This is a Lucene story, but may well apply... By the time I'd sent a request
for assistance
to the vendor of one of our search tools and received the reply "you didn't
give us the
right license number", I'd found Lucene, indexed part of my corpus and run
successful
searches against it. And had answers provided to me from the users list.
Paying for support provides, I believe, a false sense of security. Once you
sign up,
you're at the mercy of the vendor for many things, among them:
1> releases are far apart
2> if the company gets purchased, all sorts of interesting things happen.
Witness Microsoft buying FAST recently, then announcing they were not
doing
any more development on *nix platforms.
3> If the company does go out of business, you are stuck with binary code
you can't
compile/run/fix understand.
4> You are at the mercy of the next release for "really gotta have it now"
changes. Unless
you're willing to pay...er...a considerable sum to get a special fix,
which may not
even be an option.
That said, not all open source products are great, I just happen to think
that SOLR/Lucene
is. Add to that that problems that are found are often fixed in a day or
two, a record that
no commercial package I've ever used has matched.
Here's one technique you can use to sell it to management. Get a pilot up
and running in, oh,
say three days (ok, take a week). Try the same thing with commercial package
X. Do not,
under any circumstances, be satisfied with the powerpoint presentation from
a commercial
vendor <G>. Require working code. Then evaluate <G>...
Best
Erick
On Thu, Apr 29, 2010 at 2:24 PM, Nagelberg, Kallin <
knagelb...@globeandmail.com> wrote:
> I had a very hard time selling Solr to business folks. Most are of the mind
> that if you're not paying for something it can't be any good. That might
> also be why they refrain from posting 'powered by solr' on their website, as
> if it might show them to be cheap. They are also fearful of lack of support
> should you get hit by a bus. This might be remedied by recommending
> professional services from a company such as lucid imagination.
>
> I think your best bet is to create a working demo with your data and show
> them the performance.
>
> Cheers,
> -Kallin Nagelberg
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Israel Ekpo [mailto:israele...@gmail.com]
> Sent: Thursday, April 29, 2010 2:19 PM
> To: solr-user@lucene.apache.org
> Subject: Re: Evangelism
>
> Their main search page has the "Powered by Solr" logo
>
> http://www.lucidimagination.com/search/
>
>
>
> On Thu, Apr 29, 2010 at 2:18 PM, Israel Ekpo <israele...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Checkout Lucid Imagination
> >
> > http://www.lucidimagination.com/About-Search
> >
> > This should convince you.
> >
> >
> > On Thu, Apr 29, 2010 at 2:10 PM, Daniel Baughman <da...@hostworks.com
> >wrote:
> >
> >> Hi I'm new to the list here,
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> I'd like to steer someone in the direction of Solr, and I see the list
> of
> >> companies using solr, but none have a "power by solr" logo or anything.
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> Does anyone have any great links with evidence to majorly successful
> solr
> >> projects?
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> Thanks in advance,
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> Dan B.
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >
> >
> > --
> > "Good Enough" is not good enough.
> > To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift.
> > Quality First. Measure Twice. Cut Once.
> > http://www.israelekpo.com/
> >
>
>
>
> --
> "Good Enough" is not good enough.
> To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift.
> Quality First. Measure Twice. Cut Once.
> http://www.israelekpo.com/
>
