Hi Robert Please read my replies in context.
On Tue, 2006-05-30 at 10:36 +0100, Robert Neuschul wrote: > Joe > > Very well put. > > For my 2c worth I might perhaps go somewhat further [and at a bit more > length]; from the perspective of end customers [in other words /our/ > customers] there is a major issue surrounding /any/ FOSS product that > targets a business critical area such as the NAS/SAN sector. One is - > in effect - asking the customer to bet the future of their > business/organisation on the integrity and robustness of the tool one > is recommending [Let's not get into discussion about this being true > for many other common products - we may know this but the important > point is that it's what such customers perceive to be true]. > You are mistaken if you assume that anyone is *asking* you to adopt Free/OSS software. We are not _asking_ you to use our software. You can use whatever you want. There are several choices, even in the open source realm (there's FreeNAS which was reviewed recently on Slashdot), and of course there are the "big-name" commercial vendors such as NetApp and EMC. Go ahead, use whatever you want. Free and open source software also come with no warranty, or guarantees that they're fit for a purpose. Actually even the majority of commercial software come with no warranty, but the free software camp is more vocal in putting this up front. The point I'm trying to make is that the choice must be yours and you alone are responsible for any issues that crop up due to your use of this software such as loss of data, loss of people's lives, etc. What a support contract provides you from any vendor including Red Hat, IBM, Novell, etc. is timely help for problems that are fixable by them. If the problems are beyond their control, then they'll do everything they can to get it resolved by those who can fix them, but that's where the help ends. > Whilst products such as e-NAS, EMC/Clarion, and the like aren't cheap > they are mostly just plug and go, with a relatively well known 'name' > and a fairly high level of street cred to back them up, and with a > fairly global coverage of support and service etc. Recommending and > supporting such products falls into the old "No-one got fired for > buying IBM" zone. > This "No-one got fired for buying IBM" statement is a relic of the past. I guess you have never come across horror stories of how much money is spent on TCO on an IBM service. I am not knocking them, but I'm saying you never get more than what you pay for. You always get less, and sometimes you get far less. And yes people do get fired for buying IBM, and "nobody got fired for buying Openfiler (yet)". > OF doesn't [yet] have that presence and reputation in the wider world - > which makes the risks perceived by potential customers even higher. No > matter what levels of support we as vendors and the OF dev team might > provide, it's that customer inertia that has to be overcome. > The risks lie upon the customer. The customer has to take decisions. Openfiler comes with no warranty. Openfiler has been available as a public release for over 2 years now, and as an internal company product for over 3 years now. We ask all our customers (and yes we already have "big-name" heavy-use customers too) to first evaluate the product thoroughly in their networks, and only then decide if they want to use it. > On the one hand a paid for support scheme /may/ be a reassurance to > customers; on the other hand it can also seem highly premature. > How is it premature? We are actively getting calls from vendors to have a services section and to offer support, as their customers ask for support and the vendor doesn't know anything about the product to support it. When there are such requests, then the time _is_ right to have support levels. Should we turn a deaf ear to these requests? > I'm very sympathetic to Rafiu and the team's objectives for the product > but I'm highly sceptical about the commercialisation of a product [or > more properly the services surrounding the product] so early in the > development cycle. > Thank you for the support and I hope you will help the development of this project by purchasing a support contract yourself if you use it in a commercial environment. Again, to reiterate, the product is not -early- in the development cycle. There are big name customers using it. When you see the name "2.0 beta 1", it means a beta release in the 2.0 branch which is a newer version which needs to be tested by our customers. Red Hat also releases betas for its enterprise distributions.. by no means is their distribution a premature product. The rest is a repetition of what I've already answered. I am grateful for your comments, but you have some wrong assumptions from your perception of the product. Mukund > Many here are techies and could probably cope with problems, with some > prompting and help from others in the group. However for OF to be truly > commercial it would need to be out there in userland alongside MySQL > and Apache et al: that's a place where the user may not be especially > techie but simply wants the features and facilities OF can offer. Such > users won't jump to use OF in the present circumstance because the > product is 'unproven' and the fixes/solution & docs etc are still "too > techie" [note that this isn't especially a crit, it's mostly the nature > of the product itself]. In short, for end users' it's a risk/reward > calculation that [I believe] doesn't currently support a subscription > model. That balance can only be changed by making OF easier to use with > other OSs [Windows etc] and much more robust and much better documented > so that end users can support themselves more easily. > > If Rafiu is suggesting a subscription model for us techies and/or > resellers only [rather than for end user customers] then that's never > going to generate sufficient income to cover costs; the target has to > be direct revenues from end users - and that in turn means generating > perceived values and advantages which don't yet exist. > > Robert. > > > _______________________________________________ > Openfiler-users mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.openfiler.com/mailman/listinfo/openfiler-users _______________________________________________ Openfiler-users mailing list [email protected] https://lists.openfiler.com/mailman/listinfo/openfiler-users
