Open Source for Enterprises - who does the work?
Enterprises are used to purchase software following a standardized procurement process. This process is supported by commercial vendors by supplying information, answering RFPs, sending materials, providing free support, delivering proof-of-concepts. etc. When an Enterprise turns to Open Source, many of these things are not granted anymore, especially when you are dealing with community supported software. The illustration below compares a typical Open Source community, a commercial Open Source vendor and a traditional commercial software vendor along the services typically requested by enterprise.
What can be easily seen is that Enterprises must change their attitude a lot if they really want to deal with true Open Source communities. As not all of the Enterprises are willing to do so, an interesting market for “commercial Open Source” vendors has been enabled. These commercial Open Source vendors such as SugarCRM, Alfresco, SpringSource, etc. close the gap between what a traditional commercial vendor is offering and what a community is able to do. It comes with a price of course, but still is very attractive, especially when Open Source elements and commercial elements are combined in a good way.
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May 27th, 2009 at 12:31 pm
This is a good graphic Bruno.
Government departments, so far, have been very bad at adapting their procurement processes to deal with open source.
An additional problem that is encountered sometimes the procurement process (especially if it is automated) is specific for procuring a ‘license’ and the process (and people in it) are confused by a ’subscription’.
James
June 1st, 2009 at 2:27 am
Excellent comparison between Open source and commercial vendor. Thanks
Hai