Information Technology Manager at a wholesaler/distributor with 5,001-10,000 employees
Real User
2021-05-16T12:13:00Z
May 16, 2021
I have mixed feelings about the pricing and licensing. I believe that when you sell a UPS, and considering the UPS is a lifeline to a lot of the major corporations, the monitoring solution should be part of the package automatically, out-the-door. If you have to raise that price on the UPS an extra $5,000, then do so at that moment. Don't have that as an extra offer after the UPS has been sold. I believe that all UPSs need to have high availability, all the latest software installed, and be ready to go out-the-door.
Manager of Engineering and Reliability at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
Real User
2020-07-16T06:21:00Z
Jul 16, 2020
The pricing was very fair. That was one of the criteria when we did our evaluation and Eaton had the better price at that time. And what's amazing about it is that I found no other costs with Eaton. It was the cost of the UPS and the cost of the parts contract and that was it. They have not ever charged me anything else.
It is an expensive technology. The maintenance is expensive. The batteries are expensive. Replacing those batteries is expensive as a capital cost. You have to plan for it every four to five years, but it's the cost of doing business. The cost of not having a good reliable system in place is even higher when you have catastrophic failures. I would recommend the product, but you do have to be prepared to spend some money, both on the product as well as all the environmental preparations for powering the system and cooling system. We use their service plan, which includes parts so we don't do the maintenance on it ourselves. We have a service plan that we use, then they do all the maintenance and periodical maintenance (PM) work. If there are any hardware failures, then they also do the work. Therefore, it's a hardware/software support contract that includes labor. For our used case, 12kW is good. It has worked very well for us. They can be a lot bigger and they can be smaller, but the 12kW seems to be just about right for us. It has a good price point.
The cost per unit, as a rough estimate, is $300,000 per UPS 750-block. The only additional services would be the maintenance we do. I don't know the exact costs of that at each location, but at Cleveland or Denver I believe we're paying about 35,000 a year per maintenance contract.
Director of Data Center Strategy & Operations at University of Chicago
Real User
2019-09-02T05:33:00Z
Sep 2, 2019
When you bid these large units I fin them all within a single-digit percentage point of each other. I can't make a bad decision. It's just what's the right decision at that moment in time? They're all cost-competitive. I do pay for a service contract to Eaton every year. I do it through a third-party, but it's all Eaton paper. We do that because of the Ts and Cs - getting contracts mutually agreed to with all the legal teams is challenging thus I leverage a third party to help with this. I have the luxury of dealing with Eaton direct or leverage my VAR as needed. Either way communications between all parties is strong!
We have a service plan through Eaton. A local vendor, Blackmon Agency, who is a third-party, helps manage it for us. I don't get into it everyday. Our supervisor manages it with the local reps. I just helped orchestrate their initial agreement, then they have managed it since then.
I usually get the pricing of the overall project when it's complete. I want to say they are around $50,000 to $70,000 depending on the options and the modules that we get. With Eaton - and this is something of a detractor - I have to give them a PO with a minimum dollar amount. With Vertiv, I just have to call them out. I don't have to give them a PO upfront. They know we're going to pay so they don't need that. It gets them on campus quicker. With Eaton, I have to go through the entire payment process and I don't understand that, given that we're as large as we are as a company and do so much business with them. That's something to flag as our biggest gripe. As for services costs, I don't know what they are. Their full-service contract is pretty expensive, but we normally don't buy that, so I don't know if they're competitive within the market itself. We only have a service contract like that with Eaton at one site. That site with the full-service has 50 UPSs and it's more expensive than the site where I have 100 UPSs which are only on a T&M contract. For us, the full-service is on the expensive end, but I don't have any comparison. I don't know what Vertiv's price would be on that.
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I have mixed feelings about the pricing and licensing. I believe that when you sell a UPS, and considering the UPS is a lifeline to a lot of the major corporations, the monitoring solution should be part of the package automatically, out-the-door. If you have to raise that price on the UPS an extra $5,000, then do so at that moment. Don't have that as an extra offer after the UPS has been sold. I believe that all UPSs need to have high availability, all the latest software installed, and be ready to go out-the-door.
The pricing was very fair. That was one of the criteria when we did our evaluation and Eaton had the better price at that time. And what's amazing about it is that I found no other costs with Eaton. It was the cost of the UPS and the cost of the parts contract and that was it. They have not ever charged me anything else.
It is an expensive technology. The maintenance is expensive. The batteries are expensive. Replacing those batteries is expensive as a capital cost. You have to plan for it every four to five years, but it's the cost of doing business. The cost of not having a good reliable system in place is even higher when you have catastrophic failures. I would recommend the product, but you do have to be prepared to spend some money, both on the product as well as all the environmental preparations for powering the system and cooling system. We use their service plan, which includes parts so we don't do the maintenance on it ourselves. We have a service plan that we use, then they do all the maintenance and periodical maintenance (PM) work. If there are any hardware failures, then they also do the work. Therefore, it's a hardware/software support contract that includes labor. For our used case, 12kW is good. It has worked very well for us. They can be a lot bigger and they can be smaller, but the 12kW seems to be just about right for us. It has a good price point.
The cost per unit, as a rough estimate, is $300,000 per UPS 750-block. The only additional services would be the maintenance we do. I don't know the exact costs of that at each location, but at Cleveland or Denver I believe we're paying about 35,000 a year per maintenance contract.
When you bid these large units I fin them all within a single-digit percentage point of each other. I can't make a bad decision. It's just what's the right decision at that moment in time? They're all cost-competitive. I do pay for a service contract to Eaton every year. I do it through a third-party, but it's all Eaton paper. We do that because of the Ts and Cs - getting contracts mutually agreed to with all the legal teams is challenging thus I leverage a third party to help with this. I have the luxury of dealing with Eaton direct or leverage my VAR as needed. Either way communications between all parties is strong!
I have a maintenance contract with Eaton, which has been very good. The notifications that we receive, we use email to my team, and they work well.
We have a service plan through Eaton. A local vendor, Blackmon Agency, who is a third-party, helps manage it for us. I don't get into it everyday. Our supervisor manages it with the local reps. I just helped orchestrate their initial agreement, then they have managed it since then.
I usually get the pricing of the overall project when it's complete. I want to say they are around $50,000 to $70,000 depending on the options and the modules that we get. With Eaton - and this is something of a detractor - I have to give them a PO with a minimum dollar amount. With Vertiv, I just have to call them out. I don't have to give them a PO upfront. They know we're going to pay so they don't need that. It gets them on campus quicker. With Eaton, I have to go through the entire payment process and I don't understand that, given that we're as large as we are as a company and do so much business with them. That's something to flag as our biggest gripe. As for services costs, I don't know what they are. Their full-service contract is pretty expensive, but we normally don't buy that, so I don't know if they're competitive within the market itself. We only have a service contract like that with Eaton at one site. That site with the full-service has 50 UPSs and it's more expensive than the site where I have 100 UPSs which are only on a T&M contract. For us, the full-service is on the expensive end, but I don't have any comparison. I don't know what Vertiv's price would be on that.
The Service Plan we have is on a three-year contract.