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A lot of what you're paying for with the "big bucks" vendors is support, maintenance, advice, and depending on your position in the business food chain, some vi
by jpwagner 15y ago
A lot of what you're paying for with the "big bucks" vendors is support, maintenance, advice, and depending on your position in the business food chain, some visibility (presenting at their conferences, etc.)
Intangible: what about when your "intelligence" isn't working so intelligently, would you rather be angry with your internal team or some vendor?
In a lot of cases open source BI makes sense, but the cost-benefit analysis should include things other than money.
- Joeri 15y agoSupport is overrated. My experience with big bucks companies is that even if you do have support, it's very hard to actually get your money's worth out of it. If your problem isn't in an FAQ, you can get stuck in an endless cycle of "we'll get back to you on that". Unless you have ironclad service-level agreements, good luck getting a big vendor to solve emergency problems for you.
- bobochan 15y agoI coded in SAS for a long time and I can say unequivocally that their support was absolutely worth it. I have had techs work practically around the clock to find fixes and offer suggestions. MathWorks is about the only other company that I've dealt with that had that level of responsive support.
- mrspandex 15y agoI agree, having the source and being able to fix a bug myself is far more valuable than having big blue tell me its not a problem, then me proving it is, then spend months waiting for a promised fix, then the fix breaking two other things...
- jpwagner 15y agoAnything that has the quality that you don't "get your money's worth" is by definition bad. Simply stating that something as general as "support", which is run differently at every company, has that quality doesn't aim to prove any point.