Thread: The Business Case for PostgreSQL

Looks nice !
One question - how about localization ? I mean not just a translation, which
I assume should be ok (?), but also changing of some country-specific
content, for example, a list of companies using PostgreSQL.

Oleg

On Fri, 15 Jun 2007, Liam O'Duibhir wrote:

> All,
>
> I have posted to Advocacy before about the Business Case for PostgreSQL
> initiative.
>
> I am pleased to announce that a full-colour A4 and US print-format PDF copy
> of the "Business Case for PostgreSQL" document is now available from the
> Fujitsu Supported PostgreSQL (FSP) website:
>
> http://postgresql.fastware.com/community/business_case_for_postgresql
>
>
>
> We think it looks pretty good!
>
> Because this is essentially a marketing document, we have also made
> available the Adobe Illustrator (.ai) files which can be used by graphic
> designers to alter the document to suit a particular purpose. These are
> downloadable from the FSP site, but will hopefully also be available in
> PgFoundry very shortly.
>
> Anyone who wishes can contact us and seek an invitation to contribute to the
> content of this document -- it is available as a Google Doc:
>
> http://docs.google.com/View.aspx?docid=dfd3vbhv_0dd3hvh
>
> The document is licensed under a Creative Commons license.
>
> However, as we hope this document will prove to be a useful marketing tool
> for PostgreSQL, we are particularly interested in contributions from
> marketing professionals and business people committed to promoting
> PostgreSQL to business decision-makers (CIOs, CEOs, CFOs, etc.). The
> language of the document is intended to "speak" to this group.
>
> The document is, and will remain, vendor-neutral. It is designed to
> exclusively promote open source PostgreSQL as a great business solution for
> an organisation's database needs.
>
> Much as happens with PostgreSQL source code in preparation for a release, we
> hope to update the Business Case document in a regular cycle.
>
> I look forward to discussing this further with the community and others.
>
> Regards,
>
>
> Liam O'Duibhir
>
>

     Regards,
         Oleg
_____________________________________________________________
Oleg Bartunov, Research Scientist, Head of AstroNet (www.astronet.ru),
Sternberg Astronomical Institute, Moscow University, Russia
Internet: oleg@sai.msu.su, http://www.sai.msu.su/~megera/
phone: +007(495)939-16-83, +007(495)939-23-83

Liam O'Duibhir wrote:
> All,
>
> I have posted to Advocacy before about the Business Case for PostgreSQL
> initiative.
>
> I am pleased to announce that a full-colour A4 and US print-format PDF
> copy of the "Business Case for PostgreSQL" document is now available
> from the Fujitsu Supported PostgreSQL (FSP) website:
>
> http://postgresql.fastware.com/community/business_case_for_postgresql
>
>
>
> We think it looks pretty good!

Liam,

I agree - *excellent* work. My only comment is that it has been noted in
the past that colouring the SQL in PostgreSQL differently promotes the
incorrect name Postgre :-(.

Can that be fixed?

Regards, Dave

Liam O'Duibhir wrote:
> All,
>
> I have posted to Advocacy before about the Business Case for PostgreSQL
> initiative.
>
> I am pleased to announce that a full-colour A4 and US print-format PDF
> copy of the "Business Case for PostgreSQL" document is now available
> from the Fujitsu Supported PostgreSQL (FSP) website:
>
> http://postgresql.fastware.com/community/business_case_for_postgresql

Very nice .. one area where I was not sure if the message comes across
just right is under the title "Stop paying for software modules you
don't need". I think this could be interpreted as an excuse for lack of
features.

Maybe things like contrib should be mentioned here or the fact that
there are multiple different bundles that are based on PostgreSQL that
tailor to specific types of users?

regards,
Lukas

On Friday 15 June 2007 05:28, Lukas Kahwe Smith wrote:
> Liam O'Duibhir wrote:
> > All,
> >
> > I have posted to Advocacy before about the Business Case for PostgreSQL
> > initiative.
> >
> > I am pleased to announce that a full-colour A4 and US print-format PDF
> > copy of the "Business Case for PostgreSQL" document is now available
> > from the Fujitsu Supported PostgreSQL (FSP) website:
> >
> > http://postgresql.fastware.com/community/business_case_for_postgresql
>
> Very nice .. one area where I was not sure if the message comes across
> just right is under the title "Stop paying for software modules you
> don't need". I think this could be interpreted as an excuse for lack of
> features.
>
> Maybe things like contrib should be mentioned here or the fact that
> there are multiple different bundles that are based on PostgreSQL that
> tailor to specific types of users?
>

Or turn it on it's head... You wont have to pay extra to gain access to
advanced functionality, and the cost of software wont increase even if your
needs for features does.

