[Asterisk-biz] Help needed convincing a big customer.

[Jason Becker]

Hi Matt,

(Forgive the top post.)

I think it's useful to determine whether the client is an Early Adopter 
or a Pragmatist (ala Moore's Crossing the Chasm).

It's hard to determine from your description where your client fits on 
the continuum. i.e. They're wary of open source but their technical 
staff will "fiddle". Are they a Windows only shop?

I think selling *-based solutions to Pragmatists is challenging because 
all that they care about is a mature product. And that means a 100% 
total solution that includes well-written documentation, marketing 
materials that make it easy to compare with competitors, training, etc. 
Something that is lacking in the * community.

Technology announcements (e.g. DUNDi) are never going to convince 
Pragmatists. And in the absence of a billion dollar investment from Big 
Blue I think the community needs to address some of the shortcomings of 
the total * solution. I had mentioned on *-users awhile ago that Digium 
could approach an organization like LPI to offer certification in * (I'm 
not talking about reseller certification). Or maybe O'Reilly could be 
convinced to write a book.

One ray of hope is the Open Source Maturity Model 
(http://www.navicasoft.com/pages/osmm.htm). The OSMM is definitely 
targeted towards Pragmatist organizations that have the resources to do 
an assessment themselves, but I do think it provides a start for those 
of us selling *-based solutions. JBOSS was assessed by the model and 
scored 78/100. My gut tells me that an *-based solution would score 
around 60-65 (of course it depends on the size & type of organization). 
The core product is mature but it lacks virtually all of the other 
elements required by Pragmatists before they would feel comfortable 
implementing an *-based solution in production.

Cheers


> Could someone maybe help with some points for these questions.  I have 
> some answers, but ideas would be good if possible.
> 
> 1. being wary of open source (we are a software shop after all)
> 
> See third item (which explains it a bit better)
> 
> 2. need to be sure of uptime and product future
> 
> I've offered failover High Availability, but they only want one server. 
>  I have therefore offered them a decent IBM 2U rack mount with dual 
> power supplies (and I guess I'll probably chuck in a raid array). Anyone 
> got any good uptime figures?  I keep changing kernel/hardware and 
> restarting...
> 
> 3. they (and I) are concerned that our devs and support staff will
> "fiddle", as they are wont to do. That's a distraction from core bus.
> 
> What do I say in response to this?  Yes it's true.  I can't not give 
> them the source code because that would be a violation of the GPL. 
> Anyone maybe got any ideas on hash signing or something?
> 


-- 
Jason Becker
Director & CEO
Coalescent Systems Inc.
403.244.8089
www.voxbox.ca