Home » Archive » LxAdmin » Lxadmin Enterprise » The Number 1 Problem with LXLabs Products
| The Number 1 Problem with LXLabs Products [message #63051] |
Wed, 29 April 2009 13:09  |
 blinkie 
Messages: 56
Registered: January 2009 |
Valuable Member |
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At the moment, we're leaning back towards Parallels HSphere--a platform we first evaluated back in 2007 for deploying distributed hosting. The problem with LXLabs, unfortunately, is that you can't reliably build a business on this platform.
Yes, it's a nice interface that offers a lot of promise. And yeah, I'm sure that it will improve more over time. But here's the thing...
The current LXAdmin Enterprise (I have no experience with HyperVM) is that it is riddled with implementation shortcomings combined with a smattering of security issues (some known, some not), and hobbled with an almost 100% lack of customizability...mostly due to poor design by shortsighted developers.
There's more.
Documentation is extremely minimal. It's so bad that I would never want my customers to be directed to any of it. Nevermind that the only docs for admins are....well, pretty much these forums and then whatever help LXHelp chooses to dole out when he/she is not busy defending the development choices that have been made...actually, there's usually not a lot of defense, it's more like claiming that "this is the best unknown platform out there and everything else sucks." Then there's the he/she part I mentioned.
You see, in the past two weeks while trying to conduct business with LXLabs I have found that there is absolutely NO WAY to find out who (as in "the people") is behind LXLabs. You can't find anything here (in the forums), on the company's web site, or even through extensive Google searches. Asking directly "Can you please provide me with a contact name, email, phone number, etc." results in just the usual "Please use the lxhelp email address."
Huh? How are you supposed to build a business using a platform, built buy a company, that isn't forthcoming about it's identity? And why (WHY!) would anyone want to pay for the privilege of building a business around a platform that may not even be around in the next 4 or 5 years??
There is no way (0%) to know if any business will survive. That's for sure. But the risk of building a business around a company that operates in the elusive way that LXLabs does is just crazy. Nope, make that "plain stupid."
This is the number 1 reason I've suggested they provide a 100% open source license to the platform as an option. I will happily pay a few thousand dollars to get the actual source code of the currently shipping version so I have a safety net. And hey, as a perk, I could use this as a basis to build my very own customized system for my clients. This model would save me hundreds of hours building a system from scratch. It would bring LXLabs an amount of revenue in one shot that they otherwise wouldn't see in about 5-7 years from me. And because it's only for the currently shipping version, if I wanted to get access to updated code I'd have to forward the entire amount again or commit to some sort of annual update license (perhaps 10-20% of the initial cost). Sounds like an awesome plan to me and bound to be popular to at least a few of you.
But LXLabs has dragged their feet on the licensed code issue. They've come up with various excuses as to why this can't happen (AT ANY PRICE). And by LXLabs I mean of course the nameless person responding to tickets, since that's the only way you can communicate with the company. I've been told that all of the features that I could want will be there in 4 months time (don't hold your breath), and that they might be able to offer an open source alternative in 4 months, and that they will be opening an office in the U.S. in 4 months and everything will be 100% wonderful then. In 4 months.
Of course, I am putting a platform in place now and promises of "4 months" really don't mean much of anything when you need something yesterday.
Now, you can draw your own conclusion as to why open source presents such a burden to LXLabs (despite the winfall in immediate cash). They say licensing enforcement would be too time consuming (to which I responded there is no time consumed since we're talking 100% open source and anyone using the code without having purchased a license is in violation). There is no real way to enforce ANY license period other than through contractual agreements. Welcome to the real world where some people choose to be dishonest. Perhaps, the problem is the code itself (once again, draw your own conclusion as to what that might mean).
Anyhow, settling on HSphere is probably more expensive in the short term but the platform is built by a very reputable company where people have names, and I can even visit their offices if I want to. With LXLabs you are basically rolling the dice, crossing your fingers, and hope to hell the arrogance of the developers will eventually dissipate and lead to the platform that everyone wants...it's hard to know if any of this is happening now, of course, because not a single bug fix release
is accompanied by a ChangeLog of any kind despite their being a nice shiny button in the GUI that would provide that kind of information.
This my friends, is quite plainly a stellar example of how not to run a company. Take heed. And select your hosting platform carefully.
For those of you who are just now considering the LXLabs suite of products, hopefully this posting will serve as a warning.
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| Re: The Number 1 Problem with LXLabs Products [message #63071 is a reply to message #63051] |
Thu, 30 April 2009 02:45  |
Lxhelp
Messages: 23691
Registered: July 2006 |
The Champion |
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Hi,
First let me thank you for your carefully thought post, and I really appreciate your taking time to evaluate our products.
I am very sorry for your experience. Around 2 months back we consulted a marketing firm and enquired about the viability of the name lxadmin as a product, and we were told that the name is completely untenable as a generic software that can be used by non-technical people.
