DimDim Review

DimDim is a web conferencing provider based in Lowell, MA that has built its business on a open source-based value proposition. They can be a cost effective solution for the right buyer but know that the biggest risk with DimDim is reliability, performance, and security. (Note: These three major risks are not directly because of DimDim but indirectly through their business relationship with Amazon.)

DimDim’s Mission:

"Our mission is to enable web collaboration for everyone. We believe that we can improve the world by providing easy, open and affordable collaboration software that anyone can use."

DimDim Company Profile:

• 25 employees
• About $1M in revenue
• HQ in Lowell, MA
• $8.4M funded (Series A: $2.4M on 2/2007 and Series B: $6M on 7/2008)

Though DimDim is a SaaS-based company, they do not actually own their technology network since they rely on Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). Whether this is because they cannot afford to build out their own network or because they want to try to keep things "open," EC2 does have its limitations and drawbacks which ultimately negatively effect DimDim and DimDim customers.

EC2 has a reputation for being cost effective but with that, it also has a reputation for compromising reliability and security. EX: Amazon's SLA is 99.95% and they measure reliability in 5 minute blocks. With a 99.95% SLA, this means that in every 2,000 5 minute blocks there will be a service disruption. Across a 45 hour work week, can your business afford to be down once per week?

Related Source on EC2 compromising Reliability:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/07/amazon-web-services-gets-another-hiccup/

EC2 also stores user data on its servers as Amazon does not initialize EC2 after each user. Many 3rd party IT consulting firms stress the importance of partitioning and then wiping your data clean when you are done using EC2. (Amazon does not wipe out information for its users and customers! Your company info is floating on EC2!) With a simple Google search, you can see cases of security breaches on EC2 as they relate to login/password info, access keys, VPN information, key and certificate information, user data, etc. The security risks are significant!

DimDim Pros:

• Cheap
• Open source value proposition
• Very basic capabilities that might fit the basic needs of an SMB buyer

DimDim Cons:

• Poor performance on Amazon EC2
• Does not own infrastructure, uses Amazon EC2, so no control over technology infrastructure
• Poor VoIP quality
• Requires Active X or Flash download

DimDim Product Line:

• DimDim Enterprise: hosted and on-prem option
• DimDim Webinar: supports up to 1,000 attendees ($75 per month)
• DimDim Pro: supports up to 50 attendees ($19 per month)
• DimDim Free: supported by advertisements...
• Virtual Classroom Pack: 10 teachers can host up to 40 students at a time in their own classrooms ($2,199 per year)
• DimDim Zimlet: enables UC across campus-wide email systems using an open source email solution

DimDim Open Source Partners:

• SugarCRM: CRM solution focused on R&D. My insiders tell me a sales lay-off may be in the works at SugarCRM.
• Moodle: online classroom communities
• Zimbra: email system
• Claroline: elearning platform to build ad manage online courses
• EventBrite: online event management

10/2/2009 UPDATE:

I received some important information this morning from Steve Chazin, DimDim's Chief Marketing Officer, and wanted to provide an update to my original blog. Steve was kind enough to provide some additional information:

• Over 60 full-time employees
• About $1M in revenue (This number is based on Hoover's, a Duns and Bradstreet company. DimDim is a private company so the $1M in revenue by Hoovers is an estimate. Steve Chazin states DimDim's revenue is higher than the $1M stated by Hoovers.)
• Virtual Classroom Pack: 10 teachers can host up to 50 students at a time in their own classrooms ($2,199 per year)

(Steve Chazin's full comments are listed in the comments section of this blog post.)

Related Data Sources:

DimDim Uses Amazon EC2 (Important Note: DimDim sources have told me that this web source is inaccurate as DimDim manages its own servers and does not rely on Amazon EC2. DimDim customers can opt to use Amazon EC2 but it is not mandatory.)
Amazon EC2 SLA
Amazon EC2 Highlights
Amazon EC2 Reliability Metrics

 

Thanks,
David Chao
The Web Conferencing Expert 

 

Some of the individuals posting to this site, including the moderators, work for Cisco Systems, Inc. Opinions expressed here and in any corresponding comments are the personal opinions of the original authors, not those of Cisco.
 

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Comments

[David Chao]

Mark,

Thanks for your comments and apologize if you view the contents of the blog as "deceitful or unethical." All initial information came from a DimDim customer which they reference in one of their Marketing PDF's 'DimDim vs. WebEx.' (You might want to take a look at that PDF as their are some inaccurate claims that they make about WebEx. Being a WebEx user, I think they will immediately standout for you.) When Steve Chazen, DimDim CMO, reached out to assist with making corrections, I immediately made the updates on 10/2/09. I also made an IMPORTANT NOTE comment that DimDim does have its own hosted servers.

What else would you have suggested I do Mark? I'm open to your suggestions.

[Mark Saner]

As a current Webex customer I would like voice my displeasure with this post. We are currently reviewing our webconferencing solution and looking closely at Dimdim. The fact that you have not removed your comments about Dimdim's lack of hosted servers in your initial post nor have your even touched on the subject in your update is deceitful at best.

Reading this post has cemented my decision to move away from Webex. I do not want to support a company that uses such unethical marketing tactics.

Mark Saner

[David Chao]

Jared Finkenbinder, thanks for your comments. I can feel your PASSION for DimDim through your comments!

In life, mistakes and misunderstandings can happen. One simply hopes to learn from these experiences. I have posted a blog on "The World of Blogging," to briefly highlight some of the things I learned with this specific blog post.

