Thursday, December 06, 2007 1:12 AM
If you haven’t checked out FogBugz or you don’t know what it is, do yourself a favor and watch the demo. FogBugz had me at “Evidence Based Scheduling”. Brilliant. Simple. Powerfull.
Joel had a great post where he talks about the ratio of sales between the installed and hosted versions of FogBugz. He says the installed to hosted ratio is 4 to 1. The ironic part about the timing of Joel’s post was that I was talking with FogCreek sales today.
Personally, I really want to use the hosted version. I really do. It’s not that I’m afraid of installing the application—I’m sure it will go fine with my particular flavor of server. My question is, “Why?” Why would I want to go through the trouble of all this setup, if instead I could just get myself and my team using the software. Don’t give me “security”—I’m willing to bet 2 to 1 that data on their servers will be more secure than data on yours (or mine for that matter -- after all if I have admin rights on it, who else does?)
The problem, for me, is that I work in the belly of an enormous, dysfunctional, rotting corpse of a company. Yes, Dilbert works at my company—we have lunch sometimes. Luckily I'm so weird and hidden I can get away with purchasing and using something as cool as FogBugz. The hosted version requires that I somehow get the company to pay for it monthly using a credit card—directly to FogCreek no less. Outrageous, I know (please note that I am being sarcastic). The sales staff offerred a reasonable (which is why it won’t work) solution to the problem of a re-occurring monthly charge. The trouble is there is no way for me to purchase anything without a P.O. Which sadly, FogCreek can’t quite offer. I don’t blame them, after the whole P.O. process, and receipt of an invoice it could take 90 days to cut the check.
I have to generate a P.O. based on the installed sales quote. A third party company will buy the software for me (and charge my company a fee). The good thing for FogCreek is that they’ll get their money. Doesn't that just sound insane?
Oh wait! Wally just got up to get the last cup of coffee -- gotta go -- I bet I can beat him to it.