I got the official answer from IBM on Symphony support for SMB
Category Symphony SMB Support
Following on from my blog post last week about Symphony support for SMBs, I got an email response from IBM with the researched official answer.
Well I have decided for 10 employees, telephone support at $2500 per user is a little steep. I am surprised at this, as I honestly believe that Symphony has the best hope of capturing the SMB companies before it catches any Enterprise customers. Even more surprising when IBM is telling us that SMB is a target growth area for them. So what options does an SMB have if they don't want to use Office but want to get something with support that is more than a forum.
1. Buy Notes 8 - an SMB can get a license and get telephone support and get Symphony.
2. OpenOffice - Sun offers incident based support starting at $19.99 an incident, it has more applications than Symphony and is a later version of OpenOffice.
3. Buy a copy of SmartSuite - You can get licenses really cheap on eBay, has IBM support, and includes more applications than Symphony, it also includes Lotus Approach which is great for quick Notes reports. It shares LotusScript as the programming language, and contains Notes.lsx for accessing Notes data, methods and functions programmatically from SmartSuite applications. Runs on much lower spec machines than Notes or Symphony.
4. Corel WordPerfect Office - Corel does the support, $15 a call, runs on lower spec machines than Notes or Symphony.
5. Foundations is shortly going to include Symphony, it will be interesting to see what the license cost for that with support will be for 10 users, that may end up being the best option if someone really wants to run Symphony and get telephone support.
Update: Based upon Nathan's comment I thought I should be clear. IBM will sell support to a 10 person company, but the price starts at $25k, hence my $2500 per user figure. From a marketing point of view, I can see why $25 is used. It's important to remember, IBM is not a charity, they won't do anything that they don't think will help them make money. Customers pays for this stuff somehow, somewhere. If it doesn't make a profit, it will get canned.
Following on from my blog post last week about Symphony support for SMBs, I got an email response from IBM with the researched official answer.
Hi Carl,
It was good to engage with you over Lotus LiveChat this week. Regarding your question about paid support for Symphony, my source informed me that the fee would be approximately $25 per user for 1000 employees. If this is within your price range and you like to receive this software support, please let me know.
Daniel
Well I have decided for 10 employees, telephone support at $2500 per user is a little steep. I am surprised at this, as I honestly believe that Symphony has the best hope of capturing the SMB companies before it catches any Enterprise customers. Even more surprising when IBM is telling us that SMB is a target growth area for them. So what options does an SMB have if they don't want to use Office but want to get something with support that is more than a forum.
1. Buy Notes 8 - an SMB can get a license and get telephone support and get Symphony.
2. OpenOffice - Sun offers incident based support starting at $19.99 an incident, it has more applications than Symphony and is a later version of OpenOffice.
3. Buy a copy of SmartSuite - You can get licenses really cheap on eBay, has IBM support, and includes more applications than Symphony, it also includes Lotus Approach which is great for quick Notes reports. It shares LotusScript as the programming language, and contains Notes.lsx for accessing Notes data, methods and functions programmatically from SmartSuite applications. Runs on much lower spec machines than Notes or Symphony.
4. Corel WordPerfect Office - Corel does the support, $15 a call, runs on lower spec machines than Notes or Symphony.
5. Foundations is shortly going to include Symphony, it will be interesting to see what the license cost for that with support will be for 10 users, that may end up being the best option if someone really wants to run Symphony and get telephone support.
Update: Based upon Nathan's comment I thought I should be clear. IBM will sell support to a 10 person company, but the price starts at $25k, hence my $2500 per user figure. From a marketing point of view, I can see why $25 is used. It's important to remember, IBM is not a charity, they won't do anything that they don't think will help them make money. Customers pays for this stuff somehow, somewhere. If it doesn't make a profit, it will get canned.
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Comments
"approximately $25 per user for 1000 employees"
$25 x 10 employees = $250, which seems quite reasonable.
Posted by Nathan T. Freeman At 04:24:11 PM On 07/14/2008 | - Website - |
So $25 * 1000 user min = $25,000
25000 / 10 users = $2500 per user.
Posted by Carl Tyler At 04:24:47 PM On 07/14/2008 | - Website - |
Posted by Rob Novak At 04:26:35 PM On 07/14/2008 | - Website - |
*cough*
Posted by Craig Wiseman At 04:08:52 PM On 07/15/2008 | - Website - |