Opening new doors with Open Source

From consumer desktop software to enterprise-wide solutions, Open Source presents a significant opportunity for channel players prepared to stake a claim in this new frontier.

If your customers aren’t already asking you about Open Source, they soon will be.

Religious fervour is taking a back seat as Open Source comes of age.

It is also shaking off the “free’’ tag as more people come to appreciate Open Source is free as in ‘’free speech,’’ not as in “free beer’’.

There’s more to Open Source than just the Firefox browser and Linux operating system. There’s now a viable, business-ready Open Source alternative for practically every piece of software available today.

Open Source lets the channel build new business models around enhanced support and services, rather than merely lining the pockets of the proprietary software giants.

It also offers greater control over the underlying stack and allows you to build more tailored solutions to meet clients’ individual needs – thus strengthening the relationship.

The Open Source development model operates mostly under the GNU General Public License (GPL).

Often referred to as “copy-left’’ as opposed to copyright, software covered by the GNU GPL is available free of charge to the general public.

Developers have access to the complete source code, making it easier to build customised solutions.

If a programmer modifies software covered by the GNU GPL, then those modifications must also be made freely available.

While the underlying code may be “free”, the profit for the channel lies in providing integration, training, support and other services.

In an industry where hardware and even software are becoming commodity items, such services are where the decent margins are to be found.

Although some Open Source applications are designed to run on proprietary foundations such as Microsoft’s Windows operating system and SQL Server database, the beauty of using Open Source software is you can build a complete Open Source stack from the bare metal up.

This gives you complete control over your environment, letting you modify any part of the stack to develop a customised solution.

The vast majority of Open Source applications are designed to run on the LAMP stack of Open Source applications – Linux, Apache, MySQL and the PHP scripting language (see breakout).

A wide range of business-grade applications have been developed on top of this Open Source foundation, such as SugarCRM for customer relationship management, Compiere for enterprise resource planning, OrangeHRM for human relations management and Asterisk to replace the traditional PABX.

Middleware also gets a look in, with JBoss offering a Java-based Open Source applications platform.

The stack of Open Source applications allows channel players to expand their offerings whilst weaning themselves and their customers off reliance on the proprietary software giants, said Gartner research vice president Brian Prentice.

“In general, one of the things we see with Open Source is a move away from a software licensing type of structure, towards a service delivery type of structure. This creates opportunities for channel partners to link Open Source into the primary part of their business today, which is service delivery,” Prentice said.

“The question here is what is the value proposition to the end customer? We see that one of the reasons customers like to buy Open Source is it removes critical dependencies that they have on software suppliers.
Most channel partners should be looking to add some form of Open Source to their kit bag.
It’s a combination of being both an opportunity and a risk mitigation.
If I am a channel partner and I can’t accommodate the Open Source requirements of a customer then that may be a problem.
If I am a web developer and I don’t know how to do anything around Ruby or PHP that could be a problem. If I am focused on middleware and I don’t know anything about JBoss, that could be a problem.”

Forewarned is forearmed and, like any technological advancement, channel players need to keep abreast of how Open Source is impacting their market space.

The rise of Open Source is providing the channel with a wide variety of business opportunities, said Red Hat Australia general manager Max McLaren.

Red Hat provides commercial-grade support, service and training for the Red Hat distribution of Linux, as well as JBoss.

“With small to medium businesses, there is a lot of demand for Linux implementation and management,” McLaren said.

“We see lots of opportunities for system integrators and for hosting partners in that space. For the enterprise there is a requirement for organisations to do a reasonable amount of systems integration, especially with third-party applications, and that is where the whole middleware space is providing
a great opportunity for systems integrators.

“In the middleware space with JBoss we are probably a couple of years behind Linux in terms of maturity. The interesting thing is we are not just an application server in the JBoss space, we move right up through the stack into Service Oriented Architecture space so there is a lot of integration opportunity there for business partners.”

Open Source vendors such as Red Hat don’t expect the channel to venture into Open Source territory unassisted.

Red Hat Australia offers a three-tier partnership program.

Red Hat Ready partners gain access to Red Hat’s online portal as well as discounts in areas such as training.

The Advanced Business Partner program features a Red Hat stream and a JBoss stream.

To qualify, channel partners need to commit to a level of business with Red Hat and have a number of skills-certified engineers on staff.

Advanced Business Partners also receive preferential treatment in areas such as sales leads.

