Dear Daud,  thanks for your question.

People having different opinions is definitely not something new to us and we're happy to assist where we can.  Although it's pretty difficult to answer in general without knowing those opinions and/or so-called competing products, however here some ideas from the top of my head that could assist you:

Tackling costs, again I would welcome looking to the details as we can on short notice provide you a budgetary quotation.  But in general, I would advise you calculating a 5Y TCO. Meaning a total cost of ownership tackling your initial investment costs, the savings you make by consolidation tools/support/resources, the support costs, the update costs, the upgrade costs, the costs to add new products and their impact on your operational ecosystem, the cost of changes on the platform due to new requirements/market situations, the cost of education, the cost when new colleagues join to onboard them, the cost of searching the right answers, the cost of not having an open ecosystem, the cost of not being able to benefit from constant improvements further enhancing value to you, etc.  Experience learns that the world can look pretty different by doing a full 5Y TCO cost exercise.  People typically underestimate the cost of software heavily, maybe not in its initial investment but in its total cost over a longer period - when doing this exercise suddenly people realize that DataMiner is by far not too expensive and delivers a lot of value truly helping the organization.

Other facts you can take with you:

• Number one solution:  DataMiner is the leading & fastest growing network management & OSS solution for the ICT Media & Broadband market.  In other words, you're joining an experienced and large network of professionals (see also this DOJO community where thousands of people consult and add content on daily basis) adding value to you day over day.  Not only about DataMiner but in the wider technology ecosystem we're living in today and tomorrow (knowledge is power) - how to make and benefit from the right decisions proven by many companies before. How to make DataMiner the most future-proof and cost-efficient open software platform.
• True vendor agnostic: DataMiner is a vendor-agnostic platform, integrating with any system from any vendor.  In the media business, we've today +7000 connectors available off-the-shelf from +500 manufacturers, this alone is by far the largest catalog in our market.  Hence from a risk management (and cost) point of view, you have the guarantee that your products can be integrated and likely already have been integrated. Here you not only benefit from Skyline experience but also from market experience embedded into those products already.
• Any protocol:  Our connectors can communicate any type of protocol, whether it's standard off-the-shelf or vendor-specific you have the guarantee we can communicate in the requested language.  And this tackles standard trap, polling type of connections, or the more modern telemetry/streaming type of interfaces in the market.  If a software solution you're looking at belongs to a certain technology manufacturer you know it's there with one single main business purpose - supporting the technology of the vendor as a first goal (and because they need claim to be open to third parties but that's more a must than a priority).  Please take with you the following thinking.  How can a software monitoring solution that is developing technology from brand X provide you with a guarantee it can integrate the technology from its competitor brand Y.  Correct, it cannot and in the end, this party will lock you into their environment.  That's the business model they operate, with DataMiner you know unconditionally it can be integrated. You 100% choose the technology today and tomorrow independent of the manufacturer of choice and you know tomorrow that's going to be 100% possible.
• Open intuitive user-friendly UI: With DataMiner you can design the UEX exactly to your needs using an open intuitive user-friendly UI that is packed with unique features and capabilities.  At run-time, you can update your platform.
• Dev-Ops style: DataMiner is Dev-Ops open, in other words changing, adding products, logic, UIs, users, etc. it's all possible at run-time.  DataMiner is an enabling platform, where you can model/configure everything on the solid foundation we've. Platforms today change constantly, having the capabilities of handling these changes yourselves while avoiding engineering/consultancy costs can be pretty different in your total TCO.
• Security and CI/CD:  Security is key, looks at what's happening around us. Software solutions, networks, companies are being hacked - how are you protecting yourselves from it?  A firewall only is not doing the job, at Skyline we take this seriously, and security plays a pivotal role in our complete software development & quality testing and deployment services. CI/CD workflows in Skyline are fully automating internal processes from design to deployment - making software reliable, secure, and future-proof.  Software in our industry needs to be able to receive constant improvements through updates/upgrades without interfering with the operational ecosystem or allowing downtime in parallel there is no room for dropping on security.
• Functionality:  In general monitoring platforms today & tomorrow are not only about being able to see if something went wrong only, today it's all about having a solid data acquisition & control plane that is not only able to pinpoint immediately what services are impacted, but allow you based on the wealth of data to make instant use of it, e.g. to automate the resolution of the fault, to predict if and when are things going wrong in your ecosystem in the near future, to manage the onboarding of systems, to orchestrate business processes, to manage virtual and physical resources and their capacity, to build solutions tackling specific use-cases...  Today Automation is key to mitigate recurring costs and avoiding disasters. In addition, artificial intelligence is becoming crucial in further reducing & avoiding failures going to happen, which means eventually further drive down costs for your organization and constantly looking to increase the value.
• ...

There are many more points I can add, therefore don't hesitate to get in touch with me to learn more about your requirements and how we can assist you to show how DataMiner is your only and best choice.

Glenn

glenn.dhaene@skyline.be