[business] Ægir Support Services

Fri Aug 28 10:19:35 EDT 2015

I've been working on a draft of the support offerings, and have come up
with this, so far:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1h9prbW0Z65Ykt5hPWAhzXsiDbpPesuw0ddM6w-cNMYw/pubhtml?gid=0&single=true

Feedback is obviously most welcome.

Also, should we consider adding training services?

Christopher Gervais  :|:  Principal,  Ergon Logic Enterprises
514.945.6442  :|:  christopher.gervais at ergonlogic.com

On 19 August 2015 at 02:44, Christopher Gervais <
christopher.gervais at ergonlogic.com> wrote:

> We appear to be in agreement that the Ægir Project should be offering
> support directly. We ought to focus on the Ægir distribution itself,
> including golden contrib. Support for the rest of contrib, or anything
> custom, should be referred to member and partner agencies and consultants.
> A finder's fee (10%?) on this referred work seems fair.
>
> I rather like the simplicity (and pricing) of Proxmox's subscription model
> <https://www.proxmox.com/en/proxmox-ve/pricing>. Basically, it scales on
> the number of support tickets, the level of engagement (forum, portal,
> SSH), and the scale of deployment (CPU count). The Best Practical RT
> Support Model <https://www.bestpractical.com/services/support.html> is
> similarly structured, but adds emergency and phone support at the top end.
> Seeing as how Ægir already caters to both individual developers, and large
> institutions, we'll probably want a blend of both models.
>
> Tech support is a well-defined discipline that usually get's divided into 3
> or 4 tiers
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_support#Multi-tiered_technical_support>.
> Since our goal is to help maintain and develop Ægir, the core team should
> focus on tiers 3 (bugfixing) and 4 (re-factoring and re-architecture),
> while coaching experienced tier 2 (troubleshooting) and first-line tier 1
> (diagnosis) members.
>
> My preference is for a cooperative business model, which would support the
> independence of its members, but I'm open to other suggestions. I'm not
> certain how or whether multi-national membership works here in Canada, but
> I'll look into it, if there's interest. The alternative would probably be a
> consortium, but I'm not very familiar with how they're structured. Either
> way, we'll need some basic governance.
>
> I also prefer to keep our internal operational overheads to a minimum. We
> should simply subscribe to RT, Askbot, etc., thus supporting fellow libre
> software projects whenever feasible. Contracting a bookkeeper, accountant
> and other professionals, allows all workers to focus on our competencies.
>
> Christopher Gervais  :|:  Principal,  Ergon Logic Enterprises
> 514.945.6442  :|:  christopher.gervais at ergonlogic.com
>
> On 14 August 2015 at 19:03, Cameron Eagans <me at cweagans.net> wrote:
>
>> I'm interested in taking smaller things as a freelancer. I don't work
>> through a company for Aegir stuff.
>>
>> We might be able to solve the ticket allocation problem pretty easily:
>>
>> - Everyone goes into a queue
>> - First ticket that comes in goes to the first person in the queue or
>> they can refuse it
>> - That person goes to the end of the queue and the next person gets the
>> next ticket and so forth.
>>
>> Personally, I think it would be a good idea to sell support tickets
>> through the Aegir project as a funding mechanism, rather than pass off an
>> entire client. Maybe we (the project) could ask for some percentage of
>> income generated from the support tickets?
>>
>> Cameron Eagans
>>
>> On 8/14/15 3:51 PM, Guillaume Boudrias wrote:
>>
>> I'm obviously interested as well, and I can commit in Praxis' name.
>>
>> We've already committed to working on Aegir issues one day a week, so
>> I'd also be glad to be a part of a more sustained maintenance initiative
>> if we can make it happen.
>>
>> I'm assuming we're talking about a sort of centralized support ticket
>> system here (and not really large support contracts) so correct me if
>> I'm wrong.
>>
>> I foresee differences in how we want to implement the support plans, but
>> Praxis is still in the experimental stage in that regard so we can
>> probably shift to any reasonable way of doing things.
>>
>> Another crucial point is how tickets will be distributed. I'm guessing
>> that most everyone involved will want as many support tickets as
>> possible, and we want to make the response time as short as possible
>> (which means we won't have time for debate). I don't have any specific
>> ideas on this point but to me it seems like the most sensitive one.
>>
>> Looking forward to seeing where this goes,
>> -Guillaume
>>
>>
>> On 14/08/15 05:18 PM, Herman van Rink wrote:
>>
>> On 14-08-15 06:51, Christopher Gervais wrote:
>>
>> The main takeaway from the Ægir Summit confab with Richard Stallman is
>> that we ought to be offering support to finance ongoing maintenance
>> and development of the project. "We" here being the Ægir Project
>> itself, whether directly or indirectly.
>>
>> This makes perfect sense. It should open up a market that has
>> heretofore been vastly under-served: commercial and institutional
>> users who have neither the budget to hire consultants, nor the spare
>> time, staff or desire to become experts themselves.
>>
>> Before, at and since the Summit, many project and community
>> contributors have talked about forming a consortium or cooperative to
>> offer such support. Let's agree to move forward with this, declare our
>> interest in participating and sort out how to proceed. I know that I'm
>> eager to see this move forward.
>>
>> I believe it is important to build the service around offering
>> support. This should, in turn primarily finance the generally
>> unappealing work of maintenance and documentation. Developers like to
>> work on cutting edge features, and consulting clients are often
>> willing to finance such work. However, fixing bugs, writing and
>> curating good documentation, code refactoring and cleanup are all very
>> difficult to justify spending IT budget on.
>>
>> Many active Ægir project and community contributors already offer
>> hosting and/or consulting services, including me. This endeavour must
>> not seek to undermine these established niches, but rather benefit
>> them by growing the market, and generating and referring /more/
>> consulting and hosting business.
>>
>> In fact, these very individuals and organizations, that already help
>> to drive the project forward, are the ideal participants in such a
>> venture. I invite all of them to join me in making this a reality. You
>> can start by declaring an interest to participate, and adding your
>> thoughts to this discussion.
>>
>>
>> I'm in.
>>
>> I do however value my independence.
>>
>> A Support Services could set baselines about what a client could expect,
>> while still leaving room to individual members to utilize their personal
>> strengths.
>>
>> The 'easy' way from our side would be to direct a new prospect client to
>> one of the members, and let any contracts be directly between them.
>>
>> For a client it might be more comfortable to get a contract with the
>> project's support organisation where they don't have to care who does
>> the work.
>>
>> The last thing I would want is bad feelings between members, so we'd
>> have to devise some clear guidelines on who is responsible for what and
>> where the money flows.
>>
>> --
>>
>> Met vriendelijke groet / Regards,
>>
>> Herman van Rink
>> Initfour websolutions
>>
>>
>>
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