I hear Sonar is easy...
*From:* CBB - Jay Fuller
*Sent:* Tuesday, October 17, 2017 4:48 PM
*To:* af@afmug.com
*Subject:* Re: [AFMUG] Sonar
...i really want to comment on this....but i won't lol
i like young flashy software tho!! but sometimes it isn't...matured.
yah, i tried to not comment lol
not saying that about sonar at all....or hot wives for that matter.
----- Original Message -----
*From:* James Howard
*To:* 'af@afmug.com'
*Sent:* Tuesday, October 17, 2017 4:48 PM
*Subject:* Re: [AFMUG] Sonar
So you’re saying that some people will take their time and choose
one and stick with it for life while others will play the field,
pick the hottest youngest available model and then get tired of it
and move to something newer and flashier every few years?
*From:*Af [mailto:af-boun...@afmug.com] *On Behalf Of *ch...@wbmfg.com
*Sent:* Tuesday, October 17, 2017 4:42 PM
*To:* af@afmug.com
*Subject:* Re: [AFMUG] Sonar
Same goes for picking a wife.
*From:*Matt Hoppes
*Sent:*Tuesday, October 17, 2017 3:38 PM
*To:*af@afmug.com
*Subject:*Re: [AFMUG] Sonar
A great reason to make sure you pick the right billing platform
the first time.
On Oct 17, 2017, at 17:28, <ch...@wbmfg.com> <ch...@wbmfg.com> wrote:
It never goes smoothly.
I used to work for banks, talk about a headache when you
change out their software that manages all the customer
accounts etc. They migrated off an old dinosaur main frame to
an AS-400 with all the latest software. I think it took more
than 6 months to actually get it up and going.
I have worked for several telephone companies and all of them
have migrated software, most of them multiple times. Again,
never smooth, always pain.
Ditto for WISPS, been there, done that too. Platypus was
probably the easiest due to the IT department being very hands
on through the process.
It never goes smoothly and they can guarantee everything to
work all they want, but it will not work perfectly without
elbow grease.
*From:*Nathan Anderson
*Sent:*Tuesday, October 17, 2017 3:21 PM
*To:*af@afmug.com
*Subject:*Re: [AFMUG] Sonar
Didn't this thread start out with somebody complaining that
their new vendor either wasn't willing to do this or weren't
doing an effective or good job of it? Vendor on-boarding is
not always an option, or at least is not something that is
guaranteed to work or go smoothly.
-- Nathan
*From:*Af [mailto:af-boun...@afmug.com] *On Behalf Of
*ch...@wbmfg.com
*Sent:* Tuesday, October 17, 2017 2:15 PM
*To:* af@afmug.com
*Subject:* Re: [AFMUG] Sonar
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.
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