Executive Summary: What is it?
Every Solution Profile carries three scores from 1 to 5. Complexity rates what it takes to stand up a working production setup. Maintenance rates the work your team keeps doing once it runs. User Management rates how far the free self-hosted build lets you manage many users centrally. Each score comes with one word (1 Minimal, 2 Low, 3 Moderate, 4 High, 5 Very High) and a short reason written for that tool.
CFO / Business Impact: What does it cost/risk?
Effort, not money. The scores rate the work a self-hosted tool asks of your team, never its price. Complexity is a one-off cost of standing the tool up. Maintenance is the running cost in engineering time, the hours the Total Cost of Ownership resource puts at your loaded rate. User Management shows how much of the access control your security team expects comes in the free build, and how much you would buy or build.
- Staffing: A score of 4 or 5 on Complexity or Maintenance calls for a team with operations experience, or a service provider who runs the tool for you.
- A Low Score Is No Verdict: A desktop app rates 1 on User Management because one person uses it, not because it is weak. Read each score against your own need.
Technical Reality: How does it work?
Each score rates the typical production setup of the self-hosted build. A feature sold only in a paid edition or the vendor's cloud does not raise the User Management score.
Complexity
What it takes to stand up a working production setup, by how many services must run.
- 1 Minimal: Nothing runs on a server: a desktop app, a command-line tool or a static site.
- 2 Low: One service, or an app with its own database.
- 3 Moderate: A third service the default setup needs beside the app and its database, such as a cache, a queue or a search index.
- 4 High: Several services beyond the app, its database and a cache or queue, or a setup spread across several servers.
- 5 Very High: A cluster of several different kinds of service, each sized and run on its own.
Maintenance
The work your team keeps doing once it runs.
- 1 Minimal: Updates only, with no server to run.
- 2 Low: Periodic updates and backups, with no database changes to manage.
- 3 Moderate: Updates and backups plus routine database migrations, indexes or queues to manage, or replicas kept in step continuously.
- 4 High: Frequent breaking upgrades, active tuning, or several servers to keep in step.
- 5 Very High: Constant hands-on attention, such as rebalancing data or scaling by hand.
User Management
What the free self-hosted build offers to manage many users centrally: sign-in, roles, single sign-on, audit.
- 1 Minimal: One user, or one shared account.
- 2 Low: Separate user accounts, but no ready-made roles, single sign-on or audit trail, or those are paid.
- 3 Moderate: Roles or access rules over encrypted connections the software itself provides; single sign-on or an audit trail is missing or paid.
- 4 High: Single sign-on and roles, plus an audit trail, automatic user provisioning or access reviews.
- 5 Very High: Single sign-on and detailed roles, plus two or more of an audit trail, automatic user provisioning and access reviews.
On a Solution Profile: Where the Scores Appear
The three scores close the Profile list at the top of each Solution Profile, each on its own line: the word, the number out of 5, and the reason for that tool, for example Low (2/5) - one service plus its database. The reason names what earns the score, so two tools with the same number can still differ in what they ask of you.