Intel, Sun and the subterfuge effect

After some thoughts while sitting in an aircraft towards Dresden (yes, the customer not unrelated to announcement yesterday), i came to the conclusion, that the announcement yesterday evening can make it easier to sell AMD systems. Sounds counterintuitive, but there is a interesting effect in selling hardware: I call it the subterfuge effect. When there is a weakness in your portfolio, your argumentation is a subterfuge, when there is a strength your arguments are reasonable. Nice example: Against a wide knows that TPC-C is not an indicator for system speed, it´s an function over the number of harddisks. When you have no or only an average TPC-C value, nobody believes you. Even when you explain it on bit level, many customers see this as an subterfuge. When you lead the TPC-C, the customer believes you, when you say: “TPC-C is utter bullshit”. But obviously you wouldn´t do, as this would obliterate an selling point. With AMD and Intel it´s the same. When you have only Intel or AMD, every argument for your point is only a subterfuge: “You say this, because you can´t sell us Intel”. When you have both it´s a good advise. So, the deal with Intel can actually help us to sell AMD systems.