24 July 2008 - 13:52Ironic Juxtaposition
Two articles within a day of each other on InternetNews.com ... Open Source Users Unhappy with Paid Support and Sun Takes a Shine to Linux in New Web Stack tickled the Symas fancy.. The title of the first is a bit hyperbolic as the article body doesn't actually say they are unhappy with paying for support ... some are unhappy with the support they're getting from the folks they are paying which is something of a different message. And Sun's program is as much about support of Apache, MySQL, and PhP on Solaris as it is on Linux but I guess the Linux part is news to someone ... of course MySQL is Sun, isn't it?
The irony here is that the business model for the software units of large companies is evolving to try to participate in the "Open Source" revenue streams (primarily support). Sun is, in fact, late to the table with this. HP has been providing support for those pieces for years now (we have no idea how that's going) and Oracle's Linux distribution was a splash back then as well. But then you take the message that some support shops are not as good as the Open Source Software project email lists and freelancers and you begin to see the irony in the announcements.
Technical support is all about in-depth technical expertise. It's not about a few smart people who can jump into a random pile of code and work miracles. Software is too complicated for that. You need people who know, in depth, how to make the software work and how to spot the not-so-obvious faux pas that is the grist for the tech. support mill. You also need people who know the code and know how to figure out the few percent of problems that really need engineering level support. Without that, those skills, in depth and current, the technical support team is searching email lists and bug databases just like the end-user and that gets pretty obvious pretty fast. Hence the sentiment of the unhappy users who see through paper thin support offerings.
Sun joins a huge pool of folks offering support for the OS, Apache Web Server, MySQL database, and PhP (Perl, Python) web programming "stack" (LAMP if the OS is Linux ... is that SAMP for Solaris?). Of course, Covalent (now SpringSource), with many dedicated Apache Project contributors also offers Apache Web Server support. And MySQL, a Sun unit, offers MySQL database support. We would expect Covalent and MySQL to provide outstanding support for their projects' code. They have the depth and the experience. Why would we expect Sun to be as capable a provider of technical support for Apache HTTP Server as Covalent/SpringSource?
We don't.
Shop for support based on proven access to project contributors and participants. Otherwise, you're paying for better readers of email lists and bug databases and not for the kind of technical support most Enterprises want.
Symas Corporation is the only commercial provider of technical support for OpenLDAP. You can get access to our support through our global technical support partner, HP who contracts in-depth support from Symas. Oh, and for customers in the UK and Europe, Suretec Systems in UK also partners with Symas, providing local integration and support services in addition to our underlying support. Those are the folks you should turn to if you are building a state of the art Enterprise Directory these days.
Jordan considers the snark factor in this post acceptable. He's been hunting for the snark all evening. He assures me no rabbits or weasels were harmed and forgives me for saying something nice about Sun and MySQL because they treat him well and we actually have many friends who work there.
two comments:
DeLonghi’s a pretty well-trusted brand – and with good reason! Their products usually work really well http://ac-reviews.com/
thanks
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