[Manifold-l] Manifold reference clients

[Dennis Blum]

I strongly concur.  The Manifold Wikipedia entry is a helpful marketing
reference too.

-----Original Message-----
From: manifold-l-bounces at lists.directionsmag.com
[mailto:manifold-l-bounces at lists.directionsmag.com] On Behalf Of F Whiteley
Sent: Monday, October 16, 2006 6:47 AM
To: 'Pat Waggaman'; manifold-l at lists.directionsmag.com
Subject: RE: [Manifold-l] Manifold reference clients


Pat your wrote...

>>The point was raised that the forestry industry works long term, it 
>>takes 20 years - down here - to grow trees

I brought this topic up at the Manifold user meeting at UCL and we had an
interesting discussion about it.  As the number of licences sold was not
forth coming from Manifold, there was a concern regarding Manifold long term
funding of the product.  From my perspective the sales don't seem to support
the expenditure, which apparently means we are getting a real bargain!  

I don't care how it is financed just as long as I can run Manifold, and yes,
at least one of the users represented was a large civil engineering company
using other mainstream GIS systems and Manifold appeared to be their
preferred product. 

So we can be assured the product is a good solid GIS and fit for purpose: we
have a very good bargain software which may or may not be around for very
long.  

20 years is too long to plan for in software terms, so what can we expect?
My advice is nothing, don't bargain on anything.  Protect your application
by being in a position to port to another GIS if you need to - this could be
expensive and long winded, but only a cost you would incur in the unlikely
event that Manifold folds or is bought out and yanks up the prices.  This
scenario is likely to happen to any company, but probably more likely with
Manifold than those that have been around since 1985.

Manifold actually gives you the ability to protect yourself to a certain
extent from this event - using external databases to hold the data will
allow you to migrate to another system if you have to, albeit with some cost
in extra programming and systems admin.  You should do this in any system.

Even adding the extra cost of porting from Manifold licensing will be
significantly cheaper at this time ( about 1/10th ).

The biggest worry I have is activation keys: Manifold may go bust and we
will loose access to the keys.  Now that that the key is machine specific I
doubt if taking an image of the disk will help if you loose your hard drive.
This is built in obsolescence and guarantees you must buy more licences, but
Manifold just might not be there when you need them.  You will be forced to
migrate when Manifold goes bust, and copy all those projects to another
package that you did for previous clients just in case one comes back
wanting more work done.  If you had the old open system of trust you would
not need to panic and plan your migration accordingly.  I am not sure if the
license server option gets around this at all.

The other draw back I have noticed with activation keys is that they
generally only work for a specific machine - this means that the machine has
to be dedicated to that software, but if you are using multiple packages you
can find that two people have to use the same machine but different
packages. This becomes a pain if you have lots of packages and a few users.
The old dongle system avoided this and was pretty flexible but I guess is
too expensive for Manifold. 

I would really be happier if I could buy the software for life, not till the
next hardware failure or upgrade, and be able to back it up for 10 years
without fear.

All this needs to be costed in both Manifold and its suggested alternative.
My guess is that Manifold will still win hands down.  

But all the uncertainty is not helping - I think Manifold are playing things
too close to their chest: A lot of people will be put off developing new
code based on Manifold ( a heavy investment) if they think the cost
justification is about to go pear shaped any minute now.

Francis






-----Original Message-----
From: manifold-l-bounces at lists.directionsmag.com
[mailto:manifold-l-bounces at lists.directionsmag.com] On Behalf Of Pat
Waggaman
Sent: 11 October 2006 21:03
To: manifold-l at lists.directionsmag.com
Subject: [Manifold-l] Manifold reference clients

Listees,

In a Web based dynamic forest fire control system presentation into the
Chilean forestry industry, up against the usual "protect the job, expand the
fiefdom & burn 2 candles to Dangermond before sleeping" 
folks, we did just fine; with one exception.  The point was raised that the
forestry industry works long term, it takes 20 years - down here - to grow
trees.  ESRI is not expected to go out of business, and as such will support
long-cycle businesses, Manifold might be another tech boom flash & fizzle.

I refrained from a long discussion of destructive technologies and the
strategic targets of our favorite Crimson Russian; limiting myself to
pointing out that ESRI wasn't much 20 years ago.  Ducked the reference
client issue by pointing to our own client list.

Now I've got to go back into the board with the proposal where I'll take
that shot again from the - very comfortable, very low productivity - GIS
department.  Forearmed ...

Folks, could you provide me with some Fortune 500 - 100 companies, and
governments of similar stature using Manifold?  Perhaps some forestry
industry folks could point at North American, Scandanavia or Austral
forestry co's / governments such as Simon's legendary Tasmanians?

Dimitri, could Manifold make a specific statement on the issue?  Nice to
have client penetration references of "principal GIS" but perfectly all
right "verifiably in use if reference checked."

Thanks,

Pat

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