For all the hue and cry about the discomfort enterprises have with ‘free’ software (I use the quotes mainly because everyone from Ballmer to Schwartz is reminding us that free isn’t really free), it sure seems to be getting lot of attention these days. In the last week or so we’ve seen two separate VC-backed efforts (see here and here) aimed at addressing one of the major, perceived weaknesses of F/OSS (free and open source software) – support. This follows on the support major vendors are giving to open source, such as HP with MySQL/JBoss and IBM with Derby (nee Cloudscape).
What does this mean as far as the enterprise is concerned? A more richly functional – and supported – stack to work from. Open source is pushing middleware and infrastructure vendors to continue innovating at the high end, because it’s accelerating its consumption and commoditization of mid to low end features.
The catch, for many enterprises, has been not having anybody at the end of the line when something goes wrong. This is the opportunity that Red Hat, SuSE and others capitalized.
The new guys – SourceLabs and SpikeSource – along with some help from the big guys – HP, IBM, et al – may push the support further out the stack.
The question now will be price. Support is great, but it’s definitely not free. The trick is to price it so as to leverage the lessened R&D expenses that come with open source, but at a level sufficient to ensure the enterprise class support experience.
