"The LDAP Guys."

Symas™ Services

Symas has several different kinds of services offerings: Distributions, Development Services, and LDAP University™ The Distributions are binary distributions of Open Source Software prepared for the use and benefit of paying subscribers. Development services can either be sponsored development of Open Source Software for contribution back to the communities or enterprise-specific development to help in design, development and integration of Symas's sponsored Open Source Products into the enterprise. LDAP University is a series of training courses for OpenLDAP (Symas's Connexitor™ Directory Services distribution or CDS) or PADL's authentication enhancement libraries (Connexitor Naming Service distribution or CNS).

The table below summarizes list prices. Details follow the table.

Distributions 

Connexitor™ Directory Services (CDS) 

CDS is Symas's distribution of OpenLDAP and related Open Source Software packages.

CDS Silver - The Free Version

CDS is available for free download from our download portal in a version which comes with no support and which is not actively maintained. This distribution is referred to as CDS Silver and is intended as a training/familiarization tool. CDS Silver may well be adequate for small installations where the directory is not mission critical and technical support is not generally required. There are two optional support services offerings for CDS Silver: incident support and annual email support.

For enterprises or users who are generally happy with CDS/OpenLDAP and very occasionally run into a problem for which support from Symas is needed, we offer incident-based support. Generally, an incident is initiated by sending an email to Symas's Support Email and paying an initial fee of $300US via Paypal to that same email. This fee opens an incident and pays for up to two hours of work on Symas's part on the requestor's behalf. At the end of two hours, Symas will report progress and discuss continuing effort at our standard rates (currently $200US/hour).

Customers happy with CDS Silver and wanting unlimited email support can get an annual CDS Silver subscription agreement for $995 per year per server.

CDS Gold

CDS Gold is the full, current, commercial distribution of CDS. It is available under an annual support subscription for $6,000US per server. Support for the standard CDS Gold distribution includes maintenance of the source and binary software products as normal Open Source Software project activity updates the software, access to any updated versions of the CDS binary distributions made and posted during the subscription period, and defect corrections for defects in the software as delivered. Defects are limited to functional failures in functionality originally programmed into the software and do not include extensions or improvements which can be requested under separate development contracts. CDS Gold includes unlimited technical support via email with the understanding that the support email line is only officially staffed during Symas's normal business hours.

There are two additional options for CDS Gold: Business Hour telephone support and 24x7 telephone support. For $6,000US per year, customers get business hour telephone technical support. For $25,000 per year, customers get 24 hour a day telephone access to Symas Technical Support.

Phone support augments email support by providing a way for customers to explain the urgency and impact of problems which, hopefully, have already been reported by email. It is always most productive to report problems through email with appropriate attached or included data from error logs, configuraiton files, etc.

Symas often initiates telephone contact with subscribers, even those without telephone support, when conversations will enhance resolution of an incident.

CDS OEM Agreements

Symas offers qualified original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and independent software vendors (ISVs) technical support for Symas's CDS distributions of OpenLDAP. This program is intended to assist OEMs and ISVs who's products deliver and/or rely on directory services software by providing them with CDS distributions for inclusion with their products. Under this program, the customers get all of their support from the OEM or ISV. Symas supports the OEM or ISV as "Level 3" support.

This program provides the services offered in the CDS Gold subscription to the OEM or ISV. That means the base subscription includes unlimited email support. The telephone support options are available. Other training or consulting services are provided under standard consulting contracts. OEM customers are strongly recommended to contract with Symas for LDAP University training for their technical support teams and others who may need in-depth experience with the software.

The cost of an OEM agreement of this type is $6,000US per platform (operating system on a family of processors) per year. Other arrangements including per-customer or per-customer pricing are available for discussion.

Connexitor Naming Services (CNS) 

CNS is only available through an annual support subscription. There is no free version. Evaluation copies of current versions of CNS can be obtained under an Evaluation Agreement; for more information, contact us through our sales email address.

The cost of an annual subscription for CNS is $100US per system per year with a 20 system minimum. Support for the standard CNS distribution includes maintenance of the source and binary software products as normal Open Source Software project activity updates the software, access to any updated versions of the CNS binary distributions made and posted during the subscription period, and defect corrections for defects in the software as delivered. Defects are limited to functional failures in functionality originally programmed into the software and do not include extensions or improvements which can be requested under separate development contracts. Technical support for CNS does not include any technical support for the LDAP directories which the libraries are configured to connect to or applications which invoke the libraries or for the configuration files (nsswitch.conf or pam.conf). Symas will assist in isolating the root causes of problems to CNS or one of those others but will only provide support for CNS itself. CNS support includes unlimited technical support via email with the understanding that the support email line is only officially staffed during Symas's normal business hours.

There are two additional options for CNS : Business Hour telephone support and 24x7 telephone support. For $6,000US per year, customers get business hour telephone technical support. For $25,000 per year, customers get 24 hour a day telephone access to Symas Technical Support.

Larger enterprises often subscribe to CNS for many systems. Symas offers a twenty percent (20%) discount on CNS subscriptions for quantities of over 400 systems. If your needs are for more than 900 system subscriptions, please contact us to discuss your situation and we will consider other pricing options.

There is an additional optional service for CNS: the Configuration Management Option (CMO). There are three cost elements associated with the CMO: Development Services to prepare the configuration option, Development Services for Updates, and the subscription fee for each system on which CMO configurations will be used. Initial development of CMO configuration files and installers costs $6,000US per platform. Updates to configuration files and the installation packages including testing costs $1,500US per change per platform. The annual subscription cost for each system on which CMO packages are installed is $20US. The discounts for high volume CNS users electing to use the CMO service are the same as for CNS (20% for installations with more than 400 systems under subscription).

Consulting Services

Symas offers planning, design, development, testing, and integration services under consulting contracts. We are available either directly to end-user enterprises or to or through OEM partners.

Our standard consulting rate is $200US per hour.

Symas also undertakes work of this type under fixed-price, fixed delivery date contracts. Preparation of proposals for such contracts is often done under design contracts which, assuming the scope of work is well defined, can themselves be fixed price.

LDAP University™ 

Symas offers several training courses under the general name LDAP University™. The most popular are:

• Introduction to Directory Services, LDAP, and OpenLDAP (1 day)
• OpenLDAP for Systems Administrators (3 - 5 days, customizable)
• Connexitor Naming Services for System Administrators (2 days)

When Symas produces the course and offers it for public attendance, the cost is $850US per student per day plus the cost of course materials. If your enterprise wants to train several people at once and to hold the training on your site, the cost is $1,600US per day exclusive of travel expenses.

Performances by Howard usually cost extra.