Has ConnectWise Set ScreenConnect Adrift as Ghost Ship Software?
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@jaredbusch said in Has ConnectWise Set ScreenConnect Adrift as Ghost Ship Software?:
I have been on ScreenConnect for years and years. Updates still come at a decent pace. I never upgrade it immediately mostly because I never check for updates but a couple times a year.
Good Ghost Ship marketing will include trivial interface level updates to make it feel like the product is being worked on, but the issue here is that the core of the product appears to be abandoned. The part that matters, and is hard, and would require expertise.
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@jaredbusch said in Has ConnectWise Set ScreenConnect Adrift as Ghost Ship Software?:
Their forum used to have a thread on release stuff. It was decently updated. Did you ever look at it? Or are you just bitching?
The updates from them are way more current than the forum. Their support can't get Allen's issues fixed, they threw up their hands and said "software dependencies not being maintained" as their excuse for not fixing issues.
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@jaredbusch said in Has ConnectWise Set ScreenConnect Adrift as Ghost Ship Software?:
Here it is.
https://controlforum.connectwise.com/yaf_topics9_Output-Stream.aspxThey make a thread for each version and they are consistently updated during the version process.
Look at how long between releases and how superficial the recently release is. It's not terrible, but doing facade updates and skipping the foundation of the application is a pretty big deal, especially when releases are 4-6 months apart.
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@scottalanmiller said in Has ConnectWise Set ScreenConnect Adrift as Ghost Ship Software?:
@stuartjordan said in Has ConnectWise Set ScreenConnect Adrift as Ghost Ship Software?:
it's a shame the Original owners of Screenconnect sold themselves out, but these buyouts normally end up making the product twice as expensive without any decent further development.
That's precisely my concern - a company that specialized in this one thing sold it to a company that specializes in Indian offshoring for L0 call handling where this product doesn't fit their portfolio and they have no skills to maintain. If they didn't retain and continue to support the skills that they bought from SC (if they even bought the development team at all) then they are likely stuck with no working product.
Beware vendors with free/cheap gifts...
To be blunt, this is something that is the eventual endgame for MOST "free/low cost" software that is underpricing the industry in their space by a non-sustainable amount.
If you choose software that is in the "Free as in beer, or cheap as in Keystone" category, this is the eventual endgame is SOMEONE will monetize it. Look at 5Nines, the price spikes for LogMeIn, every weird low cost pre-paid shell service, ultra-cheap backup products, HCI platforms that are cheaper than the raw hardware, etc.There are two ways to look at this.
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Review the companies financials before considering them a serious bidder for your solution. Be extremely cautious of private companies. Review when their last round of funding was and understand that someone who's just at an angel or A round likely has a VERY short runway and could disappear overnight. Understand that someone who's at C/D round is likely about to either IPO (If the valuation of 10x the Venture Capital that has gone in is doable) or be acquired and have to shift to becoming more profitable.
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When they say "We are profitable" understand that they are likely talking non-gaap financials where they ignore things like employee compensation in their calculations. If they are private and old (5+ years) recognize that key individuals likely have had their stock vest and may just up and leave if they don't get an exit (Sale, or IPO). The end game for all companies no matter what they say is IPO or Sale.
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Look at the storage market. Everyone was going to disrupt Netapp/HPE/HDS/EMC and look at where we are today from Revenue and market share. Tintri, Violin, Nimbus, Nimboxx, and dozens of others are now in the dustbin of history. Markets mature, and 1-2 major players tend to absorb most of the profits. By the time they lose market share (like Cisco in core routing and switching) the margin and profitability has evaporated and moved on to another level (in this case security, SDN, NFV, 5G, IoT automation etc).
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Recognize that sometimes it's worth the risk to play with the small niche startup/cheap players. If the cost to operationalize, migration, redeploy, retrain everyone for something else is low then maybe it's not a big deal. (If Someone gave me a free compute mouse that's actually quite trivial to move out of it within a specific timeframe). Some other services carry great costs (IF I have a PB in a cloud-based object storage system and I have 30 days to move it out because they are going bankrupt, I'm kinnnnnda screwed). If I have 7 years of retention on my backups and my backup provider goes out of business I have to figure out how to re-hydrate that old data and get it into another archiving system.
Kooler told me about a story of a customer who asked for free trials constantly and ended up a rack full of demo gear of companies that failed while they were doing try and buys. (Thought this was hilarious). That said, I've seen the shop who had 3 different storage arrays that had been abandoned by their vendors. Recognize that some products are going to be less sticky than others (Remote access tools), Some will be time sinks to move (Migrating monitoring systems with heavy customization) and some will carry large risks (Running storage or backup systems without support).
