Apologies to the list for cc'ing them, go ahead and delete if you're not interested. I just want the Digi-guys to see this. Darren, please forward this to Jason, as our <expletive> Exchange server and this <expletive> Outlook client won't let me see his email address. Try getting support from *them*! I work in the marketing department of a small multinational software company. I can promise you that I see nothing but "you get what you pay for" people. Ours is a public company, so profit reports and current stock price are the only things that command real attention. I mention all this so that you can see that Open Source is a foreign concept to this world. In the marketing department, I run both our commercial web site and our intranet. Being a multi-site company, we have to run our intranet over a frame relay to some sites, over VPN to others. One key feature of the intranet, raised by our CEO, was that sales and other personnel had to have immediate access to the most recent marketing material, and that all locations had to access the *same* material, and do so transparently. A second key feature, raised by the R&D dept., was that, to enable sharing of development information during coding a new product, each programmer had to have complete control over his own documents, ability to post those documents for secure, world-wide viewing, and that certain senior developers had to be able to easily manage subsections of the site without jeopardizing the marketing control over their material. We had a senior developer do an exhaustive review of available products, and none fit the bill as well as Zope. Since I have to run the thing now, I can't say enough about how effective its been. Most of the site has been simply write and forget; it just runs. Having had FrontPage/IIS experience, I can't even begin to describe what a relief *that* is. We address the world-wide transparent access to the same material using a Zope product called ZEO. If anything, I'd sing even higher praises for ZEO than it's parent product. This thing is just amazing. I have one database server backed up daily on our LAN, and four remote HTTP servers across the world all connecting back to it, serving HTML generated on the fly from that back-end. I swear to you that the end user can't tell the difference. Even though it's *generating* the page over a long circuit, not serving local static files, it's no less responsive than a local web server. We address the programmers' control over their own documents, and senior programmers' control over sections of the site, with the fine built-in Zope ability to delegate administrative tasks safely with an excellent and reasonably fine-grained security model. As for Digital Creations support, I do have to tell a story. The aforementioned senior developer who initially recommended Zope also did the "alpha" version of the intranet, then left the company. I'm an Apache and Perl/CGI guy, never did OOP in my life, and suddenly they gave *me* this site, built in a purely OO environment, running an OO database server written in an OO scripting language. Ugh. So I looked at his site, and it looked more like "proof of concept" than even alpha. I thought I was in deep trouble, so I too looked at paid support options, and frankly, was shocked. My boss almost fell over when I told her the price Digital Creations charges for paid support. Not that I don't think you're worth it, but I thought "Egad! Can't you have a lower level for people on small budgets?" I was soon to learn to think better of the Digi-guys. Anyway, there was no way I could pry that kind of cash out of our accounting department's iron clutches, ever aware of profit reports and balance statements as they are. So I felt kind of stuck with the mailing list. I've seen Open Source support before, and I have to say that I've always gotten at least a response to newsgroup questions and the like. But there's never any guarantee of timeliness, and the answers might not always be helpful, although for the most part I have found what I needed. I was uncertain that "for the most part" would please the "you get what you pay for" people. Then I started reading the Zope mail list in earnest, and found out that it truly is the "lower level for small budgets" option, not just a haphazard response system like the newsgroups I'd seen. I have never seen *paid* support answer with the speed and accuracy that these volunteers do. Buy the paid support if you need it to appease the corporate-types, to hand-hold the non-techies, and because I'd love to see the Digi-guys continue to produce incredible software. But you can get all your answers on the list. Hell, the chief architect of the ZODB itself, the magical guts of Zope, Jim Fulton, a fellow with a depth of knowledge that will astound you, answers mailing list questions. Where else can you get direct access to people with that kind of know-how? Not at a commercial company. Certainly not at mine, our Chief Software Engineers would rather be boiled in oil than answer customer questions; that's what we hire Tech Support guys for. That raises another point. Keep in mind when you buy support from Digital Creations, you are buying access to the actual developers of the product, not some roomful of "customer service reps" who are trained only enough to answer basic questions and sound nice on the phone. These guys can and will answer questions about why the thing was designed the way it was, freely acknowledge design shortcomings, and then tell you how to work around them. To address the "knowledge of the university environment" question, I think that Zope gets used in many universities. Certainly I see names on the list from lots of them, asking questions and giving answers. That means you have direct access to many, many people who are intimately familiar with your environment, and who know Zope almost as well as the Digi-guys. I know that sharing specialized information is what our developers do with Zope, and that has to fit the educational model at least somewhat. We rely on Zope to help develop our products by sharing development documents, to help sell our products by giving salespeople current marketing material to hand-off to customers, and to communicate HR information to employees worldwide. I have had many questions about Zope answered on the list before I had even thought to ask them. It's fantastic. Do not make the mistake I did, and assume that all Open Source support is the same. It isn't. These guys are top-notch. Do it. Use Zope. Buy the support. You won't regret it, IMHO. Craig Dunigan Web Programmer Esker Software -- Extending the Reach of Information ph 608.273.6000 http://www.esker.com mailto:craig.dunigan@esker.com

