R help - Jul 2006 - Moving from Splus to R - advice/opinions request from a management perspective

Hi,
   
  I've looked through the archives and seen several posts discussing
technical differences between R and S(plus).  It appears to me that R can likely
functionally replace Splus for my situation, but I'm more interested in
looking at the risks and benefits of moving from Splus to R from a (project)
management point of view.
   
  Background (a bit wordy, I'm afraid):
   
  - I'm not a stats guy, but rather a project manager responsible for an
internal application that utilizes Splus as a back-end analysis engine to
analyze manufacturing data at a med/large company.
   
  - I really don't know why Splus was chosen as the analysis engine for this
app - that choice was made long before I inherited the project.
   
  - The developer currently in charge of the Splus code is not a stats guy
either, but he is a very talented programmer that has been to one Insightful
course and taught himself enough to maintain the existing code (the original
authors are long gone).
   
  -  While there is quite a large quantity of existing code that is used by our
application, I don't believe that it is terribly complex, from an applied
statistics point of view.  Using Splus may be over-kill from a functionality
standpoint, but we just haven't had the time to re-write in a more
"appropriate" package - even if we knew what that more appropriate
package might be.
   
  -  With the imminent release of Splus 8, I'm feeling uncomfortable with
the risk associated with remaining on Splus 2000, which we are currently using. 
***Comments on this point would be appreciated.***
   
  -  The developer was able to modify the existing code to run in Splus 7. 
Unfortunately, the code is significantly slower than before, and Insightful
claims this is due to a change to the S language (at version 6) that was out of
their control (and one reason that they bought the S language rights).
   
  -  We have found Insightful's telephone support to be rather unresponsive,
and not very helpful, other than to recommend their consulting services. 
Obtaining consulting services from Insightful to improve performance has proved
challenging (don't ask), and if we ever actually do receive any consulting
services from them, it will no doubt be quite expensive.
   
  (if you are still with me, thank you)
   
  I see our realistic options as:
   
  A)  Stick with Splus with the assumption that eventually, Insightful will help
us migrate our code to the latest release, and performance will be comparable to
what it is today.  The advantage of this is working with a known entity, if not
one we are very pleased with.  In addition, if we can get the relationship to
work, we can hopefully "outsource" future statistics development and
support to Insightful.
   
  The disadvantage is that it is costing us quite a bit of $$$ to maintain a
relationship that we are not really happy with.  Incidentally, I'm not
intending to bash Insightful here - it may just be that we are not a good fit
for each other.
   
  B)  Drop Splus for R with the assumption that migrating to R and rewriting to
improve performance will be little more difficult than rewriting by ourselves in
Splus.  The obvious advantage is the cost savings, which is very significant. 
In addition, based on the archives I've read, it appears that there is a
very responsive and helpful R community.
   
  The disadvantage is that we may be committing to maintaining statistical
expertise in-house, whereas we were hoping to be able to outsource some or all
of it (to Insightful).  In addition, we will be leaving behind an entity that
has a mailing address, phone number, and stock symbol for one that is
represented "only" by a mailing list - I'm rather conservative and
risk averse.
   
  C)  Stick with Splus and either find some consulting help outside of
Insightful or slog away internally.  I suppose that we could even end our
M&S contract with Insightful and just continue to use Splus, knowing that we
will never receive any releases newer than 8.x nor any future support.
   
  (almost done)
   
  So, I'd like to hear opinions of whether you think that the benefits of
moving to R outweigh the risks.  Listing additional benefits and risks that I
have not identified would be appreciated.  I'm particularly interested in
hearing from anyone that has made this same S -> R transition in a business
environment.
   
  Also, does anyone have any recommendations for either Splus or R consultants,
other than Insightful?  I would prefer someone who is willing to work remotely,
rather than anyone having to travel.
   
  Thats it.
   