Red Hat Australia’s Certified Services Partner program allows channel players to work with Red Hat from a skills transfer perspective in their first engagements, to help them get up and running.

While working with Open Source can offer a range of new business opportunities, it can also be a form of risk mitigation.

Unlike proprietary software foundations, if channel players encounter a bug in the Open Source stack they’re not left at the mercy of one major software vendor, said Shane Owenby, Oracle Asia Pacific’s senior director of Linux and Open Source.

While Oracle’s offerings run on traditional operating systems such as Windows and Solaris, the software giant also offers customers its own Oracle Enterprise Linux distribution – derived from Red Hat Enterprise.

Customers can run Oracle and other applications on Oracle Enterprise Linux, which Oracle supports under its Unbreakable Linux program.

“Traditionally the Oracle channel has not cared about the operating system, but that is starting to change based on the interest my team is seeing all around Asia Pacific. The channel guys see now that we can provide a full stack solution,” Owenby said.

“If you are going to go out there and be the average Joe Blow flogger of software or hardware, you’ve got a thousand people to differentiate yourself from. From what I’ve seen, the partners that have been successful in Open Source have developed an angle. When you’re dealing with the flexibility of Open Source software, you can build on a base such as Oracle Enterprise Linux. You can easily add a special device driver or a special configuration for a file system, whatever it is that your customer needs.”

With Oracle software running on Oracle Enterprise Linux, the channel can now provide, customise and support the entire stack.

They can choose between supporting the software themselves, supporting it with Oracle’s backing or letting Oracle handle the support.

Channel players offering solutions that run on Windows, for example, are reliant on Microsoft’s support to solve the issue, whereas Open Source platforms allows channel players to turn to a number of sources – making them masters of their own destiny.

“While using Unbreakable Linux might broaden support options, one of the other interesting components Oracle offers is something called Premier Back Porting,” Owenby said.

“Imagine you’ve got a six-month project and three months into it you find a bug in the operating system. The normal solution for all Linux distribution is to upgrade to the latest version. Of course, upgrading to the latest version could introduce a whole new set of problems.

“Our Premier Back Porting program says that if you identify a bug, we will back port the fix to the version you’re using – not just to the latest version. It’s a subtle difference but I am talking to customers and they are just champing at the bit for that. It is exactly what they want as they don’t want to take the 30 changes that come with a new version, they just want the one change they know they need.”

Although Open Source projects may offer free access to the underlying code, software license fees generally only account for a small percentage of a major project’s overall costs.

Money not put into a software giants’ pocket can be invested back into the project, said Obol Software CEO Shannon Roy.

Obol Software is the developer of Fivedash, a fully featured, general-purpose Open Source accounting program.

While anyone can download a free copy of Fivedash, Obol Software makes its money through deployment, customisation and support.

“If your customers are not already asking about including an Open Source option in a proposal, then it is going to come in the next six months.

Resellers need to get out there and integrators need to get out there and find out what is available in the Open Source space. They really need to educate themselves because their customers are going to drive it if they don’t,” Roy said.

“In a financial accounting system rollout there are generally two costs.

There is the cost of the software, which is a license fee usually updated yearly. There is big hit at the start and then a yearly hit.

Then there is the set up and customisation, where the software will be modified for your particular usage.

Generally the split of those costs is around about 30/70, with 30 percent for licenses and 70 percent for services.

“Immediately Open Source gives you an advantage because there are no license fees.
Essentially you can take that 30 percent and put it in your back pocket, using it to develop your business in another way.
Spend a bit more money on the customisation part and, at the end of the day, you’ll have a piece of software that is far more attuned to your customer’s particular business model.
Too many businesses change their business to fit in with what their accounting software wants them to do. We feel that is completely wrong-headed.
People should have the freedom to change their accounting software so it does what they need it to do. It is really hard to do that with proprietary software, but that is what Open Source is really about, making the software do what you need it to do.”

Another strength of Open Source technologies is their general adherence to open standards.

Around the world customers are beginning to demand open standards, with government departments in particular mandating open standards as an essential part of any IT project.

Particular attention has been paid to Microsoft’s Office document formats.

While Microsoft’s document formats for Word and Excel have been de facto standards for many years, international concern is growing over such reliance on one vendor.

Many organisations are concerned about data sovereignty, considering it a business risk to lock their intellectual property away in proprietary formats.

Such concerns have seen the rise of OpenOffice, a free Open Source alternative to Microsoft Office comprising of a word processor, spreadsheet and database as well as presentation, vector drawing and mathematical function tools.