I liked doing business with public companies when I was a customer because I could read their books, and see that they had enough cash to continue for 10 years if they started loosing 100 million a quarter. It's true they abandon products (Watch out for vendors who don't have a large presence in a market with Gen1 products). it's true they sometimes just kill support and run companies into the grown through terrible management (although you can see this coming if you see activist investors stack the board and force a new CEO). These risks exist but frankly they are easier to follow if you just read their finanacials, and follow the executive dramma on TheRegister.
I don't mean to come in here with a FUD cannon and say "free stuff sucks, no one ever got fired for buying IBM!" but I do want to point out that you need to look beyond technology and learn some finance if you want to be involved in vendor selection. Complaining on the internet about someone abandoning your market segment doesn't really do any good.
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Good advice and all, but worth noting even a healthy company might accept investment or buyout from a larger company just because it is good money. It doesn't mean that the old ScreenConnect wasn't healthy, it could be that it just made so much money from the buy out that they didn't care.
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@scottalanmiller said in Has ConnectWise Set ScreenConnect Adrift as Ghost Ship Software?:
@jaredbusch said in Has ConnectWise Set ScreenConnect Adrift as Ghost Ship Software?:
Their forum used to have a thread on release stuff. It was decently updated. Did you ever look at it? Or are you just bitching?
The updates from them are way more current than the forum. Their support can't get Allen's issues fixed, they threw up their hands and said "software dependencies not being maintained" as their excuse for not fixing issues.
I'd like to point out that a public company sold an upfront subscription (and booked revenue) and then failed to deliver a product that "shipped" and met those promises that would be something the SEC would investigate. Private companies can promise anything (even features that never ship, or ship 2 years later). Public companies MUST ship in quarter anything they promise.
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I don't think it's fair to call ScreenConnect ghost ship when other products are really releasing new features faster. I forgot who said that once a product gets to about version 6 it's pretty mature in what it does and you shouldn't expect ground breaking new features in subsequent versions.
If GoToAssist/LogMeIn/Bomgar had come out with a bunch of features in the last year that ScreenConnect didn't, I would probably feel differently, and I would vote with my dollars at renewal time.
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@storageninja said in Has ConnectWise Set ScreenConnect Adrift as Ghost Ship Software?:
Review the companies financials before considering them a serious bidder for your solution. Be extremely cautious of private companies. Review when their last round of funding was and understand that someone who's just at an angel or A round likely has a VERY short runway and could disappear overnight. Understand that someone who's at C/D round is likely about to either IPO (If the valuation of 10x the Venture Capital that has gone in is doable) or be acquired and have to shift to becoming more profitable.
I think this is great advice and is often overlooked.
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@mike-davis said in Has ConnectWise Set ScreenConnect Adrift as Ghost Ship Software?:
I don't think it's fair to call ScreenConnect ghost ship when other products are really releasing new features faster.
New features aren't relevant, really. The issue is maintaining the current product to working levels. Currently, instead of fixing things, they simply warn that the product is not working properly and insecure.
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@mike-davis said in Has ConnectWise Set ScreenConnect Adrift as Ghost Ship Software?:
I forgot who said that once a product gets to about version 6 it's pretty mature in what it does and you shouldn't expect ground breaking new features in subsequent versions.
Product version mean nothing. If someone said that, they didn't know anything about software. Many products, Windows for example, start in higher numbers. Windows NT started on version 3 to make it sound more mature to specifically trick people who think version numbers would tell them something of that nature.
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@mike-davis said in Has ConnectWise Set ScreenConnect Adrift as Ghost Ship Software?:
If GoToAssist/LogMeIn/Bomgar had come out with a bunch of features in the last year that ScreenConnect didn't, I would probably feel differently, and I would vote with my dollars at renewal time.
Why would features matter? If the product is good and does what is needed, features are just wasted resources. But maintaining a working product is a million times more relevant.
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@scottalanmiller said in Has ConnectWise Set ScreenConnect Adrift as Ghost Ship Software?:
@mike-davis said in Has ConnectWise Set ScreenConnect Adrift as Ghost Ship Software?:
I don't think it's fair to call ScreenConnect ghost ship when other products are really releasing new features faster.
New features aren't relevant, really. The issue is maintaining the current product to working levels. Currently, instead of fixing things, they simply warn that the product is not working properly and insecure.
Except that they have never recommended your version of their solution. They built it second. The product has always been designed to run on Windows with native .Net.
Just because you don't like that, does not negate the design of the solution.
Maybe you should never have used it in the first place.
Sounds like poor research on your part if that is how you are feeling.
