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52612 Views 8 Replies Latest reply: Sep 21, 2009 8:37 AM by jmp242 RSS
tbannister Rank: White Belt
tbannister
42 posts since
Mar 5, 2008
Currently Being Moderated

Sep 4, 2009 11:51 AM

Zenoss and the Competition

When I was originally looking around to see what was available for Performance monitoring software, one of Zenoss's competitors that I looked at closely was Hyperic HQ, and since I last looked at them they seem to have really stepped up their game.

They have a demo of the Hyperic HQ 4.1 on their site that shows what appears to be a vastly improved web interface (which I think looks liberally copied from Zenoss). So in the spirit of what goes around comes around can we expect to see some of those features copied in to Zenoss in the next version?

I particularly think the "graph rotating" portlet would be a welcome addition to Zenoss. The lack of something similar is one thing my boss does complain about whenever the topic of Zenoss comes up.
  • Ryan Matte ZenossMaster
    Ryan Matte
    653 posts since
    Mar 26, 2009
    Currently Being Moderated
    1. Sep 15, 2009 5:52 PM (in response to tbannister)
    Re: Zenoss and the Competition

    By the time stone crab comes out the whole interface will be revamped.  Also, if there's a feature that you really need which is not available you can always pay Zenoss Inc. for some PS work and have them design you whatever you wish.  Comparing one product to another and asking why it doesn't have this or that feature which is in the other product isn't really an effective form of criticism.  I'm sure that Zenoss has features which Hyperic doesn't have and vice-versa.

     

    There are 5 developers and 2 support developers working on the entire Zenoss project.  I would consider a rotating graphs portlet as a "nice to have" feature, rather than something critical.  There are many bugs that need to be addressed in upcoming versions, and only so many developers working on resolving them all.  Combine that with a goal of redesigning the whole interface (see a preview here: http://public-demo.zenoss.com/evconsole) by the time that Stone Crab rolls around, and I'd say that they have their plates pretty full.

     

    Managers always tend to be more concerned with having an abundance of pretty pictures available to display stats, rather than with the actual back-end functionality of any given monitoring system.
  • tbannister Rank: White Belt
    tbannister
    42 posts since
    Mar 5, 2008
    Currently Being Moderated
    2. Sep 16, 2009 9:56 AM (in response to Ryan Matte)
    Re: Zenoss and the Competition

    You know, of course, that I have multiple reasons for things out.  With both Hyperic and Zenoss being open source based projects, cross-pollination is a good thing, I think both projects can prosper with a little judicious copying.  Of course, mostly, I just want my boss to stop threatening me with a forced migration to Solarwinds.

     

    However, it can't help but cross my mind that if Zenoss would like some more money to hire a few more developers, maybe they should consider having a somewhat cheaper support package.  The minimum $25,000 (yearly) buy in for support prevents my company from paying for support.  The price jump from free to paid support is simply too big (and we're too small to have that kind of money just lying around).  Of course, I understand something substanciallly cheaper might cut into the sales of the higher priced plans, but I wonder if Zenoss provided a plan with just 8x5 email support or even just access to Zenoss Enterprise features at a fraction of the cost (for example ~$2,500/year) if Zenoss wouldn't gather a lot of money from smaller businesses.  But, hey it's not my business.

     

    By the way is there a place that explains what the rates are for PS work?

  • Ryan Matte ZenossMaster
    Ryan Matte
    653 posts since
    Mar 26, 2009
    Currently Being Moderated
    3. Sep 16, 2009 10:13 AM (in response to tbannister)
    Re: Zenoss and the Competition
    We tried Solarwinds and backed away from it since we monitor multiple clients and we didn't realize that we'd have to pay (quite a bit) for each individual collector.  We are in the same boat as you guys regarding the expense of support and of professional and enterprise versions.

    I agree that there should be lower priced packages available.  The pricing caters more to larger businesses.  I personally find that with some massaging, you can get Core to do pretty much anything.  You do need someone on staff who is willing to take on Zenoss as a full time project to accomplish this though (preferably with some type of scripting experience).

    From what I understand the fact that they offer PS work for Core isn't really advertised anywhere, but Matt had mentioned that they do.  I'd imagine that you would have to explain to them what you'd like developed and then the price would be determined based on the complexity of the project.
  • jcurry ZenossMaster
    jcurry
    1,021 posts since
    Apr 15, 2008
    Currently Being Moderated
    4. Sep 16, 2009 3:26 PM (in response to tbannister)
    Re: Zenoss and the Competition

    I started a thread yesterday to discuss "support" for Core customers on the "Support and Services Partners" group - thread/11396?tstart=0 .I know the problems of providing particularly "defect support" - it's potentially a very open committment, but I think there are lots of folk out there who can't pay the minimum $25K for Enterprise.

     

    Have a look at my thoughts and lets have a debate about it.

     

    Cheers,

    Jane

  • jmp242 ZenossMaster
    jmp242
    4,060 posts since
    Mar 7, 2007
    Currently Being Moderated
    5. Sep 16, 2009 3:51 PM (in response to jcurry)
    Re: Zenoss and the Competition

    I generally think that it would be nice to have some cheaper support

    options. I don't know how it should work out, but I'd be interested in

    what support providers feel they could do for what price. I could

    definitely see a market for Zenpack creation, but I don't know the

    price. The other thing that I could see is defect fixes, but probably

    most of it would be coding, so it'd work out something like a

    specialized elance or some such.

    --

    James Pulver

    Information Technology Area Supervisor

    LEPP Computer Group

    Cornell University

     

     

     

    jcurry wrote, On 9/16/2009 3:26 PM:

    I started a thread yesterday to discuss "support" for Core customers on the "Support and Services Partners" group - thread/11396?tstart=0 (thread/11396) .I know the problems of providing particularly "defect support" - it's potentially a very open committment, but I think there are lots of folk out there who can't pay the minimum $25K for Enterprise.

     

    Have a look at my thoughts and lets have a debate about it.

     

    Cheers,

    Jane

    >

  • Mark Hinkle Rank: Green Belt
    Mark Hinkle
    19 posts since
    Feb 19, 2007
    Currently Being Moderated
    6. Sep 17, 2009 1:28 AM (in response to Ryan Matte)
    Re: Zenoss and the Competition

    You bring up a pretty valid point. Zenoss Inc. as of right now is not offering any lower priced packages and truth be told we have a ton of work. The idea for the Partners community is to allow people who do have the bandwidth and the expertise to provide services and support on the lower end (or the higher end if they so chose . This is pretty consistent with what Red Hat and other vendors do. Also if these partners get active in the community, like Jane, can show off their skills and talents and hopefully through their community credibility make it easy for some folks to decide which partner can help them best. I would hope over the course of the next year we add a ton of Zenoss partners that can provide training, ZenPack development and even hosted instances of Zenoss. That also begs the question of whether we resell Zenoss Enteprise ZenPacks individually. That's an option which we will continue to evaluate. The tough thing is that when you are a little company you can only bite off so many initiatives that doesn't mean we won't add more offerings and options as we grow

  • jcurry ZenossMaster
    jcurry
    1,021 posts since
    Apr 15, 2008
    Currently Being Moderated
    7. Sep 17, 2009 2:56 PM (in response to Mark Hinkle)
    Re: Zenoss and the Competition
  • jmp242 ZenossMaster
    jmp242
    4,060 posts since
    Mar 7, 2007
    Currently Being Moderated
    8. Sep 21, 2009 8:37 AM (in response to jcurry)
    Re: Zenoss and the Competition

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