As we continue to develop Tator, our web platform for video annotation and analysis, we have identified two distinct user groups. The first group consists of Open Source Software (OSS) Users who are typically small teams or individual researchers looking to use Tator for a single project or field work. They prefer to install Tator on a single on-premise machine, without relying on cloud services. They have limited data, typically less than 10TB, and require access for a small team of 1-10 users. On the other hand, Enterprise Users are medium to large organizations that require high availability and data durability, with scalability and security being their top concerns. They are interested in using the cloud and require access to large amounts of data, often in the range of tens or hundreds of TB.
As developers, we recognize the importance of serving both types of users, and have endeavored to do so with a single open source codebase. However, we have found that our current codebase is not optimal for either group. For OSS Users, Tator is difficult to install and configure due to its reliance on Kubernetes. Despite the development of our install script and support for microk8s, OSS Users often experience issues related to container networking, particularly with DNS, firewalls, and proxies. Meanwhile, for Enterprise Users, the value proposition of a Tator Enterprise Subscription is unclear since Tator is entirely open source.
To address these issues, our repository will be split into two separate repositories, Tator OSS and Tator Enterprise, starting with release 1.1.0, which is our next big milestone release.