How are you to decide a strategy without knowing what your realistic choices are? Here are a few.

Strategy A:

Figure out how much you'll charge them. Figure hardware as a fixed percentage of that. Decide what the best configuration is that you can buy for that much money. Find a vendor that will give you a kickback for driving business to them.

Recommend that configuration from that vendor.

Above all, do not admit that your application runs just fine on a 2 GHz PC running Linux. If your customer knows that, then they might decide that there can't be much to the application and they'll want to be charged less.

Profit.

Strategy B:

Take the configuration from strategy A. Gold plate it. Recommend that.

Offer as an alternative for a low low hosting fee of X$/month to provide them with a working system that you'll administer and keep in tiptop shape, plus deliver upgrade fees for. Make sure that this fee would cover the goldplated system and then some.

Deliver the cheapest system that you think will actually meet their needs, and replace it periodically. Make sure that one of these "upgrades under your service plan" takes place within the 6 month period leading up to renegotiating your software contract. (You want the benefit of the warm fuzzies.

Profit.

Strategy C:

Be honest.

Go broke.

In reply to Re: How to recommend hardware to customers? by tilly
in thread How to recommend hardware to customers? by amonroy

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