Who Supports Free Software?

When you purchase commercial software and you run into problems, you can always complain to the company that got the check. But what happens when you download open source software for free off the Internet?

With OpenNMS, the community provides a number of support options at no cost. However, there are times when that is not enough. If your company relies on OpenNMS, the purchase of commercial support gets you directly in contact with the people most likely to be able to solve your problems. Plus, revenues from support go directly into making the product better.

Many commercial software companies charge extra for support, and you are required to pay those fees in order to get upgrades and bug fixes. It is a bit ironic to buy a piece of software and then to find out it doesn't work due to a bug, and then to have to pay extra to get it to do what it should have done in the first place.

Since all of OpenNMS is free and open, we at the OpenNMS Group have to earn your business. If you decide that our support isn't worth the money, you can still use the latest version of the product at no cost. But we think that once you experience working with our knowledgeable staff, you'll wonder how you lived without it.

How Does It Work?

OpenNMS requires no license keys, so there is no way for us to track whether you have one instance of OpenNMS running or ten, or if you are monitoring 500 devices or 50,000. So we did away with all of that "node based" pricing. Each OpenNMS support package includes a certain number of contacts who can open tickets. The lowest number is two: one primary and one backup. Contacts can open as many tickets as they require.

As OpenNMS has grown, we had to divide support into Basic and Enterprise versions. There are certain features such as distributed monitoring, the event translator, the importer and the trouble ticket API that require a considerable amount of configuration yet are not used by some of our clients. Thus we created Basic support to provide a cost-effective option for them. Enterprise customers are covered for all aspects of the application. There is no difference between the software used for each option, just the type of support we are able to provide.

Support tickets are one of three types:

• Configuration Questions: OpenNMS is amazingly powerful and configurable. Over 90% of tickets are opened with respect to getting OpenNMS to do a certain task. Often there may be more than one way to address an issue, and our experienced consultants can offer suggestions on the best way to solve the problem.
• Bugs: Even the best software has bugs. Due to the architecture of OpenNMS they can usually be addressed quickly, and due to its open source nature a fix can be deployed in hours or days versus weeks and months.
• Feature Requests: Rarely the answer to a support ticket is simply "OpenNMS doesn't do that." It is unusual, but you always have the option of purchasing a custom development project to add the missing feature. In addition, when it comes to determining new features to be added to the product, those requested by commercial customers are given a much higher priority.

Custom Support

The OpenNMS Group can also create custom support options for your particular needs. While normal support covers the operation of OpenNMS, it is also possible to purchase additional Developer Support if you need to ask questions about the code itself. The Ultra support package was designed for those companies who integrate OpenNMS with their customer-facing systems where downtime is very obvious. It includes Developer Support as well as the highest level of support offered.

Sounds Too Good to Be True, What's the Catch?

Purchasing OpenNMS support is not a replacement for having knowledgeable management staff on hand. Ultimately our role is to maximize the value of OpenNMS to your organization, but it is outside the scope of support to create a management strategy or to train people on the use of the product. Luckily, we can also provide those services, just not as part of support.