[Zope] FW: a Question about quality of Digicool support

[addyd@unk.edu]

Hi All,
I subscribe to a University & College Webmasters List. I mentioned Zope in
response to a question today which seemed to elicit the following message.
I post it here, because I feel that he will find more people who can speak
to the quality of Digicool support (including Digicool personel
themselves).

I have to admit that I have not yet taken the Zope plunge myself, but have
been following its maturation process for over a year. I am philosophically
behind Open Source in general and Python/Zope in particular. I think that
the attitude displayed in this letter is the sort of thing that
Zope/Digicool will have to know how to answer/overcome in order to achieve
widespread success. I feel that universities are a great place for Zope to
focus their efforts as it is from there that students (and staff) move out
into the "real world". Encouraging Zope adoption and implimentation THERE
could be one of the wisest places in which to invest support (and prove to
be a great test bed for Zope development).

Here is the message. I leave it to you to decide whether it would be best
to Cc this list with your replies to him. I (personally) would like to see
the responses too.
(CMS refers to "Content Management Systems"):
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::

After evaluating several CMS products, we started getting really excited
about Zope (we actually started recreating the site in Zope just to prove
how easy it is).  So far so good, but now that more of the college is
hearing about our work, we're being asked to take a look at commercial CMS
products as well.

There's a faction on campus that feels that "you get what you pay for" and
the open source nature of Zope makes those folks nervous.  Unfortunately,
I'm having a hard time identifying commercial CMS products that aren't
marketed as "e-business platforms".  Has anyone had any experience with a
company that makes a CMS product and also understands the university
environment?  I would be thrilled if I could find a sales rep that is
willing to hold our hand and take their time with us, and can be patient
with the less technical folks on our staff.

Basically my feeling is that the only thing that could make me want to use
something other than Zope is 1) Excellent customer service, 2) A company
that really understands the university environment and can make our
non-technical staff see the benefit of their product, 3) A company that can
make the "you get what you pay for" faction happy by presenting itself as
being in it for the long haul.

Does anyone have any experience with Digicool's commercial Zope support?
This may actually represent the best of both worlds.

Also, if any of you are actually using a CMS now (commercial or open
source), please let us know as it will help us guide our decision making.

Thanks,
Jason Wehmhoener
Web Coordinator
De Anza College
http://www.deanza.fhda.edu
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Darren Addy
Web Specialist
Information Technology Services
University of Nebraska at Kearney
addyd@unk.edu