On Jan 21, 2007, at 5:30 AM, Tautvydas wrote:
Hey List,
Little off topic, but I need some help. For a week I'm working in a
small company. (~250 workstations). Till 2008 there will be 400-600
workstations. So, they are planning to buy something for spam/mail
filtering (http://www.barracudanetworks.com/ns/products/
spam_overview.php).
I think the best would be to use openbsd+pf+spamd (with carp if
necessary). But - I have quite stupid CEO and I need many arguments,
why blackbox for many $$$ is bad (from corporate view).
Please, help me with these arguments.
Thanks.
Regards,
Tautvydas
--
Hi, I'm a .signature virus! Copy me to your .signature file and help
me propagate, thanks!
Whether or not buying and off-the-shelf solution is better than
building one in-house entirely depends on the relative cost of each
solution. Off-the-shelf tends to cost more to acquire, but usually
costs less in administration. Most of the cost of any software
usually isn't what it costs up-front to purchase it, but rather what
it costs to maintain it--how much do you have to pay people to make
sure it keeps working and that you can upgrade it in the future?
If someone very clever builds something from scratch, but then
leaves, who is going to keep it running? How much do they need to
pay to retain someone who understands the home-grown solution, vs.
how much would they need to pay someone to just click buttons? How
many hours will it take to maintain a home-grown solution vs. just
clicking buttons? When there's a problem, how long will it take the
staff to fix it vs. just calling tech support for the company you
bought software from off-the-shelf?
There's a lot more to cost than just the initial price tag, and the
value in terms of cost-savings in other areas is something else to
consider--would a commercial product block more malware, have less
false-positives, be able to comply with government regulations, etc?
Brian Keefer
www.Tumbleweed.com
"The Experts in Secure Internet Communication"