The blog has been updated with the help of some DimDim insiders.

Again, thanks for your candid response and I'm sure DimDim values such passionate and loyal customers like you.

All the best Jared.

[David Chao]

Dinhcaraeht, thanks for your comments and clarifying that to your knowledge, DimDim owns its own servers.

I updated my blog with the help of some DimDim insiders.

Thanks.

[David Chao]

Moody T, with comments from Steve Chazin, DimDim CMO, I have updated my original blog.

[David Chao]

Steve Chazin,

Thanks for your comments and providing accurate data. I updated my original blog post with your comments and new data.

Please let me know if you have additional comments or questions.

I look forward to seeing updates and revisions in the DimDim corporate datasheets.

Thanks again for reaching out Steve.

[Steve Chazin]

David,

I'm Steve Chazin, Dimdim's CMO and Kevin's manager. Thank you for finally posting Kevin's comments and now noting on your blog that you work for Cisco WebEx. I believe that every blogger has a responsibility for transparency so readers can trust your content and ambitions.

While you have updated these comments, your original post still says we rely solely on Amazon and contains other inaccuracies:

* Dimdim Free is not supported by ads - it is a full featured product that lets 20 people meet an unlimited number of times for free
* We have over 60 full time employees
* We generate way more revenue than you suggest (curious how you could guestimate the revenue of a private company)
* Virtual Classroom Pack supports 50 students in each of the 10 Classrooms

Further, while your title suggests a Dimdim Review you haven't done one here: this is really an Amazon EC2 post. I'd be happy to personally provide a Dimdim demo to you our anyone else at Cisco Webex at any time. In fact, I'd be happy to invite all of your readers and do one live via Dimdim at at time of your choosing. Just say when.

David, many bloggers simply post a big UPDATE on the top of the offending blog post and correct the data therein when they know that data if left uncorrected will remain misleading. I'm happy to update and repost our datasheet when you do likewise to your blog.

[David Chao]

David Meerman Scott, thank you for your comments and your perspective.

In regards to "deleting" comments, I addressed this on the DimDim Blog and on mine own in the comments section http://blog.dimdim.com/blog/bid/21722/We-must-be-doing-well-if-our-biggest-competitor-resorts-to-spreading-false-information

In life there are always lessons learned. I plan to do a quick blog on some blogging best practices and things that I have learned through this specific blog post experience.

Thanks again Scott.

Again, thank you for your continued WebEx support and your comments.

[David Chao]

Steve Riley from Amazon sent me an email on Amazon EC2:

Hi, David, how are you? I saw your review of DimDim yesterday (http://davidchao.typepad.com/webconferencingexpert/2009/09/dimdim-review.html). We are keenly aware that data leakage can be a problem, so to prevent that both Amazon EC2 and Amazon EBS zero-out disk blocks whenever capacity is provisioned by customers for ephemeral storage in EC2 or as a volume in EBS. Effectively, then, each customer receives scrubbed storage with nothing left over from previous customers.

Let me know if you need more detail.

--Steve

[David Chao]

Kord Campbell and I had an email exchange. Here is the communication we had about his comments on Amazon EC2.

-----------

Kord,

Appreciate your email comments. Very interesting stuff and thank you for sharing.

Sources I used:

http://aws.amazon.com/ec2-sla/
http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/#highlights
http://www.businessinsider.com/2008/10/amazon-we-promise-our-ec2-cloud-will-only-crash-once-a-week-amzn-

If interested, take a look at the DimDim Marketing Collateral that they use as it's filled with inaccuracies. Not that you should care but it was the catalyst for my blog post.

Again, thanks for your comments Kord. Your company, Loggly, looks interesting.

David Chao

-----------

Kord's response:

David,

Thanks for the email! I get a bit fired up about comments poking at EC2. I've relied on them before, and are now again relying on them for infrastructure! It's important to paint a clear and accurate picture of the cloud landscape for customers, and outline the advantages and disadvantages of the service.

Look at it from this standpoint. If I get SLA from someone like Internap, then the SLA they give me is based on BANDWIDTH and CONNECTIVITY alone. If, for example, my server goes down, then that's not their fault and they don't start the counter running on the SLA guarantee. With Amazon, more is included in the deal - bandwidth, EC2, APIs, S3, etc. It stands to reason, because of the complexity of the systems I'm using, they would have a looser SLA than Internap. BUT, and here's my main point, it's likely to be MORE reliable than me+Internap because I'm not having to maintain my own complex infrastructure and deal with failures in it - coupled with failures in bandwidth too.

Again, Amazon's SLA isn't a measure of their uptime by any stretch. Their actual uptime is usually much higher than the SLA - as is typical with most providers. You say companies should expect to be down 5 minutes a week - but in actuality they aren't. They should just expect they COULD be down up to 5 minutes a week before being compensated. There's a difference. Again, in practice, the downtime will be far smaller than this. You should clarify what you are saying with your comments about SLA!

Anyway, I was probably a little hard in my comments, but it's time we all start putting this fear of the cloud behind us. If we have evidence of problems with the cloud, then we should make clear arguments for SOLUTIONS to it, not arguments against the companies that use it - like Loggly. It's where we are going - like it or not - and there are opportunities to address everyone's concerns.

Appreciate you taking the time to email. Again, I had no vested interest in DimDim at all, just your general remarks about companies using Amazon.

Cheers,

Kord