How do you sell the idea of ASP.net over OSS?

Question

How many of you tried to sell ASP.net to client or boss but go up against the wall of free OSS stacks(PHP, RoR...etc.)?

Nothing wrong with OSS or ASP.net. I'm interesting in how to overcome selling ASP.net solution against OSS.

Answer 1

ASP.NET can be free/OSS.

Mono aside, there is nothing ASP.NET can do that any other lang/platform cannot. They all have their pros and cons, which is ENDLESSLY debated here and elsewhere, but in the end it all comes down to ecosystem and shop preference. If your devs are PHP guys, go with PHP. If you have a Windows ecosystem (especially with SQL Server), it can be very advantageous to go with ASP.NET - but only if your shop has that skillset.

If you are the lone ASP.NET guy in a Ruby shop, it makes less than zero sense to do a project in ASP.NET. It doesn't fit into your application portfolio, it's architecturally unsound, if you get hit by a bus then your company eats a huge overhead in hiring or training so someone else can take over.

The ecosystem and existing skillset are pretty much the only arguments that are effective for convincing management. Not coincidentally, they are also the most legit questions you should ask as well.

Answer 2

Selling it to a boss or a non-techie I'd just say that Microsoft has the support behind their technology. If there's a bug or something you don't have to rely on someone that's not getting paid to fix the problem. If the application is "Enterprise'ish" then this might be a big deal.

You could also mention that there are a lot of people that know ASP.NET and all that comes with it. The cost for developers is a bit lower than Java dev's I believe.

Maybe the last thing you could point out is how your particular problem would be best solved by something in the ASP.NET stack. Something that's going to shave tons of time off development. What exactly are you looking at in the ASP.NET world that's going to make your life easier and save the company money. That sort of thing.

Course, like Rex said there's a bunch of Pro's and Con's you have to factor in other things outside of it, but thought I'd throw a few ideas out there.

Answer 3

Ask yourself seriously why you're so dead-set on using ASP.NET. You've obviously got some reason for it if you're this keen to fight for using it - what is it?

Then it should be reasonably obvious whether or not that reason is a sensible thing for your company ("I think I will be able to build this site in half the time in ASP.NET") or not ("I hate Ruby").

And remember that there are other factors to it as well - especially given your mention of "client". Trying to push a particular technology on them may not endear you to anyone.

Answer 4

I'm interesting in how to overcome selling ASP.net solution against OSS.

The question should answer itself - if you don't know the differences and advantages of one over the other in a given situation, there's nothing we can do to help you.

The best way to convince someone else that your position is correct is by showing them how it solves their current problem better than the other options, and usually by better they mean "cheaper, faster to implement, technically superior."

In that order.

It's hard to convince someone that the commercial solution is cheaper than the OSS solution, but a case can be made regarding the number and cost of programmers, availability of support contracts and contractors that can speed up time to market, and lower maintenance costs over time because you're using "industry standard" tools.

It can sometimes be faster because right now there are more training programs for commercial tools than OSS tools. Need to get your programmers up to speed? They can learn C# in a week in Florida for only $1.5k a pop. They have to learn PHP on their own, or maybe there's a few day workshop by the local PHP shop, but it's not a 'certified' training by the company that makes PHP.

Technically superior can be argued either way, so you had best learn the differences between the two if you want to prove that one.

Depends on the project, people, resources

Note that whether the commercial solution is better on these three fronts than the OSS solutions is COMPLETELY dependent on the project, the company, the developers, IT, etc.

Don't think for an instant that one solution is better than another in all cases. There's a reason good carpenters have 4 different kinds of hammers on their belt and 15 back at the shop.

Answer 5

The Microsoft stack does have quite a lot going for it; beyond the initial cost (Windows Server 2008 Web Edition isn't too prohibitively priced, but it can be "too much" in some cases), there's the relative ease of use and administration (graphical management tools of a reasonable quality, although there's certainly nothing wrong with a good ol' shell), etc.

The platform itself is generally quite nice in many areas, and the tooling is pretty good, on the whole. Say what you like about ASP.NET Web Forms, but it's very easy to get going, and coupled with something like Linq-to-SQL or ADO.NET Entities, it's a cinch to get a bog standard CRUD application set up and running. Of course, ASP.NET MVC is pretty nifty too, if you want to go down that route.

That's not to say that a Microsoft stack is superior to a traditional LAMP stack in all scenarios; you can quibble over technical and philosophical superiority until the cows come home, but at the end of the day, there are going to be situations where you'll want to let the purists argue out the pros and cons while you get the job done.

Answer 6

Good components suite can accelerate development (hence neutralize the non-oss cost) Personally, I preferred python based solution. However, for current project, these demos seduced me into ASP.NET

Try show these to your client or boss.

http://demos.devexpress.com/ASPxperienceDemos/

http://demos.telerik.com/aspnet-ajax/controls/examples/default/defaultcs.aspx

http://aspnetajax.componentart.com/