This, as you can imagine, was a very serious issue for us, since changing the name is a very complex process, and at lxlabs we have a very strict policy that we will not disrupt our customer's business. We have finally decided on a new name, and we have also finally created a way so that customers can trivially migrate from their old lxadmin systems to new system. But for the last two months, this name change took priority over everything else, and so our normally fanatic support had suffered badly.
You can rest assured that once the name change is complete you will see a completely different lxlabs where features are added on a per hour basis. Please give us a week, and we will be introducing the new software.
On Wed, Apr 29, 2009 at 05:09:10PM -0000, Blinkie wrote:
>
>
> At the moment, we're leaning back towards Parallels HSphere--a platform we first evaluated back in 2007 for deploying distributed hosting. The problem with LXLabs, unfortunately, is that you can't reliably build a business on this platform.
>
> Yes, it's a nice interface that offers a lot of promise. And yeah, I'm sure that it will improve more over time. But here's the thing...
>
> The current LXAdmin Enterprise (I have no experience with HyperVM) is that it is riddled with implementation shortcomings combined with a smattering of security issues (some known, some not), and hobbled with an almost 100% lack of customizability...mostly due to poor design by shortsighted developers.
>
> There's more.
>
> Documentation is extremely minimal. It's so bad that I would never want my customers to be directed to any of it. Nevermind that the only docs for admins are....well, pretty much these forums and then whatever help LXHelp chooses to dole out when he/she is not busy defending the development choices that have been made...actually, there's usually not a lot of defense, it's more like claiming that "this is the best unknown platform out there and everything else sucks." Then there's the he/she part I mentioned.
>
> You see, in the past two weeks while trying to conduct business with LXLabs I have found that there is absolutely NO WAY to find out who (as in "the people") is behind LXLabs. You can't find anything here (in the forums), on the company's web site, or even through extensive Google searches. Asking directly "Can you please provide me with a contact name, email, phone number, etc." results in just the usual "Please use the lxhelp email address."
>
> Huh? How are you supposed to build a business using a platform, built buy a company, that isn't forthcoming about it's identity? And why (WHY!) would anyone want to pay for the privilege of building a business around a platform that may not even be around in the next 4 or 5 years??
>
> There is no way (0%) to know if any business will survive. That's for sure. But the risk of building a business around a company that operates in the elusive way that LXLabs does is just crazy. Nope, make that "plain stupid."
>
> This is the number 1 reason I've suggested they provide a 100% open source license to the platform as an option. I will happily pay a few thousand dollars to get the actual source code of the currently shipping version so I have a safety net. And hey, as a perk, I could use this as a basis to build my very own customized system for my clients. This model would save me hundreds of hours building a system from scratch. It would bring LXLabs an amount of revenue in one shot that they otherwise wouldn't see in about 5-7 years from me. And because it's only for the currently shipping version, if I wanted to get access to updated code I'd have to forward the entire amount again or commit to some sort of annual update license (perhaps 10-20% of the initial cost). Sounds like an awesome plan to me and bound to be popular to at least a few of you.
>
> But LXLabs has dragged their feet on the licensed code issue. They've come up with various excuses as to why this can't happen (AT ANY PRICE). And by LXLabs I mean of course the nameless person responding to tickets, since that's the only way you can communicate with the company. I've been told that all of the features that I could want will be there in 4 months time (don't hold your breath), and that they might be able to offer an open source alternative in 4 months, and that they will be opening an office in the U.S. in 4 months and everything will be 100% wonderful then. In 4 months.
>
> Of course, I am putting a platform in place now and promises of "4 months" really don't mean much of anything when you need something yesterday.
>
> Now, you can draw your own conclusion as to why open source presents such a burden to LXLabs (despite the winfall in immediate cash). They say licensing enforcement would be too time consuming (to which I responded there is no time consumed since we're talking 100% open source and anyone using the code without having purchased a license is in violation). There is no real way to enforce ANY license period other than through contractual agreements. Welcome to the real world where some people choose to be dishonest. Perhaps, the problem is the code itself (once again, draw your own conclusion as to what that might mean).
>
> Anyhow, settling on HSphere is probably more expensive in the short term but the platform is built by a very reputable company where people have names, and I can even visit their offices if I want to. With LXLabs you are basically rolling the dice, crossing your fingers, and hope to hell the arrogance of the developers will eventually dissipate and lead to the platform that everyone wants...it's hard to know if any of this is happening now, of course, because not a single bug fix release
> is accompanied by a ChangeLog of any kind despite their being a nice shiny button in the GUI that would provide that kind of information.
>
> This my friends, is quite plainly a stellar example of how not to run a company. Take heed. And select your hosting platform carefully.
>
> For those of you who are just now considering the LXLabs suite of products, hopefully this posting will serve as a warning.
