List,
We have an organic community here, but the list has been our only output.
The support from the company is lacking. Orionsupport seems to have been a
good outlet for some, but appears to be down for a spell.
Many here have used the other commercial packages (I have used weblogic and
iplanet), but had to suffer through their "seminars" which are just
over-blown sales meetings. If you are a small company, these are just not
the products for you.
It would be nice if we could post "success stories" and "hints" directly on
the OrionServer web site. If they want to commercialize the product, and
don't have the bucks or people to provide support...let *us* provide this
service through a "community" process.
About 18 months ago I started using the netbeans ide. At the time, its was
the only jave 2 ide out there. The netbeans news server was well maintained
by a support engineer for netbeans. Later they sold out to Sun, and a lot of
that "organic" feeling went away. But the attention that one guy gave to the
news service was great, and made using the product a good experience.
If we could move the energy prevalent on the orion-interest news service
into a "community" web page, maybe this could help all of us out? We could
award *points* to the best answers to questions. We could have an ignore
button. And yes, we could have a *paid* consultancy service for email
questions, phone coaching, and even site visits. Many of the users of orion
are independent consultants, so it is not out of the question that a
community web service for orion wouldn't fill the gap for orion support.
I think one thing missing from the OrionSupport web site was this last
bit....some paid service for support. Its also missing from the Ironflare.
If you notice, you can buy the product...but even if you wanted to pay for
extra support, they don't sell it.
If you are reading this at Orion, please consider the McDonald's model. They
had a good idea for a hamburger, but how do you put a restaurant on every
corner? You franchise the hamburger restaurant idea. Why does'nt Ironflare
"franchise" the support for Orion? This way they could continue to write
great software, but others would pay them to give great support service for
Orion.
I have been trying to call these guys for a month now, with no success.
So my question is...
How do we take the next step?
Regards,
The elephantwalker
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Thursday, April 12, 2001 5:44 PM
To: Orion-Interest
Subject: productive comment.
> David, nothing personal, I'm just hanging my reply off yours as
>it's the latest one in this thread...BUT some of us are very bored of this
thread popping up every few weeks. Sure, Orion hasn't released a new version
in a couple of months now (I think), and I'm as desperately eager for 1.4.8
as anyone here. Why does
this always translate to 'Orion is tanking'?
I know where you are coming from. I love orion. The problem I have is when
I have to rationalize its use to others. Here's the most basic
recommendation that I think would go a long way (believe it or not)
UPDATE THE WEB SITE ONCE A WEEK
include simple news...even just a paragraph or to. perhaps explaining
latest updates (in betas). If you have no news....add link to new
clients/web sites...I'm sure ...this would take about 10 minutes a week and
would go a long way in helping me convince people to buy it...believe it or
not. I know it has no relevance on the quality of the product, but it would
make a huge difference in giving the people I work with confidence in
Orion's future. This is necessary because orion is not open source and we
can not update the orionserver.com site as a community. I know this is what
orionsupport is for, however, when I have to get people to commit money to a
product simple things go a long way. I hope this was a more productive
comment.
