The Remarketer

If you’re looking to run a datacenter on the cheap in 2006, Sioux Falls is the place to be.

Let me repeat that. Sioux Falls is the place to be. You really don’t get to say that often enough.

To our friends to the West, I send my congratulations, as yesterday Information Week published a report from The Boyd Co. citing Sioux Falls as the most affordable place in the United States to operate a datacenter. They based their ranking on various costs involved in operating a 125,000 foot datacenter with Sioux Falls, coming in just below $10 million in annual operating costs.

After a 5 day sabbatical, I’m just about ready to post again.
For now, here are some videos that I spotted, highlighting interesting uses for servers of all shapes and sizes:

Dell Servers used to make Rotisserie Chicken and Climbing Wall
(Sun x86 advertisement):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQXvnWfOKlA
“Good Enough is still good, right?”
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Skateboarding on a Compaq Proliant Server (link only):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFogTeZPLC4
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HP Demonstrates their uptime capabilities by literally shooting an HP Storageworks xp12000 array with a high caliber rifle. Note they advise not to shoot your own servers. Higher on the unintentional comedy scale than the intentional.

Shipping high-end servers and storage equipment across the country or to the other side of the globe can potentially be a scary proposition if you don’t have a freight forwarder you can trust. At Vibrant, we do all we can to ensure a quality product arrives at our customer’s dock - so choosing reliable freight vendors cannot be overlooked.

Axis Global Logistics is one of these top-notch partners for us and our rep, Chris Kosvic, was kind enough to answer some questions we had on how they ensure safe passage of our valuable products - and what we can do to help them succeed.

It was reported last June (2006) that reseller Sun Valley Technical Repair (SVTR) had been raided by several local, state and federal agencies. Other than charges of employing illegal workers, the involvement of the additional agencies is still not public. What did go public last month, though, were the physical assets of SVTR, via auctioneer Cowan Alexander:

Auction Details
Vacant Office Photos

UPDATE (12/15/09):Sun Claims Win / Judgement over defunct SVTR

In Malcolm Gladwell’s book, Blink, experienced art curators could immediately sense a fake when looking at the Getty Museum’s prized Kouros statue based on their gut instinct alone. Likewise, senior sales reps can usually sense a scam in the opening lines of an e-mail or the beginning of a call.

Yesterday I spelled out 4 underrated scam techniques used against IT Resellers, and today I’ll list seven signs that should clue you in to steer clear.

These aren’t your garden variety scams involving Nigerians, Phishing and Russian Brides. No, we’re talking about under-the-radar ways in which IT Resellers are getting burned by unscrupulous buyers. These are professional scam techniques that are pulled off at various levels of sophistication.

1) They Claim to work for a Large Corporation
- Taking advantage of a company’s weakness to trust a big name.
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It’s customary for corporate clients to require payment terms, anywhere from seven to thirty days to pay their invoice after shipment. Usually credit checks are run before terms are granted, but if a company is large enough (and if the order seems urgent enough), some companies will ship first and ask questions later.

You want updates on the latest systems and trends. You might wonder - “Why should I heed the words and opinions of a used IT hardware remarketer? They sell equipment from two to three years ago, right?”

I can see where you’re coming from, but the myth that we only sell museum-ready systems is exactly that: a myth. You would be surprised at how quickly the latest models hit our docks. We’re typically stocking servers, routers and storage hardware two weeks to two months after a product is launched. There is more to this question than recency though.

IBM xSeries 205 Server with neon ground effects.

This is a photo of a used IBM Server that was sitting in our staging area, waiting to be packed and shipped out to a client today (minus the neon glow).

Darcy, our marketing maven, played around with Photoshop and whipped up this prototype visual of the type of customization we could offer by teaming up with Vibrant Performance (see previous post). I wonder if they also do spoilers?

Google says we are; that must count for something, right? A vanity search for “Vibrant” at Yahoo shows they think we’re even more vibrant. Google at least had the sense to place us 2nd to an aftermarket auto parts company. (We can’t argue with that.) Stay tuned for a future collaboration featuring optional ground effects for servers and routers.

From a literal standpoint, Vibrant is our company name and URL. I think the question implies a deeper answer though; how can an IT hardware remarketer, in the land of ice and snow, be bold enough to represent itself as Vibrant?