>
>
>
>
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| Re: The Number 1 Problem with LXLabs Products [message #63298 is a reply to message #63071] |
Sun, 03 May 2009 09:21 |
drank 
Messages: 1324
Registered: June 2007 |
Senior Master |
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| Lxhelp wrote on Thu, 30 April 2009 09:45 | Hi,
First let me thank you for your carefully thought post, and I really appreciate your taking time to evaluate our products.
I am very sorry for your experience. Around 2 months back we consulted a marketing firm and enquired about the viability of the name lxadmin as a product, and we were told that the name is completely untenable as a generic software that can be used by non-technical people.
This, as you can imagine, was a very serious issue for us, since changing the name is a very complex process, and at lxlabs we have a very strict policy that we will not disrupt our customer's business. We have finally decided on a new name, and we have also finally created a way so that customers can trivially migrate from their old lxadmin systems to new system. But for the last two months, this name change took priority over everything else, and so our normally fanatic support had suffered badly.
You can rest assured that once the name change is complete you will see a completely different lxlabs where features are added on a per hour basis. Please give us a week, and we will be introducing the new software.
|
So all the problems that blinkie described will be solved by changing the name??!! That's genius!!! LOL
It's hard to believe you'll change anything in your business model. You are only promises. I'll start to believe you only when I see your support and office phones posted on your site.
Best regards
Dragomir Denev
DGM
www.dgm.bg
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| Re: The Number 1 Problem with LXLabs Products [message #63383 is a reply to message #63379] |
Mon, 04 May 2009 19:13 |
Lxhelp
Messages: 23691
Registered: July 2006 |
The Champion |
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It is also that we are delivering nearly equivalent products at 1/10th the price of our competition, and the hosting industry is made of mostly do-it-yourself people implementing linux and open source software, and generally it has worked out for most of our paying customers.
Hosting industry cares for software that works, and not for having large corporations behind them.
For instance, linux has been success in the hosting industry much before it entered the enterprise. That's the way web hosting industry works. We care for things that work, and not for the hype.
The fact, hyperVM, Lxadmin, despite all the drawbacks, just WORKS. Which is absolutely sufficient for hosting industry. This is why, despite having a large corporation behind it, Plesk hasn't still caught up with Cpanel.
On Mon, May 04, 2009 at 08:32:14PM -0000, Blinkie wrote:
>
>
> Heh. I wanted to see if anyone else noticed that. It's a typical response: ignore the actual issues and come up with a totally unrelated answer to something else.
>
> I take the lack of responses to this thread to only mean that the market of actual paying (or maybe even installed) users must be fairly small.
>
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| Re: The Number 1 Problem with LXLabs Products [message #63386 is a reply to message #63384] |
Mon, 04 May 2009 20:00 |
Lxhelp
Messages: 23691
Registered: July 2006 |
The Champion |
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I have actually explained this in webhostingtalk discussion some time back. Hosting Industry is about commodity. Ultimately the softwares that fully succeed would be the ones that are cheap but does their job properly.
For instance, Open Source Linux vs costly Unix systems.
Ultimately the people who succeeded in the hosting industry were one's who were able to use the commodity softwares available cheap and then create a business out of them.
At the turn of the century there were indeed people who would used your logic and went with Solaris or AIX for web hosting, but now they have disappeared, and the people who succeeded are the one's that use Linux/cpanel plesk etc.
Thanks.
On Mon, May 04, 2009 at 11:31:03PM -0000, Blinkie wrote:
>
>
> I hate to have to be the one to break it to you but as someone who headed up IT operations at a major ISP...you simply don't know what you are talking about.
>
>
>
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| Re: The Number 1 Problem with LXLabs Products [message #63390 is a reply to message #63386] |
Mon, 04 May 2009 20:32 |
blinkie
Messages: 56
Registered: January 2009 |
Valuable Member |
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Truly actually, Linux was not a stable enough platform for any level of high volume hosting until about 1999. That's why Solaris garnered such high market share.
Hosting products are about commodity. In order to maintain low price points these products must be delivered with efficiency and that also entails reliability, since end user support is one of the highest costs hosting companies must bear and reputation is everything. Therefore, unreliable hardware and software combinations simply aren't acceptable to anyone except someone starting out.
What you are trying to suggest is that a large successful hosting company can run on cobbled together software installed on cheap hardware. That is simply incorrect. If it were true, we'd all be running our businesses on D-link switches, Buffalo RAID solutions, and generic PCs as servers. Instead, we build our businesses on Cisco, Network Appliance/EMC, and IBM. Go figure.
Really, you should just stop now.
You promise that today's bugs will be fixed and tomorrows features will be implemented in short order. Yet, there is no way to track bugs or know if they've been fixed (since you release software without change logs). Indeed, you say every important feature anyone could want will be delivered in short order...yet your narrow view of which features are critical and which are not will ultimately determine what is included. And still, perhaps worst of all, you guys still won't reveal your true identities.
There is no reputable company in the world that would do business with you under these circumstances. How is changing your name going to impact any of this? Especially when your current names are established????
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