XOA Pricing Model - What might it look like from a US perspective
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@matteo-nunziati said in XOA Pricing Model - What might it look like from a US perspective:
@DustinB3403 said in XOA Pricing Model - What might it look like from a US perspective:
@matteo-nunziati said in XOA Pricing Model - What might it look like from a US perspective:
BACK ON TOPIC:
yeah I really like the pay per service approach. XOA would be nice if you have to pay for a professional setup and/or a flat fee for annual support. Usually opensource companies run on this: ask money for high grade professional support, not for the product.
The issue is that there is a flat fee for each level of service, and that the flat fee is exorbitant compared to just installing it your self.
The only item that isn't currently available AFAIK is XOSAN.
yes I meant 1 price for any kind of product, than have L1/L2 support when needed. Not to pay this for a certain level of features.
just give the all-inclusive and ask for support contracts. hell even SLA could be differentiators but not the product.
Totally agree and I mentioned this. Lower cost for email only support. More for phone support. More for full "we fix your XS" support. This can be done decently easily.
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@Dashrender said in XOA Pricing Model - What might it look like from a US perspective:
@scottalanmiller said in XOA Pricing Model - What might it look like from a US perspective:
@Dashrender said in XOA Pricing Model - What might it look like from a US perspective:
@DustinB3403 said in XOA Pricing Model - What might it look like from a US perspective:
The reason that the value of support going down is with community support and self installation anything could be the culprit with both the installer and updater.
So attempting to evaluate that aspect is impossible as the dev team may look at an issue and say "not something I can help you with" but a community member can dig in and assist at no cost.
The big word there is "can"
There is no promise they will be there when you need them.And in this case if you have support you also have an appliance, so no self install.
That's debatable. Which is more reliable, the promise that the ML community will be here or the promise that some vendor will? Have you ever had a vendor go out of business or not provide support? Has ML ever gone away? I'm not saying that vendor support isn't a good thing. I'm just saying that paying and getting promises aren't the same as guarantees. At some point, reliable community best effort will surpass a vendor promise.
And for most, when that happens, you move onto a new product.
If the vendor totally fails, yes.
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@DustinB3403 said in XOA Pricing Model - What might it look like from a US perspective:
@Dashrender said in XOA Pricing Model - What might it look like from a US perspective:
@scottalanmiller said in XOA Pricing Model - What might it look like from a US perspective:
@Dashrender said in XOA Pricing Model - What might it look like from a US perspective:
@DustinB3403 said in XOA Pricing Model - What might it look like from a US perspective:
The reason that the value of support going down is with community support and self installation anything could be the culprit with both the installer and updater.
So attempting to evaluate that aspect is impossible as the dev team may look at an issue and say "not something I can help you with" but a community member can dig in and assist at no cost.
The big word there is "can"
There is no promise they will be there when you need them.And in this case if you have support you also have an appliance, so no self install.
That's debatable. Which is more reliable, the promise that the ML community will be here or the promise that some vendor will? Have you ever had a vendor go out of business or not provide support? Has ML ever gone away? I'm not saying that vendor support isn't a good thing. I'm just saying that paying and getting promises aren't the same as guarantees. At some point, reliable community best effort will surpass a vendor promise.
And for most, when that happens, you move onto a new product.
You can't just replace your hypervisor and SPoG in an instance. Sure you can do it, but it takes planning & time, which cost money.
Not many choices if the vendor has failed.
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@scottalanmiller said in XOA Pricing Model - What might it look like from a US perspective:
@matteo-nunziati said in XOA Pricing Model - What might it look like from a US perspective:
@DustinB3403 said in XOA Pricing Model - What might it look like from a US perspective:
@matteo-nunziati said in XOA Pricing Model - What might it look like from a US perspective:
BACK ON TOPIC:
yeah I really like the pay per service approach. XOA would be nice if you have to pay for a professional setup and/or a flat fee for annual support. Usually opensource companies run on this: ask money for high grade professional support, not for the product.
The issue is that there is a flat fee for each level of service, and that the flat fee is exorbitant compared to just installing it your self.
The only item that isn't currently available AFAIK is XOSAN.
yes I meant 1 price for any kind of product, than have L1/L2 support when needed. Not to pay this for a certain level of features.
just give the all-inclusive and ask for support contracts. hell even SLA could be differentiators but not the product.
Totally agree and I mentioned this. Lower cost for email only support. More for phone support. More for full "we fix your XS" support. This can be done decently easily.
Which would also simplify the offerings that they have, as it is now, there are 3 different XOA appliances from which you install and pay for.
