One of Macrobyte's long-time hosting clients wrote to me a couple of weeks ago to say that, after almost five years, they're moving to a new platform. They contracted someone about a year ago to handle their technical needs, and he has developed a completely new site for them in ASP. This contractor convinced them that their sites needed to be redone from scratch.
Eh, whatever, these things happen sometimes. They professed to be extremely happy with our service, but their contractor really felt that this other technology was more appropriate for their needs. Here's a slightly modified (to omit names) excerpt of my response:
My guess is that, in the end, the real answer will simply be that XXX was more familiar with the other system. That's often the real reason web sites are moved from one platform to another.
If that sounds harsh, it wasn't. I was politely asking if they would mind explaining the decision a little more fully. If there's something Macrobyte could have offered, but didn't, I'd like to rectify the situation for the next client. Still, as you can see, I had my suspicions.
I still have that email. It was only sent directly to the client who wrote to me. The contractor -- who had already taken over all hosting responsibilities for this client, including email and web -- was not cc'd or bcc'd.
This is where things start to go weird.
Three hours after I sent that email, I received a response from the 'new guy'. He cc'ed the client, and confirmed that yes, in fact, the move had more to do with familiarity with the other system than with technical reasons.
Another three hours later, and the client responds to the email from the 'new guy'. Here's the first paragraph of his email (anonymized, again):
I have read your email to me at the end of XXX's email.for some reason I haven't received the email direct.
So... he never received my private email, but somehow the new contrator and hosting service both received and responded to it.
If the client didn't receive it, then he couldn't have forwarded it to the new guy. Note that we're only talking about a matter of hours, here, not days. He didn't simply forget.
I believe all of these facts to be completely correct. With that, I can only come to one conclusion, but I'd like some other opinions. Maybe there's some answer to this which I haven't considered.
Let's leave it there for now. Comments greatly appreciated!
