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On Sat, Dec 03, 2005 at 12:13:11PM +0000, Rob Beard wrote:
<snip>
> Well I was thinking if I could send out a general mail-shot to try and
> get a bit more custom, then once I have my foot in the door so to speak,
> then start suggesting ways that they could improve things.
>
> I was thinking, once I've done a couple of jobs for the company, then
> discuss their servers. If they don't have any servers but would like to
> make life easier (like central backups, central data storage, e-mail on
> the server rather than on each PC), or if they have an old Novell or
> Windows NT server, then I would suggest Linux. I was thinking about the
> giving back to the community, and maybe charging a small charge for the
> media (say £10) and donate this back to the distro. I feel like I've
> been enjoying all this free software, I'd like to give something back
> for it. I would then say offer a basic support package in the price of
> installation/setup where I would make say monthly visits to the company
> and regular e-mails to make sure everything is working fine.
>
> If they needed any further support (say 24x7 support) then I'd charge a
> call out fee.
>
> The other option I was thinking was offering service contracts, I've got
> to do a bit more thinking about that though. With it just being me
> working on the business at the moment, I think offering 4 or 8 hour
> responce times may stretch me a bit, but thats not to say if business
> picks up enough I could take on some staff.
Whatever works..my thought would be that most business want to reduce
their cost of doing business, and that most business' do not care what
computer software they have as long as they increase their profits, are
comfortable with the long term reliability and support, and their staff
are happy. I believe Debian (linux) can offer this to a lot of
companies.
IF you can see someone and offer them the potential of increasing their
profits, AND making their lives easier then I think you would have more
interest than a mail shot.
Needless to say, what you offer will depend on your skill set and
the size of the company you are approaching. An established company
with tailored MS software will demand a very different approach (and
products) to a start up. In our case, the server was never really
used. Now it is. Can more be done? Yes. When? Depends on the users.
Support etc, all I know is that if I was running a small business then
if something went wrong; I want it fixed NOW; and I do not want any
surprises. But with a good set up, what is likely to go wrong?
- A virus attack?
- DoS Attack?
- Unauthorised amendments to the system?
- Hardware failure?
- Expansion?
ie you can offer a 24*7 for certain problems, knowing that you should
never be called out for it. On other problems you can offer a 24 hour
turnaround. If they give you remote access, some problems can be resolved
quicker.
Feedback to the community: I agree giving to the distro would be good.
Other options would include hosting a distribution server for the
software and also if you are successful, I would bet that the company
would want you to tailor some software to make their life easier. Under
GNU that would also be opensource....
http://tinyurl.com/cttql: John of Salisbury (1159) in his Metalogicon:
"Bernard of Chartres used to say that we are like dwarfs on the
shoulders of giants, so that we can see more than they, and things
at a greater distance, not by virtue of any sharpness on sight on
our part, or any physical distinction, but because we are carried
high and raised up by their giant size."
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