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@DustinB3403 said in XOA Pricing Model - What might it look like from a US perspective:
@scottalanmiller said in XOA Pricing Model - What might it look like from a US perspective:
@matteo-nunziati said in XOA Pricing Model - What might it look like from a US perspective:
@DustinB3403 said in XOA Pricing Model - What might it look like from a US perspective:
@matteo-nunziati said in XOA Pricing Model - What might it look like from a US perspective:
BACK ON TOPIC:
yeah I really like the pay per service approach. XOA would be nice if you have to pay for a professional setup and/or a flat fee for annual support. Usually opensource companies run on this: ask money for high grade professional support, not for the product.
The issue is that there is a flat fee for each level of service, and that the flat fee is exorbitant compared to just installing it your self.
The only item that isn't currently available AFAIK is XOSAN.
yes I meant 1 price for any kind of product, than have L1/L2 support when needed. Not to pay this for a certain level of features.
just give the all-inclusive and ask for support contracts. hell even SLA could be differentiators but not the product.
Totally agree and I mentioned this. Lower cost for email only support. More for phone support. More for full "we fix your XS" support. This can be done decently easily.
Which would also simplify the offerings that they have, as it is now, there are 3 different XOA appliances from which you install and pay for.
Yes, it's overly complex and confusing as it is today.
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@scottalanmiller said in XOA Pricing Model - What might it look like from a US perspective:
@DustinB3403 said in XOA Pricing Model - What might it look like from a US perspective:
@Dashrender said in XOA Pricing Model - What might it look like from a US perspective:
@scottalanmiller said in XOA Pricing Model - What might it look like from a US perspective:
@Dashrender said in XOA Pricing Model - What might it look like from a US perspective:
@DustinB3403 said in XOA Pricing Model - What might it look like from a US perspective:
The reason that the value of support going down is with community support and self installation anything could be the culprit with both the installer and updater.
So attempting to evaluate that aspect is impossible as the dev team may look at an issue and say "not something I can help you with" but a community member can dig in and assist at no cost.
The big word there is "can"
There is no promise they will be there when you need them.And in this case if you have support you also have an appliance, so no self install.
That's debatable. Which is more reliable, the promise that the ML community will be here or the promise that some vendor will? Have you ever had a vendor go out of business or not provide support? Has ML ever gone away? I'm not saying that vendor support isn't a good thing. I'm just saying that paying and getting promises aren't the same as guarantees. At some point, reliable community best effort will surpass a vendor promise.
And for most, when that happens, you move onto a new product.
You can't just replace your hypervisor and SPoG in an instance. Sure you can do it, but it takes planning & time, which cost money.
Not many choices if the vendor has failed.
As with any open source platform, another vendor could pick it up. But yes, a complete business failure I totally understand.
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@DustinB3403 said in XOA Pricing Model - What might it look like from a US perspective:
@scottalanmiller said in XOA Pricing Model - What might it look like from a US perspective:
@DustinB3403 said in XOA Pricing Model - What might it look like from a US perspective:
@Dashrender said in XOA Pricing Model - What might it look like from a US perspective:
@scottalanmiller said in XOA Pricing Model - What might it look like from a US perspective:
@Dashrender said in XOA Pricing Model - What might it look like from a US perspective:
@DustinB3403 said in XOA Pricing Model - What might it look like from a US perspective:
The reason that the value of support going down is with community support and self installation anything could be the culprit with both the installer and updater.
So attempting to evaluate that aspect is impossible as the dev team may look at an issue and say "not something I can help you with" but a community member can dig in and assist at no cost.
The big word there is "can"
There is no promise they will be there when you need them.And in this case if you have support you also have an appliance, so no self install.
That's debatable. Which is more reliable, the promise that the ML community will be here or the promise that some vendor will? Have you ever had a vendor go out of business or not provide support? Has ML ever gone away? I'm not saying that vendor support isn't a good thing. I'm just saying that paying and getting promises aren't the same as guarantees. At some point, reliable community best effort will surpass a vendor promise.
And for most, when that happens, you move onto a new product.
You can't just replace your hypervisor and SPoG in an instance. Sure you can do it, but it takes planning & time, which cost money.
Not many choices if the vendor has failed.
As with any open source platform, another vendor could pick it up. But yes, a complete business failure I totally understand.
He's talking about the need for vendor support in other products. In open source, the vendor just changes.
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@scottalanmiller said in XOA Pricing Model - What might it look like from a US perspective:
@matteo-nunziati said in XOA Pricing Model - What might it look like from a US perspective:
I agree only if you mean that the SMB market in Europe will never pay for a service. But most of market in Europe is SMB.
Are you sure? Everything I've seen first hand and heard from Europeans talking about problems in the space has been that there is SOHO everywhere, obviously, but then huge gaps where SMB struggles because of regulations and mindset and only larger companies have a tendency to make it.
err... ok give me your definition of SME and SMB. Litteraly translated to italian for me is:
SOHO < SMB < SME < Enterprise.
Most is SOHO and SMB, but services go to SME and enterprise. small companies don't buy!
