The slogan "We make free software affordable" was written on the first Cygnus Support T-shirt according to John Gilmore. John was one of the founders of Cygnus, probably the first company offering professional services around open source products.

 I love the idea behind this slogan. And actually I am fully convinced that using RapidMiner or any other open source software

• without the usually great ideas of the inventors,
  
• without their product expertise, and
  
• without any guarantees

at the end is much more expensive than directly connecting to us and work with the pros.

Hence, using the free Community Edition of RapidMiner not only increases your risk of failure, it turns out to be more expensive. The RapidMiner Enterprise Edition delivers critical benefits like stabilized software, direct access to product expertise, and committed response times to help you save time and money.

But why I am writing about this? Well, Rapid-I has just started a promotion campaign for RapidMiner. For example, the RapidMiner Standard Enterprise Edition for 5 analysts plus unlimited technical support including even two days of consultative support is available for 5000 Euro only.

In the long short run, paying Rapid-I to maintain the software is cheaper than employing a specialist to do the work for you.

 Read here for more information about this promotion offer.