  Thanks for your time,
  Dave

 __________________________________________________



	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]

Dave wrote:
> Hi,
>    
>   I've looked through the archives and seen several posts discussing
technical differences between R and S(plus).  It appears to me that R can likely
functionally replace Splus for my situation, but I'm more interested in
looking at the risks and benefits of moving from Splus to R from a (project)
management point of view.
>    
>   Background (a bit wordy, I'm afraid):
>    
>   - I'm not a stats guy, but rather a project manager responsible for
an internal application that utilizes Splus as a back-end analysis engine to
analyze manufacturing data at a med/large company.
>    
>   - I really don't know why Splus was chosen as the analysis engine for
this app - that choice was made long before I inherited the project.
>    
>   - The developer currently in charge of the Splus code is not a stats guy
either, but he is a very talented programmer that has been to one Insightful
course and taught himself enough to maintain the existing code (the original
authors are long gone).
>    
>   -  While there is quite a large quantity of existing code that is used by
our application, I don't believe that it is terribly complex, from an
applied statistics point of view.  Using Splus may be over-kill from a
functionality standpoint, but we just haven't had the time to re-write in a
more "appropriate" package - even if we knew what that more
appropriate package might be.
>    
>   -  With the imminent release of Splus 8, I'm feeling uncomfortable
with the risk associated with remaining on Splus 2000, which we are currently
using.  ***Comments on this point would be appreciated.***
>    
>   -  The developer was able to modify the existing code to run in Splus 7. 
Unfortunately, the code is significantly slower than before, and Insightful
claims this is due to a change to the S language (at version 6) that was out of
their control (and one reason that they bought the S language rights).
>    
>   -  We have found Insightful's telephone support to be rather
unresponsive, and not very helpful, other than to recommend their consulting
services.  Obtaining consulting services from Insightful to improve performance
has proved challenging (don't ask), and if we ever actually do receive any
consulting services from them, it will no doubt be quite expensive.
>    
>   (if you are still with me, thank you)
>    
>   I see our realistic options as:
>    
>   A)  Stick with Splus with the assumption that eventually, Insightful will
help us migrate our code to the latest release, and performance will be
comparable to what it is today.  The advantage of this is working with a known
entity, if not one we are very pleased with.  In addition, if we can get the
relationship to work, we can hopefully "outsource" future statistics
development and support to Insightful.
>    
>   The disadvantage is that it is costing us quite a bit of $$$ to maintain
a relationship that we are not really happy with.  Incidentally, I'm not
intending to bash Insightful here - it may just be that we are not a good fit
for each other.
>    
>   B)  Drop Splus for R with the assumption that migrating to R and
rewriting to improve performance will be little more difficult than rewriting by
ourselves in Splus.  The obvious advantage is the cost savings, which is very
significant.  In addition, based on the archives I've read, it appears that
there is a very responsive and helpful R community.
>    
>   The disadvantage is that we may be committing to maintaining statistical
expertise in-house, whereas we were hoping to be able to outsource some or all
of it (to Insightful).  In addition, we will be leaving behind an entity that
has a mailing address, phone number, and stock symbol for one that is
represented "only" by a mailing list - I'm rather conservative and
risk averse.
>    
>   C)  Stick with Splus and either find some consulting help outside of
Insightful or slog away internally.  I suppose that we could even end our
M&S contract with Insightful and just continue to use Splus, knowing that we
will never receive any releases newer than 8.x nor any future support.
>    
>   (almost done)
>    
>   So, I'd like to hear opinions of whether you think that the benefits
of moving to R outweigh the risks.  Listing additional benefits and risks that I
have not identified would be appreciated.  I'm particularly interested in
hearing from anyone that has made this same S -> R transition in a business
environment.
>    
>   Also, does anyone have any recommendations for either Splus or R
consultants, other than Insightful?  I would prefer someone who is willing to
work remotely, rather than anyone having to travel.
>    
>   Thats it.
>    
>   Thanks for your time,
>   Dave
Do you also write anonymous messages to Insightful? No surprise that you 
receive unconvincing replies. Beside beeing impolite, it is also hard to 
recommend consultants in such a case: If you live in New Zealand, it 
certainly is not that helpful to recommend someone in Germany ...

Uwe Ligges

>  __________________________________________________
> 
> 
> 
> 	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]
> 
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide
http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.

How large is your data?

If its large you may or may not have problems.  If its small you  probably
won't.  Try prototyping the most data intensive portion in R before you
commit significant resources.

