Support for Lotus Symphony
October 15 2008
After a short customer meeting near Heathrow, I'm headed onward to the Frankfurt area tonight. During this quick stop, UK messaging sales leader Darren Adams was kind enough to give my boss and I a lift to the airport. One of our topics of discussion was how customers can obtain support for Lotus Symphony.
When Symphony first shipped, Lotus introduced a flat fee Elite Support price for an annual Symphony support contract. The cost is very reasonable -- US$25,000 per year. At this price, you can have up to 20 named callers and support up to 20,000 users -- a very cost-effective model.
Darren pointed out that at the low end, though, this is an expensive option for organizations with a dozen or few hundred employees. No worries, though -- between us, Kevin and I came up with three additional support options that are available at a lower cost for the low-end:
- We provide free forum-based support for Symphony on the Symphony website. These forums are monitored by the product development team and responses are provided in a timely manner.
- Buy Lotus Notes or Lotus Collaboration Express licenses -- both include support for the integrated Symphony tools that are part of the Notes 8 client. You can buy as small as quantity 1 of Collaboration Express and be able to access support.
- Buy a Lotus Foundations server -- in addition to all of the great automation and collaboration capabilities of the Foundations server, Foundations included a supported license for Lotus Symphony.
All of these sound like great ways to introduce Symphony into small business, at a great price and with full vendor support.
Post a Comment
- 2
Erik Brooks | 10/15/2008 7:41:54 PM
Is pricing for the Foundations avenus listed anywhere? The "Lotus Foundations" link has no readily-obvious pricing online. There's simply a "ready to buy?" and a form to have a BP contact you.
- 3
Charles Robinson http://www.cubert.net | 10/15/2008 7:54:46 PM
I agree with Henry. Training is important to me, vendor support is not.
- 4
Keith Brooks http://www.vanessabrooks.com | 10/15/2008 10:16:03 PM
And how much are you willing to pay for it, in this economy?
The problem with training is price.
No one wants to pay for it and if they do, they don't want to spend 1,000-3,000 for an instructor to be onsite.
Or as I saw, even $500 to do it online in one case.
They want free online tutorials or precut webinars.
Maybe IBM can do it, maybe they can't.
What BP wants to do it for free or less than cost?
Not trying to weasle out of it, just asking the question differently.
- 5
John C. Cummins | 10/16/2008 3:40:40 PM
If IBM is serious about getting people to go with Symphony instead of Office 2007, then it needs to offers some free tutorials, webinars, screen cams, etc.
It is not very different from MS Office 97-2003 and hence will be much more familiar to users than Office 2007. It is more intuitive than Open Office in my opinion.
When customers bring up training, the key thing to remind them is that they will have to be trained either way. A little with Symphony or a LOT with Office 2007. There isn't a way to avoid the office tool upgrade, just postpone it until MS Office 2003 end of life...
- 6
Erik Brooks | 10/16/2008 11:39:33 PM
@5 - Interesting observation about Office 2003 EOL. If Symphony is looking good and the ribbon interface is still making people go "ummm...." then IBM could be in a great position to blitz the market.
- 7
Graham Dodge | 10/17/2008 3:03:50 AM
@2 Of the top of my head the Australian pricing for Foundations is:
Server: c. AUD$350 per server
Client: c. AUD$230 per user
Of course that's before the Australian dollar went tits up and the exchange rate plunged southwards of 70 cents :{
Not sure on the US price... that's out of my sales territory.
- 8
Mike McP http://www.openntf.com/mPortal | 10/17/2008 10:10:23 AM
@6 Not so sure about that one. I mean, corporate probably cares less about EOL of a mature Office 2003 than I do about support for a relatively new Symphony...and I'm not too interested in Symphony support.
Symphony simply needs to be as close to Office 2k/2003 visually and functionally as possible..that's the hook. To get traction into MS territory, they need to capitalize on the mess that is the Office 2007 GUI. If Symphony takes off, support will take care of itself as people report bugs and suggest enhancements.
- 9
David Vasta http://www.iSeriesAddict.com | 10/19/2008 8:46:56 PM
We are liking Symphony here, and I know I am pushing it and using it more and more each day. I do think it needs a little more time in the oven for some people, but for me and what I use it for it's super.
It would be good to see IBM offer training to application Help Desk companies like PC Helps. That would enable many companies to have access to support of Symphony and consider the switch.