I think Todd raises a very valid and relevant topic. The underlying issue does appear to be that the services are often lacking in the features which allow us to distinguish the service offering and the tools provided make the task of implementing and managing the services cumbersome or burdensome (and normally both). The RWI for Certificates, Email and DNS is a good example and the originator should be made to sit in a darkened room for a week looking at software where usability and intuitiveness are well implemented (take any Office Suite I guess). You may feel this comment is harsh but I now find the RWI so unwieldy that when I do need to use it I am frustrated to the level that this on its own could be enough for to move from OpenSRS.
There is nothing in the Managed DNS offering that OpenSRS can offer me that is not available from SourceForge and without having globally distributed DNS servers behind it or additional features such Dynamic DNS there is nothing that this service offers that I cannot implement myself today on my existing infrastructure - and without an ongoing cost. Regarding the earlier comment about the value of the Tucows name in selling the solution I simply do not believe that many of my customers will have heard of them and if they have it will be simply as a download provider for software. I cannot see any value at all in the Tucows brand in helping me to sell services, if there is any brand that has value in our market I feel it is more likely to be OpenSRS rather than Tucows. Regards Rob -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Todd Jagger Sent: 01 February 2004 18:57 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Managed DNS Service concerns (tangent) Hello, Pardon me for inserting this extrapolated tangent into this thread, however Rob's statements I think deserve some (more) discussion here as they pertain not only to the DNS service but other Tucows products as well. Let me preface by saying each of us has a different business model, needs, goals, customers, etc. What may be critical to one may be unimportant, or even undesired, by another, and vice versa. Tucows can't be everything to everybody and they have a significant challenge in trying to tailor their offerings and services to a vastly diverse customer base. While any endeavor has room for improvement I think overall Tucows has done an exceptional job and, above all, stayed consistent with high standards of ethics and professionalism. In addition they overall seem sincerely interested in what we want. Sometimes they also appear to ignore what we tell them, but at least they're listening. ;-) Whether or not Tucows offers X service or Y product is not the topic here. Tucows is going to offer the products and services they determine; that is their prerogative, just as ours is whether or not to resell that service or product, or to do business with Tucows at all. What concerns me is the development these products are given and the level at which they are offered. It seems in each case we're given something one or two notches shy of a kick-ass product, and that directly impacts our abilities to sell them to our customers. To use Rob's example, the DNS service without the ability to configure TTL. And the apparent stagnation of the client code interface and RWI. We resellers have been bemoaning the state of the client code and RWI usability for literally years. The latest word is that new client code is important and probably 6+ months down the road. I remember that same "official word" perhaps 2 years ago, back when the SF client was the model on which the client code was to be built. Specific bugs and suggestions have gone unimplemented. (Does the client code currently require a payment method - e.g. credit card input - for renewals? This was the first reason I went to the SF code. We don't want to keep numbers on file, customers' credit cards expire or they change cards or addresses; what is Tucows's model for getting payment on renewals? None apparently from the client code.) The email product has the potential to be a great outsourced service for those of us that offering fits our needs (mine does), and while some of the product are excellent, it falls short of being superior on multiple levels. The new feature additions are an improvement but don't quite take it to the A list. The webmail interface is still clunky, even compared to something like Squirrelmail, and doesn't even come close to the web interface of Cyrusoft's SilkyMail. And besides, how many people want to use webmail for their primary mail client? Not many I know. My clients want the features to be usable from their email client, and the webmail is something to use when they're not at their computer. Features like the shared address books are great but aren't going to mean anything to my customers unless they can share them from a mail client. There's no mention of the protocol (is it LDAP? ISMP? ACAP? or something proprietary from Stalker?) There are many other issues, some of which I've raised, and Bruce & Peter, you know how to reach me. :-) The point here is that with core reseller products it seems we're given a less than complete, and thus less than competitive, solution. It almost seems that the products (at least the Email and Managed DNS) were determined prior to extensive discussion about what resellers needed/wanted in the offering, and now that the products are out there it might be difficult or impossible to mold them to what our customers need. This leaves us in a difficult position of either offering something we're not excited about, or not offering it at all. This is in stark contrast to what's going on with the Blogware development. That product is being tested, hammered on, Bugzilla'ed, discussed in detail, and most importantly modified to what the resellers want. I'm convinced it's going to be, already is really, a top-notch product that's ahead of the curve, not behind it like Email, Managed DNS, client code, RWI. IMHO, I'd really like to see Tucows re-tool the quality of the products in the same spirit they're developing Blogware. Remember guys, this is technology --- you don't want to be playing catch-up. Thanks for listening tj
