XenServer Backup
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@olivier said:
@coliver Grenoble, France. We found a small team of investors that "helped us" last year, but that's really small amounts of money. But despite that, our growth is not bad, and we continue to focus on great features coming soon!
Cool, good to hear. Do you have a feature road map? Or is that something you guys try to keep quiet?
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@coliver Full transparency in our documentation: https://xen-orchestra.com/docs/roadmap.html
edit: Forever Forward Incremental Backup is not displayed there, but it's for this month. Continuous replication too. And a first beta of our self service portal.
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@olivier is it possible to setup an online demo of the full solution for people to trial?
Obviously you'd need a platform for it, but it might further the customer base for XOA.
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@olivier said:
@coliver Full transparency in our documentation: https://xen-orchestra.com/docs/roadmap.html
edit: Forever Forward Incremental Backup is not displayed there, but it's for this month. Continuous replication too. And a first beta of our self service portal.
Thanks! I'll have to give this a try when I get a chance. Not that I'll be able to pay :(.
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@DustinB3403 That's something already crossed my mind. But it's not that easy to do. You can't emulate a XenServer infrastructure. So we got two choices: a fake interface or a real stuff but with limited rights to avoid bad things ^^ Again, can't be everywhere, not a priority.
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@olivier Just a thought that popped into my mind. It would certainly help to resolve some of these questions.
Of course there's maintaining this environment, ensuring it's appropriately locked down (permissions) etc.
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@olivier said:
@scottalanmiller Nope. But nobody here will bet a penny on you if you don't have any income in less than 1 year. Roughly, they understand Internet as a mean to sell shoes.
Then explain it as "selling more shoes at lower cost to sell" instead of "selling fewer shoes with a larger marketing investment."
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@DustinB3403 said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@olivier said:
@scottalanmiller We are not in US here. Investors don't believe in this. And a very few succeeded by doing that.
Basically you just said that your investors don't believe in making money.
I think what he said is he wouldn't have any investors if his company wasn't making money. Or at least a model to make money.
Good investors, the big ones, make their big money by investing when a company is small and betting big. If you are investing in a company already profitable, your opportunities for big wins are small.
What he is explaining is that they really only have traditional investors there, and this is a well known European problem, they lack the venture capital ecosystem that drives the US economy.
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@scottalanmiller We are in a niche market. And lower cost is only possible if it's scalable. But scalable means more complex pricing, for us and for customers. There is no "trivial" way ^^
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@scottalanmiller said:
@DustinB3403 said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@olivier said:
@scottalanmiller We are not in US here. Investors don't believe in this. And a very few succeeded by doing that.
Basically you just said that your investors don't believe in making money.
I think what he said is he wouldn't have any investors if his company wasn't making money. Or at least a model to make money.
Good investors, the big ones, make their big money by investing when a company is small and betting big. If you are investing in a company already profitable, your opportunities for big wins are small.
What he is explaining is that they really only have traditional investors there, and this is a well known European problem, they lack the venture capital ecosystem that drives the US economy.
This.
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@olivier said:
@scottalanmiller We are in a niche market. And lower cost is only possible if it's scalable. But scalable means more complex pricing, for us and for customers. There is no "trivial" way ^^
I think it is only niche because of some of these decisions. It's not naturally niche.
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I know that in Norway, they are working on developing a venture capital ecosystem but it is a struggle. The older generation thinks of protecting their money in terms of "putting it in the bank" and only slightly hedging against inflation. In the US, we think of protecting our money in terms of keeping it out of banks and getting it straight into money making business ventures so that it makes more money.
There is a huge opportunity for smart US investors, because it is just natural here, to invest abroad in start ups as they people ready to do the new businesses are there, but crippled by the lack of local investment.
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@scottalanmiller Hmm.. XenServer market is around 100k companies around the world. This IS a niche market by definition (comparing to VMWare)
We didn't start commercial stuff with XO without having some figures of the industry. Now if you have other data, I'm always eager to read them
Why only XenServer users? Because they are easy to target AND convert when you start the business (works out of the box. People won't change their hypervisors like that).
edit: I like the "think big" stuff, but as I said, that's not possible in Europe.
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So @olivier do you need more investors and what is the asking "put" from investors to get into the business?
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@DustinB3403 There is no short answer to this question ^^
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@olivier said:
@scottalanmiller Hmm.. XenServer market is around 100k companies around the world. This IS a niche market by definition (comparing to VMWare)
Ah, but that's not a good way to look at the market. Look at it this way...
XenServer's registered install base is 100K companies. That's a small number of the real installs combined with the Xen installs. I know of no company with XenServer that reports to Citrix or to anyone. Some do, 100K do, but most do not. So the install base is more likely something like 500K or a million.
But that doesn't matter. What does?
The XenServer market for companies that need a good interface option is.... 100K or 500K or a million. How many VMware players need an interface replacement solution? Zero.
So, in reality, XenServer is the biggest market here.
Now, make this work with Hyper-V too and your market would explode. Add KVM, explode again. You could easily have a product that is anything but niche. You could have the go to interface for the entire sensible virtualization market. All three products are in need of a free, open source solution for this. With a little push in the right direction you could literally own the global market. Sure, most won't pay. But the number that would would be... huge.
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This is turning into a AMA.....
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@olivier said:
edit: I like the "think big" stuff, but as I said, that's not possible with European investors.
FTFY
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As far as niche, I think that you are missing something else there. The size of the Xen and XenServer non-cloud market is capped by a few things...
- Lack of backup solutions
- Lack of free and low cost third party solutions
- Lack of extensive, easy to use interfaces
Who solves these problems? You do. Who determines the niche-ness of the Xen market? To quite some degree, you do.
Why does any company not use Xen? Basically the reasons above and/or confusion. Now, confusion takes a huge toll on good products and you cant magically overcome that. But the rest, you can. You have an opportunity to redefine the Xen marketplace.
