FEATURE: OPEN SOURCE
Commercial software
code bases are
significantly more
secure than open source
(*Coverity Scan Open
Source Report 2014)
78%
of companies today run part or all
of their operations on open source
software (*Future of Open Source
Survey, sponsored by Black Duck and
North Bridge, 2015)
GIVEN THE GROWING
POPULARITY AND
IMPORTANCE OF OPEN
SOURCE, ONE COULD
ARGUE THAT PARTNERS
WITHOUT AN OPEN
SOURCE PRACTICE
ARE ALREADY AT A
DISADVANTAGE, NOT
TO MENTION LOSING
OUT ON AN EXTREMELY
LUCRATIVE REVENUE
STREAM
48
INTELLIGENTCIO
88%
of the 220 IT decision makers surveyed
identified open source as a critical or
significant enabler of their DevOps strategy
(*Red Hat DevOps, Open Source and
Business Agility (June 2015)
model and switch from the traditional
reseller approach to a consultative,
service-oriented approach. While
this is not an easy transition for
most partners to make, those that
do will not only have a competitive
advantage, but more importantly will
be able to capitalise on high margin
service business and up/ cross selling
opportunities.
Specialise, specialise and then
specialise some more
While the (seemingly) obvious choice
for any partner looking to build an
open source practice appears to be to
acquire expertise and skill-sets across
all open source solutions, this approach
is actually sub-optimal for the current
business climate.
Enterprises these days would
rather work with partners that they
consider ‘trusted advisors’ rather
than ‘resellers’. This is even truer
for open source solutions given that
the concept is still foreign to many
enterprises and that services are such
a big part of expenditure.
To that end, I wo