So during the CFUnited conference Adobe and organizers offered a special deal on ColdFusion to the attendees. I thought that this was a highly cool deal. Adobe supporting the very people that promote them every day.
I quickly chatted up the Adobe people at the conference on how to accomplish this as I did have a project requiring deployment of 23 CF servers. They all were consistent, which is good; I need to talk to the Eastern Sales Rep (Dominick Conte) whom I could not find in person or in attendance anywhere, which is bad, but whose business cards where everywhere ;o)
So, upon my return, I happily attempted to call Dominick. Different times, different dates; only voice mail answering. I thought the guy must be selling this stuff like hot-cakes as he never is available via phone; so I gave up and send an email to ask how one orders these hot deals offered by Adobe on the show.
His initial response was that I was not really at the show. Interesting, approach; made me doubt my very existence for about a little less than 0.1 ms... ahhh... deep thoughts. Of course, I advised him how he can find out who attended and then was waiting for some sort of contact.
Alas, again, no-go.
I am now paraphrasing the emails that went back and forth thereafter:
Me: "hey wassup", "why you not talk to me?", and "how can I order your good stuff?" and "why is it so difficult to talk to you guys?".
Dom: "Yeah, I tried to talk to you" (I checked and no such phone logs), and " what the h..k do you want anyways?"
This is not going well I think, as I am very consitently asking this man who is in sales on how to place an order (partners, direct or what?). So, he finaly caves and shoots back an email that he is not really the dude to talk to and the only way I can get this offer is to talk to a company in Canada.
WTH?
Cheers,
B.
Addendum:
We finally did end up buying some licenses for different projects from Adobe through the reseller in Canada. The credit for this goes entirely to Adam Lehman who could get me a contact name for ordering.
Cheers,
B.
2 comments:
Bilal,
I've been looking into this issue based on this post. I too was at CFUnited and spent a considerable amount of time in the Adobe booth with Dominic and Matt (the two CF account managers on site). I've also heard directly from several customers who praised Dominic and this specific promotion so I'm surprised to read about your negative experience.
I have to admit, that many parts of this post don't seem to add up. It seems odd that you would risk moving your company's "23" servers to an alternative technology based on a single bad experience with a sales representative.
The company Dominic directed you to was New Toronto Group (NTG). While they are indeed based in Canada they are the #1 reseller of ColdFusion in North America. Unless you are buying directly from Adobe.com most orders are fulfilled by our partners like NTG. The ColdFusion account managers work with this partners on daily basis. You may be familiar with Carahsoft who is our government partner (present at CFUnited) or even FuzzyOrange our European partner.
FWIW. If you call NTG today (9/25) you can still get ColdFusion 8 with a 25% discount and ColdFusion 9 for free when it's released.
Adam Lehman
ColdFusion Product Manager
Adam,
thanks for your follow up; your feedback is appreciated. We are testing creation and management of cloud apps; there is no certainty that either Railo or Adobe CF will be used in the end; the whole CF universe is considered to be niche technology. No reason to go into the whole rational why it is not etc. ...
The "miscommunication" with Adobe in this case did not help the cause at all.
We do not deal with Adobe directly or any of the partners you mention here; our supply comes through TechData, Ingram, or HP.
Best,
B.
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