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@scottalanmiller said in Has ConnectWise Set ScreenConnect Adrift as Ghost Ship Software?:
@mike-davis said in Has ConnectWise Set ScreenConnect Adrift as Ghost Ship Software?:
If GoToAssist/LogMeIn/Bomgar had come out with a bunch of features in the last year that ScreenConnect didn't, I would probably feel differently, and I would vote with my dollars at renewal time.
Why would features matter? If the product is good and does what is needed, features are just wasted resources. But maintaining a working product is a million times more relevant.
Except when it's not...
If you have low penetration of a market, features are more important than maintenance of existing customers for a sub-set of existing features. If a feature will get you 10K customers, and not maintaining the Linux build will lose you 100 customers that's a trivial simple decision for their product managers.
The first 100 customers you get will look nothing like the next 10K customers you get is a problem for software products.
I suspect the Windows version is the most popular (It's what I used).
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@scottalanmiller said in Has ConnectWise Set ScreenConnect Adrift as Ghost Ship Software?:
@mike-davis said in Has ConnectWise Set ScreenConnect Adrift as Ghost Ship Software?:
I forgot who said that once a product gets to about version 6 it's pretty mature in what it does and you shouldn't expect ground breaking new features in subsequent versions.
Product version mean nothing. If someone said that, they didn't know anything about software. Many products, Windows for example, start in higher numbers. Windows NT started on version 3 to make it sound more mature to specifically trick people who think version numbers would tell them something of that nature.
Veeam did this also. Started at 3.
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@storageninja said in Has ConnectWise Set ScreenConnect Adrift as Ghost Ship Software?:
@scottalanmiller said in Has ConnectWise Set ScreenConnect Adrift as Ghost Ship Software?:
@mike-davis said in Has ConnectWise Set ScreenConnect Adrift as Ghost Ship Software?:
I forgot who said that once a product gets to about version 6 it's pretty mature in what it does and you shouldn't expect ground breaking new features in subsequent versions.
Product version mean nothing. If someone said that, they didn't know anything about software. Many products, Windows for example, start in higher numbers. Windows NT started on version 3 to make it sound more mature to specifically trick people who think version numbers would tell them something of that nature.
Veeam did this also. Started at 3.
It's become increasingly common. Once companies realized that people actually went by the numbers and ignored the product, it was a simple way to prey on the gullible. People basically forced it to happen. The told vendors they didn't care about product quality, only the name. So everyone renamed.
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@jaredbusch said in Has ConnectWise Set ScreenConnect Adrift as Ghost Ship Software?:
@scottalanmiller said in Has ConnectWise Set ScreenConnect Adrift as Ghost Ship Software?:
@mike-davis said in Has ConnectWise Set ScreenConnect Adrift as Ghost Ship Software?:
I don't think it's fair to call ScreenConnect ghost ship when other products are really releasing new features faster.
New features aren't relevant, really. The issue is maintaining the current product to working levels. Currently, instead of fixing things, they simply warn that the product is not working properly and insecure.
Except that they have never recommended your version of their solution. They built it second. The product has always been designed to run on Windows with native .Net.
Just because you don't like that, does not negate the design of the solution.
Maybe you should never have used it in the first place.
Sounds like poor research on your part if that is how you are feeling.
That it was their second choice is not how you are portraying it. It was and is official, just as official as the Windows version. And we moved to it at the time because it was vastly superior for us (lower maintenance, better performance.) Windows didn't cut it, the Linux version did. Now the Linux version isn't cutting it AND the Windows version isn't. But you can't pick and choose what's official yourself. They made it official, they are failing support and upkeep.
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Firefox started changing version numbers like every month, a few years ago.
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@wrx7m said in Has ConnectWise Set ScreenConnect Adrift as Ghost Ship Software?:
Firefox started changing version numbers like every month, a few years ago.
Suse moved to 42 not that long ago, from like 11.
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Numbers and marketing aside, are there products out there that have had major changes after 6 major releases? I think 90% of the functions people use in Microsoft Word were in version 6.
For the guys trying to host their own screen connect server, why? We try to steer our customers to products in the cloud, why not use them ourselves? I've used Screen Connect that a private company hosted themselves and then started a screen connect subscription. The first thing I noticed is that I got the updates faster from the screenconnect hosted option.
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@mike-davis said in Has ConnectWise Set ScreenConnect Adrift as Ghost Ship Software?:
Numbers and marketing aside, are there products out there that have had major changes after 6 major releases? I think 90% of the functions people use in Microsoft Word were in version 6.
For the guys trying to host their own screen connect server, why? We try to steer our customers to products in the cloud, why not use them ourselves? I've used Screen Connect that a private company hosted themselves and then started a screen connect subscription. The first thing I noticed is that I got the updates faster from the screenconnect hosted option.
Because I already had it before there was a hosted option. And the cost to change is not worth it.
