This turns into a non-samba discussion pretty quickly - but I'll chime in.
I agree with Sven - that's true. The real problem, as I see it is that the
interests of the client and the vendor often don't really align - at least
not in the short term.
The vendor wants to do things as cheaply as possible so they make money now.
You [the client] want them to provide reliable service.
Yet the vendor can cut a ton of corners and do things in a way that's badly
engineered and yet invisible to you the client. You'll only find out when
the crunch comes.
But the political realities are that it IS often easier to get someone to pay a
smallish monthly fee.
Just witness Office 365. $8/mo/user for forever, or $200/user for a perpetual
license. In a couple of years using 365, you've paid for the perpetual
license. In ~7 years, you've spent ~$1000 more on the 365 license. But
it's amazing how many people line up to pay the "small monthly
fee."
:)
The nice part, for a Samba cloud instance, IMO, would be an off-site repository
of the AD db. Should a total disaster befall the in-house setup, you could
transition to relying on the cloud based setup.
But that's outsourcing hardware.
Sven seems to want to outsource the Samba expertise. That seems a much harder
solution to create.
Part of the issue is that each client will be doing different things and the way
it can fail or have problems is so varied. It would be hard to build in enough
margin into the service to pay for the stand-by expertise of a knowledgeable
Samba person. It would seem better to develop a relationship with a good
consultant, and perhaps a retainer relationship.
But interesting considerations...
SSvs> On 27.01.20 17:18, Rowland penny via samba wrote:> Why not be
honest,
SSvs> the 'cloud' is actually a server farm, somewhere
else>> on the planet, over which you have little or no control.
SSvs> Back in the old days we called this "managed servers" or
"vservers".
SSvs> Those had exactly the same problems, yet were also insanely popular for
SSvs> mostly the same reason: You can just cut a cheque to someone who
SSvs> actually knows what he's doing (hopefully), and don't have to
invest in
SSvs> building/maintaining your own IT expertise, which can be quite
SSvs> expensive. (And, depending on where you are, you flat out might not
have
SSvs> enough qualified personnel around.)
SSvs> Monthly subscriptions tend to be a lot easier to budget and/or get
SSvs> approval for than payroll expenses, too, if you're in a large
company
SSvs> where bureaucracy has turned into a competitive art form. (See also,
the
SSvs> Roman Empire, Decline and fall of.)
SSvs> That's attractive to a lot of companies who think that IT isn't
their
SSvs> core business. Whether that's a correct assessment is a different
matter?
--
Gregory Sloop, Principal: Sloop Network & Computer Consulting
Voice: 503.251.0452 x121
EMail: gregs at sloop.net
http://www.sloop.net
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