-----Original Message----- From: addyd@unk.edu [mailto:addyd@unk.edu] Sent: Tuesday, April 10, 2001 7:48 PM To: zope@zope.org Subject: [Zope] FW: a Question about quality of Digicool support

Hi All, I subscribe to a University & College Webmasters List. I mentioned Zope in response to a question today which seemed to elicit the following message. I post it here, because I feel that he will find more people who can speak to the quality of Digicool support (including Digicool personel themselves).

I have to admit that I have not yet taken the Zope plunge myself, but have been following its maturation process for over a year. I am philosophically behind Open Source in general and Python/Zope in particular. I think that the attitude displayed in this letter is the sort of thing that Zope/Digicool will have to know how to answer/overcome in order to achieve widespread success. I feel that universities are a great place for Zope to focus their efforts as it is from there that students (and staff) move out into the "real world". Encouraging Zope adoption and implimentation THERE could be one of the wisest places in which to invest support (and prove to be a great test bed for Zope development).

Here is the message. I leave it to you to decide whether it would be best to Cc this list with your replies to him. I (personally) would like to see the responses too. (CMS refers to "Content Management Systems"): :::::::::::::::::::::::::::

After evaluating several CMS products, we started getting really excited about Zope (we actually started recreating the site in Zope just to prove how easy it is). So far so good, but now that more of the college is hearing about our work, we're being asked to take a look at commercial CMS products as well.

There's a faction on campus that feels that "you get what you pay for" and the open source nature of Zope makes those folks nervous. Unfortunately, I'm having a hard time identifying commercial CMS products that aren't marketed as "e-business platforms". Has anyone had any experience with a company that makes a CMS product and also understands the university environment? I would be thrilled if I could find a sales rep that is willing to hold our hand and take their time with us, and can be patient with the less technical folks on our staff.

Basically my feeling is that the only thing that could make me want to use something other than Zope is 1) Excellent customer service, 2) A company that really understands the university environment and can make our non-technical staff see the benefit of their product, 3) A company that can make the "you get what you pay for" faction happy by presenting itself as being in it for the long haul.

Does anyone have any experience with Digicool's commercial Zope support? This may actually represent the best of both worlds.

Also, if any of you are actually using a CMS now (commercial or open source), please let us know as it will help us guide our decision making.

Thanks, Jason Wehmhoener Web Coordinator De Anza College http://www.deanza.fhda.edu ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: Darren Addy Web Specialist Information Technology Services University of Nebraska at Kearney addyd@unk.edu

_______________________________________________ Zope maillist - Zope@zope.org http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope ** No cross posts or HTML encoding! ** (Related lists - http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope-announce http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope-dev )