Tell it again

Dear Readers,

This week, while meeting an old friend of mine and having a simple discussion with him about Open Source projects, I just remind that there is still a huge gap between Open Source Commiters and Decision Makers. For most Decision Makers, Open Source is still “what they want to avoid”, because of some stupids reasons such as maintenance, and support. Because those person still think they will get support and maintenance if they choose Commercial products. For those person, choosing a commercial product and paying an expensive price is like an insurance.

There are thousand of discussion like this one … all Open Source promoters have already faced this kind of discussion … but as time goes by, we don’t have to forget 3 majors facts :

– commercial products have invested a lot of money in marketing and they have built an easy and secured position, even if the reality of their products may be slightly different.

– standard System integrator get an important part of the commercial licences revenus (sometimes up to 40%), so they have limited interest in Open Source and they relay the “commercial position” (and they are most of the times already in the place !)

– Most – if not all – Open Source migration decision come from customers, not from System Integrator …

As a conclusion : we have to tell again and again the advantages of Open Source solution …

Have Fun !

Patrick

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Building a Partner Network

Dear Readers,

Day after day, we can see more users of our Open Source Platforms and we are now recruiting key partners to provide local support, integration and training at Enterprise level. Process is already initialized, and we have now to organize internally to provide more support to our growing partners network. Our Web support facility – thanks to Mantis group – is a great professional tool, but we are late on some subjects such as providing more lead to our partners, or pushing more documentation and patches.

This is a difficult time for us : having more projects and more support to provide with limited but motivated resources is an everyday challenge ! We received many requests for features enhancement, different OS, database and application servers support … well … we know that we have now more and more to provide to our partners, as we don’t intend to ‘build and let go’, but ‘build and provide support’. We just need more time to reach our objectives.

During this hard time, I may forecast my blog will turn silent …

Have Fun,

Patrick