[OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Introduction (Re: 226 subscribers) and SomeQuestions

[Jonathan Rochkind]

I think this is a good point. I personally suspect that if you can  
afford your current SD support contract, you can afford an Equinox  
support contract too, probably more easily.  I suspect that even  
migration costs with Equinox support will be affordable compared to  
the alternatives. At some point in the near future I hope we can  
start getting more realistic figures on total cost of ownership for EG.

I wonder if Equinox will, contrary to the usual practice in the  
industry, be able to give some public very rough estimates of  
migration and/or ongoing support contracting costs for some sample  
library sizes/types.  It might go a long way to assuaging some fear  
about EG total cost of ownership.  I'm also not sure if everyone  
realizes that support contracts from Equinox (and possibly other  
vendors) are indeed available for EG, even though it's open source.  
Open source just means you don't have to pay for licensing, and don't  
HAVE to pay for support. You still can pay for support if you want  
to. (Even better from a customers point of view, if the support  
market matures, you can switch support vendors while keeping the same  
product!).

Jonathan


On Mar 28, 2007, at 5:07 PM, Deanna Frazee wrote:

>>> One last question.  We spoke with a library consultant about whether
> to
>> switch to Evergreen or not.  She advised us to wait a few years until
>> other libraries with more programming and technical staff made the
> switch
>> and Evergreen became more mature.  Do you think this is good advice,
> or is
>> the water warm to dive right in?  I know my director is eager to
> switch to
>> something other than Horizon as quickly as possible.
>
> If you can set aside some funds for support from Equinox or another
> firm, then you really may not need to worry about waiting all that  
> much.
> I am very serious about switching to Evergreen, and I do not have
> in-house support for anything beyond Linux.  But I managed just fine
> with Horizon without any in-house support at all, and with  
> Evergreen, I
> can contract with a 3rd party to provide support.  Considering the
> rather large maintenance bill from my current vendor, I am willing to
> bet I can get pretty decent support for the same amount.
>
> Deanna Frazee
> Killeen City Library System
> (254) 501-8995
> (254) 501-7704 (fax)
> dfrazee at ci.killeen.tx.us
>