Talent Solutions
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Facing Realities
Jan 20, 2009
It's Channel Time For Linux - Open-source app developers look to partners to help take Linux mainstream
Linux solution providers say they believe the larger vendors ultimately will be forced to adapt to the economic realities of open source and will need to adjust both their product and channel strategies.
Dave Gynn, director of enterprise tools and frameworks at Optaros, a Boston-based solution provider specializing in enterprise open-source projects, said every software vendor is going to have to come to the table with an open-source strategy. "The model of pure proprietary software companies that don't interact [with open-source developers] or have any kind of collaborative development process or open-source licensing is going to go away," he said. Gynn compared the open-source revolution to the impact the Internet—and before that client/server—had on business. Optaros, in fact, was started by an executive team that built big services businesses around both of those paradigm shifts.
Open source is another one of those huge shifts that impacts all vendors, Gynn said. Just how big is it? Optaros said there are more than 140,000 open-source projects in existence, and it has catalogued more than 260 of them with ratings on functionality, community support, maturity and enterprise readiness (the ratings do not include channel programs or offerings).
"There is an open-source alternative for every packaged version of software," Gynn said. The 260-plus projects catalogued by Optaros include everything from infrastructure offerings such as databases, to security offerings including identity and access management databases, to enterprise content management and search machines. Optaros is driving its business purely on consulting, services and solution development rather than reseller product fees. Gynn said the open-source application movement is allowing midsize and even smaller businesses to look at enterprise-class custom solutions that were simply out of their price range years ago. What's ironic is many companies are spending the same amount they would have years ago on an out-of-the-box software solution that just did not fit the business process.
What's more, he said, about 25 percent of his time as a solution expert would be spent resolving technical product issues with a vendor. "Now I'm spending a negligible amount of time on that," he says. "I can't imagine going back to the old way."
