And I would be amazed if a major vendor went out of business in this
industry and all the competitors didn't scramble to build tools to
create a seamless transition. We already have one click tools for most
of our competitors to import their data into Sonar, and we're working on
the rest. The challenging thing is that a lot of systems don't enforce
good data consistency, so there is junk to clean up. But if push comes
to shove and you're willing to clean up what you got, it can be done
very quickly.
I think you also have to weigh up these worst case scenarios against
reality. There has yet to be a billing vendor in this industry that has
stopped operating in the 7 years I've been part of it, let alone close
up shop in a 24 hour period and leave everyone in the cold. Is it worth
using old software that doesn't have the features you need because it
offers some modicum of protection against an unlikely event? That is up
to you to balance, but these doomsday scenarios are pretty unlikely, and
if it's costing you a lot of efficiency and potential revenue, then my
personal feeling would be that it doesn't outweigh the consequences. But
everyone has to make their own risk assessment.
I think you will just see acquisitions occur if a vendor gets to the
point that they are struggling to operate. It would be silly for them to
just disappear into the night.
On 10/17/2017 4:15 PM, ch...@wbmfg.com wrote:
Been through this many times in my life. Done it both ways. Several
times.
Prefer the new vendor to do onboarding for me.
You get what you pay for.
*From:* Nathan Anderson
*Sent:* Tuesday, October 17, 2017 3:11 PM
*To:* af@afmug.com
*Subject:* Re: [AFMUG] Sonar
Not true. It doesn't matter what the file format of the export is:
you still have to take the time to figure out how to shoehorn data
from one schema into another. As talked about earlier, maybe you'll
get support from your new vendor with that, maybe not. There will be
mistakes made during that process, and some of it will have to be
re-done. You also have to hook the new product into all of your
authentication systems and then test that to make sure it works and
doesn't suddenly break people's connections.
Then there will be the mistakes that come from actually using the new
software that you are unfamiliar with, and/or cajoling it to do what
you need it to do and which you already knew how to do with the old
software. People will get billed wrong for a while and then you'll
have to sort out that mess as your customers bring the billing
mistakes to your attention. Some people that need to get billed won't
be...others will get double-billed. Pro-rates will get
miscalculated. The system will on-hold somebody by mistake that
shouldn't have been. And on and on.
If the software is locally hosted, you can learn a new system and
transition over to it on your own schedule, instead of being pushed
into the deep end of the pool on day 1.
-- Nathan
*From:*Af [mailto:af-boun...@afmug.com] *On Behalf Of *ch...@wbmfg.com
*Sent:* Tuesday, October 17, 2017 2:04 PM
*To:* af@afmug.com
*Subject:* Re: [AFMUG] Sonar
Export backups as CSV and you can re-import it into any database. You
will only be screwed for a very short time.
*From:*Nathan Anderson
*Sent:*Tuesday, October 17, 2017 2:13 PM
*To:*af@afmug.com
*Subject:*Re: [AFMUG] Sonar
I have to say that I'm partially with Matt on this one.
It's really not about access to your own data, although that can
certainly be a component depending on how things are designed. It
sounds like perhaps Sonar has no problem giving you reasonable access
to exports of your data for you to backup yourself, and for the
moment, I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt on this.
I don't think I have to convince anyone how critical billing software
is to an organization. If it screws up or stops working, you are
losing money, and fast.
The SaaS model has some clear benefits to both parties (developer and
user), but it has an equal number of new downsides as well. One
big-E-on-the-eyechart one is what happens if the product is
discontinued, either because the parent company/developers go out of
business or for some other reason.
In the traditional software licensing and hosting model, where you use
your own computing resources to execute the code, if the development
company goes out of business one day, the software that you still
possess a copy of does not suddenly become less useful to you. Sure,
you won't get future upgrades and fixes to the product from the
vendor, but at least you have some time to figure out what your
options are and how you want to proceed, and you can migrate to a new
platform on YOUR OWN timetable, not someone else's. And in the
meantime, your business operations are not negatively impacted.
In the SaaS model, it doesn't matter if you have a complete,
unabridged, and up-to-date export of the data: when the product is
discontinued without warning, and the company shuts down the software
servers, YOU ARE SO SCREWED. That data export does you zero good if
you don't have product to process and interpret and act on it. In the
case of billing software, this means you are not collecting payments
for service from your customers, which is a big problem. Even if you
could find a suitable replacement for the software the next day, you
still have to figure out how to massage the data export you do have so
that the new software can import it, work through the inevitable
imperfections of that import (certain fields from the export that
don't map cleanly to fields in the new product), learn a new piece of
software from scratch, and figure out how to get by or work around
issues resulting from "feature X" that you depended heavily on in the
old software but which no longer exists in any form in the new one.
