[ This Open Letter was sent to Cerb2/Cerb3 On-Demand customers this afternoon. ]

Hey there,

It’s time for us to spend more of our lives on the Cerberus Helpdesk project focusing on what we feel we’re doing right.

While we’re making a good case that Cerb4 is more focused, coherent, and easier to use than past versions, we feel we likely haven’t spent enough time explaining the advantages of our Cerb4 On-Demand model. There’s a lot of value in providing things On-Demand that goes far beyond just having access to the software with your browser; we take over all the server-side headaches — upgrades, backups, security, performance tuning, monitoring, etc.

As a Cerb2/Cerb3 On-Demand user you’re already familiar with how the basic process works. However, we rebuilt Cerb4 from scratch around what we’ve learned over the past several years by hosting hundreds of helpdesks like yours. There are many advantages in the latest version that we simply can’t offer to users of past versions because of the intentional deep cooperation between Cerb4’s design and the On-Demand model.

Which brings me to my point: It’s increasingly time-consuming for us to manage multiple On-Demand environments, especially given that the past versions are inefficient by design. We need to face the fact that we will never return a significant amount development attention to the older versions. We’re very confident in the Cerb4 foundation and approach. We need to retire Cerb2 and Cerb3.

Consequently, we’d like to offer you a choice from these more sustainable options (in order of long-term viability):

#1) Upgrade to Cerb4.

Cerb4 is different, but there’s a method to the madness. We’ve reigned in the “Frankenstein Factor” to refocus the project around a central mission: team-based e-mail that helps you extract value from all the conversations taking place every day that would be closed and lost forever in other applications. We haven’t perfected that process yet, but it’s something we constantly refer to as we look ahead. For example, you should have a way to highlight great feedback independent of a ticket – tickets are quickly buried, but good ideas and opinions should survive them and find their way to the right decision makers who aren’t on the front lines of customer service.

Incentives: If you’re currently paying less than $65/mo for On-Demand you can keep your current discounted rate with Cerb4 until you cancel. If you’re currently paying more we’ll discount you to $65/mo for unlimited workers. We’ll also migrate your existing helpdesk data to the new service free of charge.

All our Cerb4 On-Demand helpdesks are located on our faster network and fastest servers.

You can find an overview of what’s offered with Cerb4 On-Demand here:

http://wiki.cerb4.com/wiki/On-Demand

#2) Move On-Site.

If you feel that you absolutely can’t use anything but Cerb2 or Cerb3 then you can continue running your current version forever if you move your helpdesk to a general purpose hosting account or server. Our objection is to living with our past mistakes, but if you want to be roommates with our past mistakes then you have our blessing.

Incentives: We’ll offer you a free On-Site license for Cerb2 or Cerb3. We can also provide a database backup in your preferred format, and we’ll even upload it to your desired location for you (which is usually much faster than downloading it and re-uploading it).

#3) Stay, but pay more.

Our network is now specialized for Cerb4 On-Demand, and the current discontinuity requires us to teach our team three major ways of doing everything. The earlier versions predate many of our team members, and you can imagine how wrong it feels to spend our time training new people our outdated ways of thinking. It’s a pointless, time-consuming, corrupting influence – and that’s putting it lightly.

We’ll be moving any legacy helpdesks that decide to “stay put” to our new server network. These are faster machines, on a faster network, with more maintainable environments. While these are more maintainable, it doesn’t avoid the issue of us having to support and train for three different environments.

DIS-incentives: On November 1st 2008 we’ll be raising the monthly rate of Cerb2 On-Demand and Cerb3 On-Demand to $125/mo.

Please respond at your earliest convenience to let us know your preferred course of action. If we don’t hear back from you we’ll assume option #3 (which preserves your current situation but raises the price).

-Jeff@WGM