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@matteo-nunziati said in XOA Pricing Model - What might it look like from a US perspective:
Most is SOHO and SMB, but services go to SME and enterprise. small companies don't buy!
Correction, small companies can't buy because they are priced out.
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@DustinB3403 said in XOA Pricing Model - What might it look like from a US perspective:
Which would also simplify the offerings that they have, as it is now, there are 3 different XOA appliances from which you install and pay for.
Huh? I thought there was only one and they used their licensing model to control access to features. Details please...
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@matteo-nunziati said in XOA Pricing Model - What might it look like from a US perspective:
@scottalanmiller said in XOA Pricing Model - What might it look like from a US perspective:
@matteo-nunziati said in XOA Pricing Model - What might it look like from a US perspective:
I agree only if you mean that the SMB market in Europe will never pay for a service. But most of market in Europe is SMB.
Are you sure? Everything I've seen first hand and heard from Europeans talking about problems in the space has been that there is SOHO everywhere, obviously, but then huge gaps where SMB struggles because of regulations and mindset and only larger companies have a tendency to make it.
err... ok give me your definition of SME and SMB. Litteraly translated to italian for me is:
SOHO < SMB < SME < Enterprise.
Most is SOHO and SMB, but services go to SME and enterprise. small companies don't buy!
SOHO < SMB < SME < Large < Enterprise
In the US, SMBs buy a lot, way more than the SME. Because they are a giant market segment. There is no barrier in regulations or from financing between SOHO and SME. Going from SOHO to SME is a clean, gradual step. Talking to companies in Europe, they say that there are large barriers to getting financing in the SMB range because financing only happens if they act like SMEs which makes them inefficient as SMBs and struggle to function.
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@Danp said in XOA Pricing Model - What might it look like from a US perspective:
@DustinB3403 said in XOA Pricing Model - What might it look like from a US perspective:
Which would also simplify the offerings that they have, as it is now, there are 3 different XOA appliances from which you install and pay for.
Huh? I thought there was only one and they used their licensing model to control access to features. Details please...
I was referring to the approach to restrict functionality. It acts as 3 separate appliances.
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@DustinB3403 Isn't it a single appliance with different features enabled depending on their individual license?
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@Danp AFAIK
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My stance is, make it an all you can eat affair.
The 3 separate levels drives people to the community edition because they are unable to / literally can't spend that much money.
Simplifying the licensing to say "you can use it however you want" and we offer these support plans would make their jobs straightforward.
Community forums (no pro help unless someone is bored) at $0, Email communications, Phone & Email, Remote Support
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The restrictions of features is what drove my boss away from paying for it. Because of the mindset "what aren't we getting?"
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@DustinB3403 said in XOA Pricing Model - What might it look like from a US perspective:
The restrictions of features is what drove my boss away from paying for it. Because of the mindset "what aren't we getting?"
Yeah, it creates an emotional reaction you don't want to trigger in customers if you can avoid it.
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XO is a complex product with lots of features. Would it make sense to offer multiple levels of support (Bronze, Silver, Gold, etc) where you pay for a higher level of support if you need ongoing assistance with specific features?
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@Danp that was exactly my recommendation.
Different teirs of priority, not functionality
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@scottalanmiller said in XOA Pricing Model - What might it look like from a US perspective:
@Dashrender said in XOA Pricing Model - What might it look like from a US perspective:
@DustinB3403 said in XOA Pricing Model - What might it look like from a US perspective:
The value of support is only worthwhile if I don't have to install it myself. From there all support goes out the window and falls to the community to help with.
I totally understand what you're saying, but it's impossible to evaluate supports worthiness when there is community support as well.
So you're saying that you find zero value in support from the vendor?
When I buy something like Veeam, vendor support is one of the most valuable things I feel that I get. Sure I might not use it much, but when shit hits the fan, the ability to get help fast from those that know the product is awesome.That said, I continue to be amazed at how mostly fast I can get help from community forums, but they are often still slower than direct support from the vendor, but this does not preclude a fees times where the forums where faster.
I've essentially never used vendor support. I've never used it from any operating system, platform, storage, backup or enterprise app vendor. Hardware, yes of course, there is no way around that. It wasn't until being in Spiceworks that even realized how people could use those vendors. As the IT guy, I was always led to believe that knowing the product and fixing it was my job since the non-IT people could just engage the vendor if that's what they were going to do.
I agree that having that support option is really valuable, but gauging its value can be tough. What IS the value of a service that I can pretty safely say there is zero chance I will use?
You've said this before, and for you, I don't find this overly surprising, but for us mere mortals, I know that I start by opening a call to a vendor for support, and while they are helping me (they are the specialists in this software/thing - right?) I am also doing my own research trying to fix the issue.
I suppose perhaps some would say I've possibly wasted a few minutes setting up the call with the vendor, especially if I find the answer quickly, but in the cases where I have called, it's pretty rare that I find a solution first.