--
Robert Treat
Build A Brighter LAMP :: Linux Apache {middleware} PostgreSQL

> We think it looks pretty good!

Great work Liam and kudos to your team.  I am guessing that from Idea ->
writing the copy -> Design/styling there is a total of 80 .... 120 hours
+ additional for the website work.

A printed vsn belongs in that wandering, Professional Booth.

Please pass out the appropriate # of back pats on behalf of someone that
fights with that type of work on a daily basis.

Thanks,
Mike Ellsworth

On Fri, 15 Jun 2007, Robert Treat wrote:

> On Friday 15 June 2007 05:28, Lukas Kahwe Smith wrote:
>> Liam O'Duibhir wrote:
>>> All,
>>>
>>> I have posted to Advocacy before about the Business Case for PostgreSQL
>>> initiative.
>>>
>>> I am pleased to announce that a full-colour A4 and US print-format PDF
>>> copy of the "Business Case for PostgreSQL" document is now available
>>> from the Fujitsu Supported PostgreSQL (FSP) website:
>>>
>>> http://postgresql.fastware.com/community/business_case_for_postgresql
>>
>> Very nice .. one area where I was not sure if the message comes across
>> just right is under the title "Stop paying for software modules you
>> don't need". I think this could be interpreted as an excuse for lack of
>> features.
>>
>> Maybe things like contrib should be mentioned here or the fact that
>> there are multiple different bundles that are based on PostgreSQL that
>> tailor to specific types of users?
>>
>
> Or turn it on it's head... You wont have to pay extra to gain access to
> advanced functionality, and the cost of software wont increase even if your
> needs for features does.

Or, go a little further, as some people may not mind 'paying extra to gain
access...'  Add to it something like, "You won't have to pay extra to add
additional production servers to your infrastructure", only more
concise...

--J

Josh wrote:
> On Fri, 15 Jun 2007, Robert Treat wrote:
>
>> On Friday 15 June 2007 05:28, Lukas Kahwe Smith wrote:
>>> Liam O'Duibhir wrote:
>>>> All,

>> Or turn it on it's head... You wont have to pay extra to gain access to
>> advanced functionality, and the cost of software wont increase even if
>> your
>> needs for features does.
>
> Or, go a little further, as some people may not mind 'paying extra to
> gain access...'  Add to it something like, "You won't have to pay extra
> to add additional production servers to your infrastructure", only more
> concise...

You could be specific:

No per cpu charges.
No per machine charges.
No "extra" functionality charges.
Yes, more money for your business.

Sincerely,

Joshua D. Drake


>
> --J
>
>
> ---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
> TIP 6: explain analyze is your friend
>


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> You could be specific:
>
> No per cpu charges.
> No per machine charges.
> No "extra" functionality charges.
> Yes, more money for your business.

"PostgreSQL keeps more money in your company's coffers because you can use
all of its advanced functionality and increase the number of CPU's and
machines whenever you want without paying additional license fees."

-J

Centuries ago, Nostradamus foresaw when josh@globalherald.net (Josh) would write:
>> You could be specific:
>>
>> No per cpu charges.
>> No per machine charges.
>> No "extra" functionality charges.
>> Yes, more money for your business.
>
> "PostgreSQL keeps more money in your company's coffers because you can
> use all of its advanced functionality and increase the number of CPU's
> and machines whenever you want without paying additional license fees."

"PostgreSQL helps keep more money in your company's own coffers
because you can expand to use more functionality, more machines, and
more CPUs whenever you choose without incurring any licensing fees."

It may also be worth mentioning something about it being valuable to
invest...

"Given the savings in cost that PostgreSQL offers, organizations
frequently find it worthwhile to invest some part of that in assuring
the ongoing vibrancy of the community.  The most visible form of such
investment may be the contribution of new code, but investment can
come in many other forms including assistance with systems integration
work to ensure that their favorite OS platforms are well supported."

Aside: I've requested edit access; I noticed a few typos here and
there in the document, and it's probably easier to Just Fix Them...

I have a thought as to dealing with the case where extensions *are*
necessary.  Here's the beginning of an approach...

