Thanks for your feedback Dan! I am encourage by the activity I see in the community. see my comments to your response below.
On Apr 6, 2013, at 12:46 AM, "Daniel Rose" <[email protected]> wrote: > 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. That's my point, if there was a strong community and clear marketing message SME could be positioned better to the small business owner. Plus, now that SBS is no longer going to be sold, the small business will not even have the option to purchases SBS (legit or not). Microsoft is trying to force all small businesses into the cloud with products like Office 365 and eliminating on premise servers. Many small businesses still like control of their data and servers which will put SME in a good position. > >> 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 would think it would make sense to have a list of local IT companies listed on the website for small business owners to contact for support when they need it and have the SME community charge a small monthly fee to the IT service provider to be listed. That way you will be giving back to the project and hopefully getting leads to charge for SME installation and support services. Could be a win win for everyone. > >> 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. > _______________________________________________ > Discussion about project organisation and overall direction > To unsubscribe, e-mail [email protected] > Searchable archive at http://lists.contribs.org/mailman/public/discussion/ > _______________________________________________ Discussion about project organisation and overall direction To unsubscribe, e-mail [email protected] Searchable archive at http://lists.contribs.org/mailman/public/discussion/
