I’m leaving for the U.S.A. and going there as a supporter of open source software and SpagoBI, with a focus on Industry and Federal Government. Would you like to meet me? You just have a few days left to register: do it now!
Now, I’m going to advocate neither for the Open Source suite for Business Intelligence and Big Data analytics – a full SpagoBI Labs team will give you all information there – nor for OW2 community, which enforces the full open source maturity and availability of the suite.
I want to keep this post simple, so I will just reveal a few concepts in advance that I think are crucial to persuade people to adopt open source software.
Actually, I expect that Industry looks at open source software because of its cost-effective nature, quality and innovation, while Federal Government can enrich open source software with more general values, such as transparency and investing public funds. However, I think that my humble words can be considered as general purpose.
Initial point #1: no need to demonstrate open source success. Big companies that fund open source software are themselves the evidence of this success. Open Source software demonstrated over time that it’s technical, economic, strategic and also socially efficient.
Initial point #2: Users expect market-ready offerings(i.e. code associated with services, training, maintenance, support, etc.). They want a comprehensive business proposal, not just bare code. Code is only a fraction of the software value-chain that delivers market-ready offerings.
What can I offer?
A full open source solution (unique stable version, no licence fees) that has grown over time following three main paths:
– functional and technical completeness, stability and maturity in order to provide users with a competitiveness lever to develop their own solutions
– a continuous connection with global open source communities, in order to grant competency, collaboration and reputation in the open source field
– participation in R&D collaborative projects in order to provide continuous innovation, looking beyond the boundaries of current enterprise needs.
At the end, what value do you get from all this? Protection of your investment!
Some past reflections of Simon Phipps are still actual:
“Open source it’s about getting control over what you are using”. “Open source is about getting control over what you do pay for, what you hire for, and what you don’t pay for. It’s a sustainable way of getting your costs under control as you deploy software.”
A full-business market-ready offering guarantees you what you are going to pay for.
Open source code availability and supporting communities guarantees you what you are not going to pay for.