There may be cases where you wish to have some extension to the
database system.  Traditionally, when this has been the case, you
would need to justify to the vendor the value of this, very likely
including paying them to make the change, and subsequently, for
extended support thereafter.

With PostgreSQL, organizations have found it worthwhile to have
developers (internal or external) prepare such extensions.  There is
always the option of keeping these enhancements proprietary to your
own organization, but frequently it proves worthwhile to contribute
such enhancements back to the community, where, if they are of
sufficiently widespread interest, the costs of support may be divided
across an entire community of interested users.

Not all necessarily worth adding, but I suspect there's an idea or two
in there...
--
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http://linuxdatabases.info/info/slony.html
Rules of the Evil Overlord #103. "I  will make it clear that I do know
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<http://www.eviloverlord.com/>

One bit that I think I vigorously disagree with:

"In the same way, adding features you want, whether ordinary ones like
replication or exotic ones such as complex statistics, is easy."

As a mathematician (couple of Math degrees in my past ;-); I'll put
this hat on for a moment...), who works on replication, I think this
is totally backwards.

Implementing complex statistical functions tends to be, behind the
scenes, a pretty Simple Matter Of Programming.  The formulae may look
nasty, but the computations are usually not all that bad, once
understood.

In contrast, I have to call replication a "pretty exotic" feature.
And I don't think implementing replication is particularly easy,
either.  The challenges with multimaster are legion...

"From the outset, PostgreSQL was constructed to meet the goals of
active businesses which could rely on it as a core element of their
mission-critical IT infrastructure."

Nope.  At the outset, it was constructed as a research project.  When
it became an OSS project, I'm not sure those were yet the goals.

I haven't made any changes relating to these bits, but (thanks, omar!)
I have gone through and made a lot of generally minor wording changes
to make tenses and references more consistent.
--
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<http://www.eviloverlord.com/>

On Sunday 17 June 2007 23:10, Chris Browne wrote:
> One bit that I think I vigorously disagree with:
>
> "In the same way, adding features you want, whether ordinary ones like
> replication or exotic ones such as complex statistics, is easy."
>
> As a mathematician (couple of Math degrees in my past ;-); I'll put
> this hat on for a moment...), who works on replication, I think this
> is totally backwards.
>
> Implementing complex statistical functions tends to be, behind the
> scenes, a pretty Simple Matter Of Programming.  The formulae may look
> nasty, but the computations are usually not all that bad, once
> understood.
>
> In contrast, I have to call replication a "pretty exotic" feature.
> And I don't think implementing replication is particularly easy,
> either.  The challenges with multimaster are legion...
>

replication is ordinary in the sense that every database system has, and many
people roll your own.  And I'll note rolling your own in postgresql is quite
a bit easier than rolling your own in say, sql server (We've done both at
OmniTI).  My engineering hat tells me that the statement should be tempered
with a "relativly easy" maybe... or replace easy with "PostgreSQL does a good
job staying out of your way"... but otherwise I don't it is that far off the
mark.

> "From the outset, PostgreSQL was constructed to meet the goals of
> active businesses which could rely on it as a core element of their
> mission-critical IT infrastructure."
>
> Nope.  At the outset, it was constructed as a research project.  When
> it became an OSS project, I'm not sure those were yet the goals.
>

Yeah, this one is probably more problematic.  Could it be argued that, having
created one system and seeing how it fared commercially, that Stonebreaker &
Co. did have in mind the idea of POSTGRES becoming a basis for a commercial
system as well?  Maybe someone from the "Old School" can comment?

--
Robert Treat
Build A Brighter LAMP :: Linux Apache {middleware} PostgreSQL

xzilla@users.sourceforge.net (Robert Treat) writes:
> On Sunday 17 June 2007 23:10, Chris Browne wrote:
>> "From the outset, PostgreSQL was constructed to meet the goals of
>> active businesses which could rely on it as a core element of their
>> mission-critical IT infrastructure."
>>
>> Nope.  At the outset, it was constructed as a research project.  When
>> it became an OSS project, I'm not sure those were yet the goals.
>
> Yeah, this one is probably more problematic.  Could it be argued
> that, having created one system and seeing how it fared
> commercially, that Stonebreaker & Co. did have in mind the idea of
> POSTGRES becoming a basis for a commercial system as well?  Maybe
> someone from the "Old School" can comment?