S Plus can time stamp objects and R cannot although you could come
up with some workarounds for specific objects if your app uses this.

If your app naturally divides into independent sections you could consider
an incremental approach converting one section over at a time.


On 7/27/06, Dave <dd4v135 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
>  I've looked through the archives and seen several posts discussing
technical differences between R and S(plus).  It appears to me that R can likely
functionally replace Splus for my situation, but I'm more interested in
looking at the risks and benefits of moving from Splus to R from a (project)
management point of view.
>
>  Background (a bit wordy, I'm afraid):
>
>  - I'm not a stats guy, but rather a project manager responsible for an
internal application that utilizes Splus as a back-end analysis engine to
analyze manufacturing data at a med/large company.
>
>  - I really don't know why Splus was chosen as the analysis engine for
this app - that choice was made long before I inherited the project.
>
>  - The developer currently in charge of the Splus code is not a stats guy
either, but he is a very talented programmer that has been to one Insightful
course and taught himself enough to maintain the existing code (the original
authors are long gone).
>
>  -  While there is quite a large quantity of existing code that is used by
our application, I don't believe that it is terribly complex, from an
applied statistics point of view.  Using Splus may be over-kill from a
functionality standpoint, but we just haven't had the time to re-write in a
more "appropriate" package - even if we knew what that more
appropriate package might be.
>
>  -  With the imminent release of Splus 8, I'm feeling uncomfortable
with the risk associated with remaining on Splus 2000, which we are currently
using.  ***Comments on this point would be appreciated.***
>
>  -  The developer was able to modify the existing code to run in Splus 7. 
Unfortunately, the code is significantly slower than before, and Insightful
claims this is due to a change to the S language (at version 6) that was out of
their control (and one reason that they bought the S language rights).
>
>  -  We have found Insightful's telephone support to be rather
unresponsive, and not very helpful, other than to recommend their consulting
services.  Obtaining consulting services from Insightful to improve performance
has proved challenging (don't ask), and if we ever actually do receive any
consulting services from them, it will no doubt be quite expensive.
>
>  (if you are still with me, thank you)
>
>  I see our realistic options as:
>
>  A)  Stick with Splus with the assumption that eventually, Insightful will
help us migrate our code to the latest release, and performance will be
comparable to what it is today.  The advantage of this is working with a known
entity, if not one we are very pleased with.  In addition, if we can get the
relationship to work, we can hopefully "outsource" future statistics
development and support to Insightful.
>
>  The disadvantage is that it is costing us quite a bit of $$$ to maintain a
relationship that we are not really happy with.  Incidentally, I'm not
intending to bash Insightful here - it may just be that we are not a good fit
for each other.
>
>  B)  Drop Splus for R with the assumption that migrating to R and rewriting
to improve performance will be little more difficult than rewriting by ourselves
in Splus.  The obvious advantage is the cost savings, which is very significant.
In addition, based on the archives I've read, it appears that there is a
very responsive and helpful R community.
>
>  The disadvantage is that we may be committing to maintaining statistical
expertise in-house, whereas we were hoping to be able to outsource some or all
of it (to Insightful).  In addition, we will be leaving behind an entity that
has a mailing address, phone number, and stock symbol for one that is
represented "only" by a mailing list - I'm rather conservative and
risk averse.
>
>  C)  Stick with Splus and either find some consulting help outside of
Insightful or slog away internally.  I suppose that we could even end our
M&S contract with Insightful and just continue to use Splus, knowing that we
will never receive any releases newer than 8.x nor any future support.
>
>  (almost done)
>
>  So, I'd like to hear opinions of whether you think that the benefits
of moving to R outweigh the risks.  Listing additional benefits and risks that I
have not identified would be appreciated.  I'm particularly interested in
hearing from anyone that has made this same S -> R transition in a business
environment.
>
>  Also, does anyone have any recommendations for either Splus or R
consultants, other than Insightful?  I would prefer someone who is willing to
work remotely, rather than anyone having to travel.
>
>  Thats it.
>
>  Thanks for your time,
>  Dave
>
>  __________________________________________________
>
>
>
>        [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide
http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>