"My customers keep their boxes for five years or more, so they don't have to buy three Dell PCs in that time span," says Tim Scheidler, owner of Halifax, Pa.-based NAS Computer Services. "When you compare our systems to, say, Dell PCs over a five-year period, we beat them in value."
Therefore, solution providers like Scheidler are taking a more sophisticated ROI message to customers, imparting to businesses that they'll get more value for their money with a custom machine. Still, systems builders acknowledge that, in fact, many people don't mind buying a cheap PC that will be replaced every 18 months to 24 months.
"A lot of customers are, unfortunately, OK with buying a new system every year because they want the latest-and-greatest model," Scheidler says. "It's like the McDonald's mentality--people want it fast and cheap."
As a result, white-box makers are taking a more targeted approach and mining customers that appreciate high standards and more advanced technologies. But can systems builders make any progress in the enterprise market? Perhaps not with the world's largest corporations, although white-box makers are finding customers that may not be true enterprises by definition have enterprise-computing needs and are seeking advanced desktops, workstations and servers. A number of white-box makers have jumped on emerging technologies, such as AMD's new Opteron 64-bit processor and open-source software, like Linux, to attract larger customers seeking high-end, advanced solutions.
For example, Lowell, Mass.-based New Technology Solutions (NTSI) has been successfully providing 64-bit Opteron-based machines to clients with high-end computing needs. The systems builder recently delivered more than 50 Opteron-based workstations to a major manufacturing client for engineering tasks.
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