XOA Pricing Model - What might it look like from a US perspective
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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:
They are busy doing those jobs. and I'm an internal employee - it's my job to handle these calls.
Right, but are you needed if a secretary could do it instead? They are busy doing "those" jobs, then why are you doing that job for them? Calling a vendor to schedule work is normally considered a secretarial job. In the way that you describe the use, at least.
Given that you HAVE an idle internal person and the secretaries are busy, it makes sense that you are taking their offload. I'm not saying that that doesn't make sense. What I'm asking is - why not just have enough secretaries for far less money?
Well - then what good does support really do - you seem to be implying that vendor support is pointless, because if you have another avenue to support that is less expensive, then vendor support is pointless.
Let's talk about a specific product - XOA. I buy XOA, you expect what? The IT pro to scour forums, reading whitepapers, error reports, etc - and NEVER call into XOA for support, even though I paid for it? That seems like you are leaving a resource on the table.
I'm not saying that the IT person doesn't scour forums, read whitepapers, error reports, etc. Not saying that. I'm saying that calling Support is just one more tool in the box.
But what you are saying for things that aren't support issues (ie my backup failed) that you should still call support to have them investigate it.
There are somethings that you are responsible for. The code its self and updates shouldn't be one of them though.
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@DustinB3403 said in XOA Pricing Model - What might it look like from a US perspective:
But what you are saying for things that aren't support issues (ie my backup failed) that you should still call support to have them investigate it.
This is a good one - Originally I was going to say I didn't say that. But I guess I really did. Frankly this is where you put your IT pants on.
For a single failed backup, I'd do some personal research first, but if after an hour, perhaps less, I couldn't realize why it was failing, and I have support - hell yah I'm going to call. Because now I'm potentially wasting time trying to find the solution alone, when I could have a team of experts helping me find a solution.How is this after different than posting on a forum? Really? I see a problem, OMG shit's broke, I don't know the instant fix - make a posting on ML, then start digging around the interwebs trying to fix the problem.
instead of posting to ML, I'm just saying that if a support contract is in place, why wouldn't I use it?
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@Dashrender said in XOA Pricing Model - What might it look like from a US perspective:
instead of posting to ML, I'm just saying that if a support contract is in place, why wouldn't I use it?
Because your support contract likely has a limit on the number of tickets you are allotted before an additional per ticket fee occurs.
Its the same reason @olivier doesn't want to work with SMB's. He has to develop the product, not dick around with likely trivial issues.
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@Dashrender said in XOA Pricing Model - What might it look like from a US perspective:
Let's talk about a specific product - XOA. I buy XOA, you expect what? The IT pro to scour forums, reading whitepapers, error reports, etc - and NEVER call into XOA for support, even though I paid for it? That seems like you are leaving a resource on the table.
Maybe it is an odd expectation, but I've always assumed my IT teams would know how to support the products run in production that we depend on and that calling support should take more time than it was worth. I'm also from a world where anything you CAN fix wasn't the vendors responsibility, because that isn't support but doing the customer's job for them, they are literally becoming the internal IT team at that point.
This is why I rarely buy support for internal use, outside of hardware. And this is why Microsoft works for most people, since their products don't come with support. If you don't need support for Windows, why do you need it for XO which is dramatically simpler and less critical? The advantage to having IT able to support everything, is that you get way more flexibility and don't need the huge cost and overhead of paying for support.
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@Dashrender said in XOA Pricing Model - What might it look like from a US perspective:
I'm not saying that the IT person doesn't scour forums, read whitepapers, error reports, etc. Not saying that. I'm saying that calling Support is just one more tool in the box.
I agree... once you are in that position of having bought support.
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@Dashrender said in XOA Pricing Model - What might it look like from a US perspective:
instead of posting to ML, I'm just saying that if a support contract is in place, why wouldn't I use it?
My point there isn't that "if you have support you should use it" because obviously that makes sense.
My point is... if you have that kind of support contract, why do you also have an IT person internally? Or if you have the IT people to do support, why pay for vendor support? It's double paying for the same stuff at that point for the company.
As a non-IT person looking at it, it seems crazy to pay for the same support twice.
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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:
I'm not saying that the IT person doesn't scour forums, read whitepapers, error reports, etc. Not saying that. I'm saying that calling Support is just one more tool in the box.
I agree... once you are in that position of having bought support.
thanks - I think.
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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:
Let's talk about a specific product - XOA. I buy XOA, you expect what? The IT pro to scour forums, reading whitepapers, error reports, etc - and NEVER call into XOA for support, even though I paid for it? That seems like you are leaving a resource on the table.
Maybe it is an odd expectation, but I've always assumed my IT teams would know how to support the products run in production that we depend on and that calling support should take more time than it was worth. I'm also from a world where anything you CAN fix wasn't the vendors responsibility, because that isn't support but doing the customer's job for them, they are literally becoming the internal IT team at that point.
