Hi,
I've looked through the archives and seen several posts discussing technical
differences between R and S(plus). It appears to me that R can likely
functionally replace Splus for my situation, but I'm more interested in looking
at the risks and benefits of moving from Splus to R from a (project) management
point of view.
Background (a bit wordy, I'm afraid):
- I'm not a stats guy, but rather a project manager responsible for an
internal application that utilizes Splus as a back-end analysis engine to
analyze manufacturing data at a med/large company.
- I really don't know why Splus was chosen as the analysis engine for this
app - that choice was made long before I inherited the project.
- The developer currently in charge of the Splus code is not a stats guy
either, but he is a very talented programmer that has been to one Insightful
course and taught himself enough to maintain the existing code (the original
authors are long gone).
- While there is quite a large quantity of existing code that is used by our
application, I don't believe that it is terribly complex, from an applied
statistics point of view. Using Splus may be over-kill from a functionality
standpoint, but we just haven't had the time to re-write in a more
"appropriate" package - even if we knew what that more appropriate package
might be.
- With the imminent release of Splus 8, I'm feeling uncomfortable with the
risk associated with remaining on Splus 2000, which we are currently using.
***Comments on this point would be appreciated.***
- The developer was able to modify the existing code to run in Splus 7.
Unfortunately, the code is significantly slower than before, and Insightful
claims this is due to a change to the S language (at version 6) that was out of
their control (and one reason that they bought the S language rights).
- We have found Insightful's telephone support to be rather unresponsive,
and not very helpful, other than to recommend their consulting services.
Obtaining consulting services from Insightful to improve performance has proved
challenging (don't ask), and if we ever actually do receive any consulting
services from them, it will no doubt be quite expensive.
(if you are still with me, thank you)
I see our realistic options as:
A) Stick with Splus with the assumption that eventually, Insightful will
help us migrate our code to the latest release, and performance will be
comparable to what it is today. The advantage of this is working with a known
entity, if not one we are very pleased with. In addition, if we can get the
relationship to work, we can hopefully "outsource" future statistics
development and support to Insightful.
The disadvantage is that it is costing us quite a bit of $$$ to maintain a
relationship that we are not really happy with. Incidentally, I'm not
intending to bash Insightful here - it may just be that we are not a good fit
for each other.
B) Drop Splus for R with the assumption that migrating to R and rewriting to
improve performance will be little more difficult than rewriting by ourselves
in Splus. The obvious advantage is the cost savings, which is very
significant. In addition, based on the archives I've read, it appears that
there is a very responsive and helpful R community.
The disadvantage is that we may be committing to maintaining statistical
expertise in-house, whereas we were hoping to be able to outsource some or all
of it (to Insightful). In addition, we will be leaving behind an entity that
has a mailing address, phone number, and stock symbol for one that is
represented "only" by a mailing list - I'm rather conservative and risk averse.
C) Stick with Splus and either find some consulting help outside of
Insightful or slog away internally. I suppose that we could even end our M&S
contract with Insightful and just continue to use Splus, knowing that we will
never receive any releases newer than 8.x nor any future support.
(almost done)
So, I'd like to hear opinions of whether you think that the benefits of
moving to R outweigh the risks. Listing additional benefits and risks that I
have not identified would be appreciated. I'm particularly interested in
hearing from anyone that has made this same S -> R transition in a business
environment.
Also, does anyone have any recommendations for either Splus or R consultants,
other than Insightful? I would prefer someone who is willing to work remotely,
rather than anyone having to travel.
Thats it.
Thanks for your time,
Dave
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