Challenges of bundling Solr out-of-box

[Pulkit Singhal <pu...@gmail.com>]

I am hoping to get some feedback from the users in this list about how they
tackled the challenges of bundling Solr out-of-box with an existing product
that was already being sold to customers.

Technical challenges of indexing & searching by adopting Solr are trivial
when compared to the fact that the customer now has to be told how to
maintain their search indices for optimum performance using Solr
administration!!!

I do understand that any product that adopts Solr probably had this coming
to them anyway but for folks that move away from structured-search database
technologies and into the text-search world ... they aren't quite sure how
to ask their customers to become search-savvy administrators all of a
sudden.

Any thoughts on how you broke you customers into loving the Solr experience?

- Pulkit

Re: Challenges of bundling Solr out-of-box

[Markus Jelsma <ma...@openindex.io>]

Hi,

You're right, there are new technical challenges for customers that don't have 
the experience in-house. Some customers have personnel you can teach how to 
monitor and maintain an installation. Others just take a service level 
agreement or just let it run forever without issues, if the environment allows 
it.

Customers that don't want to become "search-savvy administrators all of a 
sudden" can opt for a SLA.

Cheers,

> I am hoping to get some feedback from the users in this list about how they
> tackled the challenges of bundling Solr out-of-box with an existing product
> that was already being sold to customers.
> 
> Technical challenges of indexing & searching by adopting Solr are trivial
> when compared to the fact that the customer now has to be told how to
> maintain their search indices for optimum performance using Solr
> administration!!!
> 
> I do understand that any product that adopts Solr probably had this coming
> to them anyway but for folks that move away from structured-search database
> technologies and into the text-search world ... they aren't quite sure how
> to ask their customers to become search-savvy administrators all of a
> sudden.
> 
> Any thoughts on how you broke you customers into loving the Solr
> experience?
> 
> - Pulkit