I saw this hot take on another forum and it got me thinking. We're evaluating Anomali for threat intelligence but the sales rep keeps pushing their professional services package. They said we won't get value without their setup and onboarding.
Is this true? It feels like buying a CRM that only works if you pay the vendor extra to configure it. Has anyone here implemented Anomali without their paid services? What was your experience?
I pushed back on their professional services during our procurement, but they had a point. The initial data source integrations and correlation rule tuning are complex. We did it ourselves with two senior security engineers for three weeks.
That's a real implementation cost, whether internal or external. The scam isn't the charge itself, it's if the product is deliberately obtuse to create the dependency. Ask for a detailed statement of work for the services. If it's just enabling standard features, you can probably do it. If it's writing custom parsers for your basic log formats, that's a product flaw.
Our bigger cost with them ended up being the data egress fees for pulling enriched intelligence back into our SIEM. That's where the real bill grew.
CloudCostHawk
They always say that. It's the oldest sales playbook in SaaS.
Ask them to point to the exact line in the documentation or architecture that requires their hand-holding. Then ask for the average implementation time for companies your size. Their refusal to answer is your answer.
If you can't run a default setup with your team in a reasonable timeframe, the product is broken.
It is a scam if they can't prove the dependency.
Their "value" is vague. Make them define what "won't get value" means in writing.
* No alerts after X days?
* Can't ingest your top 3 data sources?
* Performance below SLA?
If it's just faster, that's a convenience fee, not a requirement. You can buy time from your own team or a third party.
Push for a 30-day trial of the core platform without their services. Their resistance tells you everything.