Things WILL be complete chaos for a while; there's no way around this.
We are actively looking for a new billing platform, and in the
meantime we have been running a piece of software that we bought and
implemented back when it was in active development but which has now
been discontinued for years. The reason that this is even possible is
because it is self-hosted. Back when this product was being developed,
it was very popular and sold very well. Nothing is "too big to
fail".../nothing/. Heck, Google has shitcanned their fair share of
services over the years after deeming them inviable, leaving devoted
users of them high-and-dry.
That we have personally experienced having a billing software vendor
go belly-up gives us great pause when it comes to evaluating our
options in the hosted/cloud space. This is not to say that we would
never consider billing-in-the-cloud, but it would have to be /awfully/
compelling, and I think it would greatly help if there were certain
guarantees in place. One example would be if the developer held the
source code of the software in escrow, to be automatically released if
a "dead man's switch" were tripped. I suspect this is what Matt has
in mind when he talks about "contracts" -- they are not just about
protecting the seller, but about protecting both parties.
-- Nathan
*From:*Af [mailto:af-boun...@afmug.com] *On Behalf Of *Matt Hoppes
*Sent:* Tuesday, October 17, 2017 11:37 AM
*To:* af@afmug.com
*Subject:* Re: [AFMUG] Sonar
Local install.
On Oct 17, 2017, at 13:32, Josh Reynolds <j...@kyneticwifi.com> wrote:
Good luck with that. Any company could close up shop today, and if
they are bankrupt, they are bankrupt.
On Oct 17, 2017 12:27 PM, "Matt Hoppes"
<mattli...@rivervalleyinternet.net> wrote:
It also means at any point they can just close up shop leaving my
data and my customer information high and dry with no recourse.
On Oct 17, 2017, at 13:24, Josh Reynolds <j...@kyneticwifi.com> wrote:
They provide enough value to avoid locking you in a contract
that would otherwise retain your business when they don't
continuously earn it.
Others are NOT the same.
On Oct 17, 2017 12:22 PM, "Matt Hoppes"
<mattli...@rivervalleyinternet.net> wrote:
No contract? That's frankly beyond scary.
On Oct 17, 2017, at 13:06, Adam Moffett
<dmmoff...@gmail.com> wrote:
Sonar is strictly per user with no contract, so if you
haven't migrated any users in yet then you pay the
minimum.....which I think is $100/month.
------ Original Message ------
From: "Matt Hoppes" <mattli...@rivervalleyinternet.net>
To: af@afmug.com
Sent: 10/17/2017 9:16:46 AM
Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Sonar
Fail.
On Oct 17, 2017, at 08:54, Lewis Bergman
<lewis.berg...@gmail.com> wrote:
Many of them start charging you regardless if
you are on their system yet. Once you sign the
contract, you start paying.
On Mon, Oct 16, 2017 at 6:00 PM Nathan
Anderson <nath...@fsr.com> wrote:
I can understand this if the product in
question is purchased/licensed for a
one-time upfront fee. However, if you have
a SaaS model with recurring revenues, it
seems like it would be in your best
interest to help the customer move
existing data over to your product
cost-free, and thus get them to be a
paying customer ASAP.
-- Nathan
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*From:*Af <af-boun...@afmug.com> on behalf
of Lewis Bergman <lewis.berg...@gmail.com>
*Sent:* Monday, October 16, 2017 3:36 PM
*To:* af@afmug.com
*Subject:* Re: [AFMUG] Sonar
Yea, this seems to be a common practice in
the software industry. What they all
should really say is that they help you
convert. I am going through this with ECi
at the moment. We paid several thousand
for them to convert our database. What it
really was was a half hearted gesture at
putting the DB into an excel spreadsheet
that they spent zero time checking for
sanity. They expect us to do all that.
It seems that most software companies
expect their customers to have a whole
team of people doing what seems to be the
software companies job. Not saying Sonar
fits the description, just that that seems
to be the rule not the exception.
On Mon, Oct 16, 2017 at 5:24 PM Sterling
Jacobson <sterl...@avative.net> wrote:
Taking forever to migrate from
Platypus to Sonar.
I was told conversion was free, but
they didn't tell me I had to do all my
own conversion from Plat to Sonar, so
in my mind that's not free.
I paid Spender Lambert to move some
initial data to their format, but I've
been on a hold with Sonar since last
month.
Super excited to get going with a
'modern' billing system, but so far
the process has been a total snoozer.
--
Simon Westlake
Email: simon@sonar.software
Phone: (702) 447-1247 US / (780) 900-1180 CA
---------------------------
Sonar Software Inc
The future of ISP billing and OSS
https://sonar.software
