Special vs Custom vs Standard? Choosing the Building Blocks….

Continuing from last week, let us continue to discuss on custom vs standard. We will continue to consider a network as a building. There can be many modes of getting the building constructed, let us have a look at the following options.

a) just specify, how many floors and how many rooms / seats, other facilities you need and get a vendor provide a “Turn Key” proposal.

b) You create your own floor design, create the specifications for the structure first and get one vendor to build the structure. You must clearly specify everything, so that when you plan and execute the remaining part of your building, the other vendors get proper space and hooks to add other layers.

c) You can get the Air-conditioning / lighting / Communications / LAN / Furnishing all done by separate vendors or you can give entire floor construction to one person each.

Each of the way is valid for an initial construction and you can create the right internal team structure to be able to manage the project so that you incur the minimum cost. But what if you want to upgrade the furnishing at a later date. What if you find that the size of tables selected by the vendor is proprietary and new tables of that size are not available from any other vendor in the market? What if this forces you to buy from the same vendor at premium? What if you find that the switch boards though fancy and nice looking cannot be replaced with commercially available brands? When some switches fail, you have to depend the existing vendor only for repair.

Next week, we will consider more such aspects, so stay tuned.