This is why I rarely buy support for internal use, outside of hardware. And this is why Microsoft works for most people, since their products don't come with support. If you don't need support for Windows, why do you need it for XO which is dramatically simpler and less critical? The advantage to having IT able to support everything, is that you get way more flexibility and don't need the huge cost and overhead of paying for support.
Then I'm a bit confused about this whole thread - if the support itself is in general of so little value, then perhaps the pricing for XOA that includes XOSAN is really more about the cost of XOSAN.
Now that said, now that things like StarWinds is free, the value proposition of XOSAN is significantly lower, assuming you can move to another platform, like Hyper-V. -
@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:
I'm not saying that the IT person doesn't scour forums, read whitepapers, error reports, etc. Not saying that. I'm saying that calling Support is just one more tool in the box.
I agree... once you are in that position of having bought support.
thanks - I think.
You are questioning what to do "given where you are." I'm questioning "why get into that situation."
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@Dashrender said in XOA Pricing Model - What might it look like from a US perspective:
Now that said, now that things like StarWinds is free, the value proposition of XOSAN is significantly lower, assuming you can move to another platform, like Hyper-V.
Right, and if someone makes an XO like management web tool for Hyper-V, XO is dead. The hypervisor is basically interchangeable. It's the ecosystem that matters. And once you have what you need on another free system, XO has no purpose.
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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:
@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:
I'm not saying that the IT person doesn't scour forums, read whitepapers, error reports, etc. Not saying that. I'm saying that calling Support is just one more tool in the box.
I agree... once you are in that position of having bought support.
thanks - I think.
You are questioning what to do "given where you are." I'm questioning "why get into that situation."
I was questioning that I think you finally agreed that if it's a tool in your box, that you can and maybe should use it.
As for why get into the situation - well you said you don't buy support when you can avoid it (other than hardware). OK - But can you buy Veeam and keep current with the updates and not buy support? Veeam is just an example.
I know, as you pointed out, that you can buy Windows, and it does not come with support, so sure, don't buy it, use your IT pants to get the job done.
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OK - in another thread, we're talking about IT generalist, and how they often aren't specialists in any one thing. How does that play into the use of support?
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@Dashrender said in XOA Pricing Model - What might it look like from a US perspective:
OK - in another thread, we're talking about IT generalist, and how they often aren't specialists in any one thing. How does that play into the use of support?
They get to learn the tools you have in house, and become the in house expert.
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@Dashrender said in XOA Pricing Model - What might it look like from a US perspective:
OK - in another thread, we're talking about IT generalist, and how they often aren't specialists in any one thing. How does that play into the use of support?
Well generalists basically always need support because in reality, you want a specialist doing any task. One of the reasons why SMB should essentially never have internal or dedicated - they have to be generalists and that just doesn't make sense.
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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:
OK - in another thread, we're talking about IT generalist, and how they often aren't specialists in any one thing. How does that play into the use of support?
They get to learn the tools you have in house, and become the in house expert.
How many SMBs have things to become experts on? Some, but how many?
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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:
OK - in another thread, we're talking about IT generalist, and how they often aren't specialists in any one thing. How does that play into the use of support?
They get to learn the tools you have in house, and become the in house expert.
How many SMBs have things to become experts on? Some, but how many?
Assuming you inhouse accounting software - does that count? I mean the support of installing/configuring/backing up/restoring, etc.
how about backups in general? Even if hosted, there are hopefully backups going on.
the main thing I can think of - is general desktop support - but really, if it's more than a 10 min fix (which I would think would be IT stuff - assuming not hardware), then you should probably be wiping and reloading, right? -
@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:
@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:
OK - in another thread, we're talking about IT generalist, and how they often aren't specialists in any one thing. How does that play into the use of support?
They get to learn the tools you have in house, and become the in house expert.
How many SMBs have things to become experts on? Some, but how many?
Assuming you inhouse accounting software - does that count? I mean the support of installing/configuring/backing up/restoring, etc.
By in house, do you mean bespoke?
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@Dashrender said in XOA Pricing Model - What might it look like from a US perspective:
I mean the support of installing/configuring/backing up/restoring, etc.
how about backups in general? Even if hosted, there are hopefully backups going on.You don't want a generalist for that, not that this is complex and you need more, but why not? Generalists get backups wrong all of the time. You want a specialist that can spend half the time and be way more confident that they got things right. A generalist is negative value here.
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@Dashrender said in XOA Pricing Model - What might it look like from a US perspective:
the main thing I can think of - is general desktop support - but really, if it's more than a 10 min fix (which I would think would be IT stuff - assuming not hardware), then you should probably be wiping and reloading, right?
Depends on what you are fixing, but generally, yes. But even this, you don't want a generalist for that. You want a desktop support specialist. The only role you want a generalist in, ever, is department oversight.