There is another possible interpretation for this, namely that the
"outset" refers to the time at which Postgres95 transformed into the
"open source" project called PostgreSQL.  *Perhaps* that could
describe how things were at that time.

Although the reports seem to more be about the goals in those days
being to get PostgreSQL to stop crashing and losing data.  I'm not
sure that gives something particularly good to point to :-(.

It seems safer to me to point back to the "research project" past, and
to point out that this means Postgres was expected to have "bleeding
edge" features.  That may undercut the desire to say what is in that
first paragraph up top, but if that paragraph isn't really true, we
can't say it :-(.
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inconveniently pulls the plug at the last moment. (If I have access to
REALLY  advanced technology, I  will include  the even  better back-up
device known as the "battery.")"  <http://www.eviloverlord.com/>

We've had some great feedback on the Business Case document. Thanks to
everyone who made a suggestion.

Recapping...

+ Set up a To Do list
+ Set up a means to facilitate Localisation
+ Some unfortunate typos (how can that be!!!!)
+ Colouring the SQL part of PostgreSQL differently is not good.
+ Include Australian reference sites such as Hitwise
+ Include reference to New Zealand Electoral Roll case study
+ Rethink the line "Stop paying for software modules you don't need".

Looking forward to version 2 already.

Thanks again,

Liam.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Josh [mailto:josh@globalherald.net]
> Sent: Saturday, June 16, 2007 3:23 AM
> To: Joshua D. Drake
> Cc: Robert Treat; pgsql-advocacy@postgresql.org; Lukas Kahwe Smith; Liam
> O'Duibhir
> Subject: Re: [pgsql-advocacy] The Business Case for PostgreSQL
>
>
> > You could be specific:
> >
> > No per cpu charges.
> > No per machine charges.
> > No "extra" functionality charges.
> > Yes, more money for your business.
>
> "PostgreSQL keeps more money in your company's coffers because you can use
> all of its advanced functionality and increase the number of CPU's and
> machines whenever you want without paying additional license fees."
>
> -J

On 6/17/07, Chris Browne <cbbrowne@acm.org> wrote:
> Implementing complex statistical functions tends to be, behind the
> scenes, a pretty Simple Matter Of Programming.  The formulae may look
> nasty, but the computations are usually not all that bad, once
> understood.

Agree.

> In contrast, I have to call replication a "pretty exotic" feature.
> And I don't think implementing replication is particularly easy,
> either.  The challenges with multimaster are legion...

Definitely agree.

> "From the outset, PostgreSQL was constructed to meet the goals of
> active businesses which could rely on it as a core element of their
> mission-critical IT infrastructure."
>
> Nope.  At the outset, it was constructed as a research project.  When
> it became an OSS project, I'm not sure those were yet the goals.

Agree completely.

--
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EnterpriseDB Corporation            | fax: 732.331.1301
33 Wood Ave S, 3rd Floor            | jharris@enterprisedb.com
Iselin, New Jersey 08830            | http://www.enterprisedb.com/

liamod@fast.fujitsu.com.au ("Liam O'Duibhir") writes:
> We've had some great feedback on the Business Case document. Thanks to
> everyone who made a suggestion.

FYI, I have done quite a lot of minor word-crafting on the document.

Most paragraphs have a sentence or so rewritten.  It's worth doing a
"diff" between "before Chris" and "after Chris"; there are a lot of
little improvements, I think...
--
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-- First Baron Acton, 1834 - 1902

On Mon, Jun 18, 2007 at 08:31:59AM -0400, Chris Browne wrote:
> xzilla@users.sourceforge.net (Robert Treat) writes:
> > On Sunday 17 June 2007 23:10, Chris Browne wrote:
> >> "From the outset, PostgreSQL was constructed to meet the goals of
> >> active businesses which could rely on it as a core element of their
> >> mission-critical IT infrastructure."
> >>
> >> Nope.  At the outset, it was constructed as a research project.  When
> >> it became an OSS project, I'm not sure those were yet the goals.
> >
> > Yeah, this one is probably more problematic.  Could it be argued
> > that, having created one system and seeing how it fared
> > commercially, that Stonebreaker & Co. did have in mind the idea of
> > POSTGRES becoming a basis for a commercial system as well?  Maybe
> > someone from the "Old School" can comment?

As we all know Stonebraker's commercial branch of Postgres circa 1992
was called Miro'/Montage/Illustra.  Then they got bought by Informix,
the stock dropped, Informix was split up and the database went to IBM.

elein
elein@varlena.com