On 06/04/13 06:43, Chris Pelon wrote:
Hi All
I run a small business IT services company in the US and we have just
started to play with the SME 8 software. So far it seems like a very
nice project, and it would be only natural for us to help improve it.
I run a small business IT services company in Australia. I've been
using and providing SME since 2000.
1. I would have to agree that the marketing message of SME needs
work. The current site somewhat works for technical information
but does a horrible job explaining what the server can do for
small businesses.
There's no marketing message because that's not what the whole thing is
really about. It's not the job of the developers or the community to
explain what the server can do for small businesses. Thats your/my job.
That's how it works, and why we can legally bill a customer $2,000 (or
$2,000,000) for a copy of the software under the GPL and pay nothing
back to contribs.org or Shad or anyone else -- provided that we can
sleep at night of course!
They make the product, it's really up to others to build a business
model around it if they choose to do so. It's an amazing product, sold
well (eg TV ads and a known brand behind it) it could really have
massive market penetration.
1. In my opinion, the primary competitor to SME is Microsoft Windows
Small Business Server. Microsoft has announced that they will be
discontinuing SBS as a product. This will create a great
opportunity for SME as many small businesses will be searching for
a SBS replacement.
I agree with the second part of the comment, but in my experience anyone
who can afford a legit copy of SBS will do so and not even consider
SME. Perhaps a more realistic competitor is pirated versions of windows
server! If you can sell someone out of SBS to SME that's fine-and-dandy
but it's very easy for other people to come in and say "Oh my god this
stuff is so dodgy I can't believe you let..." and have the poor business
owner believe them! Often the sales guy believes it too, which doesn't help.
There's sometimes a fear on the part of the client that if they go with
SME then they are locked to you and won't be able to get any other IT
people to help if they ever want to switch.
1. Has the idea of paid commercial support been explored. I for one
would be interested in offering this.
http://forums.contribs.org/index.php?topic=38535.0
The core unofficial business model (IMHO) is that you-and-I provide paid
commercial support to the end businesses with back-end donations
(tithes? Whatever you like really) to the paypal account mentioned in
other posts.
My problem is that I'm really slack at making those back end donations
because I'm nearly always in debt, so in essence I end up paying
interest on any donations I make! It's a poor excuse. My other excuse
is that most of my customers are non-profits and veteran's care agencies
and so on -- but this too is a poor excuse. I have donated less that I
should have.
I have subscribed to the mailing list and hope to add/contribute to
the project as needed/asked.
Cool! Just visit the forums lots of newbies run into simple problems
with high stakes and tight deadlines and you can make a big difference
by helping there IMO.
Let me know how I can help.
At the moment I think it's $ and bug reports and any other help with V9,
but I'm not helping much so I'm not sure. Others will chime in.
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