $100. The sweet spot was $10 to $20 per client.
Assert Yourself
There are ways to close this gap. Volume discounts are available, and very large installations (more than 100,000 nodes) can negotiate to receive services, such as on-site installation and training, free or at a reduced price. Sometimes you can economize by unbundling features. For example, if you own remote-control software, you may be able to get this functionality removed.
Although shops with 100 to 1,000 nodes won't have as much negotiating power, they do have a wider range of choices. Products from small vendors such as FrontRange Solutions, Intuit and Vector Networks may not scale as well, but they offer functionality similar to those from the big boys. Our tests focused on a 10,000-node installation, but why pay for distributed systems-management capabilities if your organization is contained in one building and will be for the foreseeable future?
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