Question:
I don't know about you, but how many times have you wanted to know the price of hardware vendor a, vendor b and vendor c's product offering only to find out that you have to contact one of their sales reps, give them all your contact & company info (I'm sure you know the drill) listen to a sales spiel (or two, or three) maybe a webinar, or conference call or..etc before finally getting a quote some time later? Only to then be bothered by endless follow up sales calls?

Wouldn't it be great if there was an online, updated daily, website that listed real quotes organized by region in the country and company size?

That way, if you wanted to, say, know that latest prices for 2TB fibre channel SAN enclosures from company A and company B you pull up the site and boom, you have a nice fairly accurate idea of what you'll pay for a company of your size and location?

I think so.  Here's what I propose.  I will design and host a web site to organize just such info.  What I will need from all of you out there is your real time quotes (anonymously submitted is just fine, black out all the relevant personal/company info) and just include some general info on location (state for instance) and rough size of company.

I'll take care of the rest.

Answer:
I've resigned myself to it being one of the things I get paid to do.

Wouldn't it be great if there was an online, updated daily, website that   listed real quotes organized by region in the country and company size?

No way that would ever happen. Companies especially in this market, thrive on making deals in a vacuum. Availability of that sort of information would force them to be slightly more competitive (and have slightly more integrity).

I think so.  Here's what I propose.  I will design and host a web site   to organize just such info.  What I will need from all of you out there   is your real time quotes (anonymously submitted is just fine, black out   all the relevant personal/company info) and just include some general   info on location (state for instance) and rough size of company.

and all zero folks who aren't bound by disclosure restrictions could participate!

The more effective and less time-consuming way to solve this problem is a discipline called "vendor management"