OpenOffice has the look and feel of Microsoft Office 2003 and is compatible with its file formats, so staff require little training to make the switch. It is available for Windows, Mac OS, Linux and Solaris.

OpenOffice is a spin-off of StarOffice, a German office suite acquired by Sun Microsystems in 1999.

Sun released most of the StarOffice code base in 2000, dubbing the project OpenOffice.

Today Sun stlll sells StarOffice, a corporate version of OpenOffice based on the same code base, plus it also offers paid support for OpenOffice.

While OpenOffice is compatible with Microsoft document formats, by default it uses Open Document Format – an open XML-based document format which was adopted as an ISO standard in 2006.

The global backlash against Microsoft proprietary formats has seen OpenOffice build a user base as diverse as the French parliament, the Israeli Ministry of Commerce and the Singapore military.

Massachusetts was the first US state to mandate the use of ODF as the standard format for all state agency documents.

The corporate world has been slower in coming to terms with the concept of open source, said OpenOffice’s Australian marketing person Jonathon Coombes.

Coombes is former secretary of the Australian UNIX and Open Systems User Group and he also runs Newcastle-based Cybersite Consulting, specialising in Open Source.

‘’I think OpenOffice is certainly ready for business,’’ Coombes said.

‘’One of the classic arguments against moving to OpenOffice has been the need to retrain staff, but that becomes null and void if you’re considering upgrading to Office 2007. Microsoft has made some fairly substantial changes to the Office 2007 interface, so everyone will need to learn a new interface regardless.’’

To combat the attraction of OpenOffice and the Open Document Format, Microsoft put forward its own Office Open XML as an ISO format.

The format was accepted under controversial circumstances but appeals have been lodged against the decision. Microsoft has announced the next Microsoft Office 2007 Service Pack will offer native ODF support, which is expected in early 2009.

Meanwhile native Office Open XML support isn’t expected until the next major release of Microsoft Office, which is several years away.

The advantage of using open standards extends far beyond document formats, said Marc Englaro, general manager of Open Source vendor Fonality.

Fonality is the developer of the business-grade TrixBox Professsional Range IP PABX solution, based on the Asterisk project, as well as the TrixBox Community Edition.

TrixBox’s adherence to open standards lets users choose from a range of certified handsets, rather than lock them in to one vendor, Englaro said.

“Open Source begets open standards. The community which works around Open Source software is more open to interoperability and I’d say that would be a big difference between ourselves and the likes of Cisco, Avaya and others – where everything is very, very proprietary,” he said.

“The choice that TrixBox and Open Source offer means you can select from a range of handsets from at least two different vendors for the TrixBox Professional Range and a dozen different vendors for the Community Edition. That choice means you can shop around and people recognise that choice means competition, both from a cost perspective and also a quality perspective.”

TrixBox Community Edition incorporates the latest cutting-edge features and can be considered TrixBox’s research and development arm.

The best features of Trixbox Community Edition are eventually incorporated into TrixBox Professsional Range to create a stable, business-grade PABX system.

This is a common development model amongst Open Source software developers. Fonality has four employees dedicated to the development of Trixbox Community Edition, along with the wider Open Source community, and this offers TrixBox Professsional Range users a clear view of the product roadmap.

While Open Source is traditionally associated with software, hardware vendors are also leveraging the flexibility of Open Source under the bonnet.

OpenGear designs and manufactures enterprise-grade infrastructure management equipment, built on embedded Linux firmware.

It counts Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade amongst its biggest customers, along with Australian embassies around the world.

The use of Open Source solutions lets OpenGear offer the channel an enhanced level of interoperability and customisation, said CEO Bob Waldie.

“Our catchcry is that we are vendor agnostic and we will connect to anything,” Waldie said.

“We have a Custom Development Kit that we happily give away.

We say to people “here you go, go and extend this and modify this – here are all the tools and utilities you need”.

This then gives channel partners the flexibility to do customisation to meet a client’s needs, rather than just pushing out someone else’s hardware.

“We specialise in managing multi-vendor environments, and we can only do that because we use Open Source tools to bring in a new area of expertise without having to develop it all ourselves. The Open Source community is important because it extends your development team way beyond the scope of your in-house team of geeks.”

Community is the key for channel players looking to explore the world of Open Source, said Gartner’s Brian Prentice.

“To make the most of Open Source you have to get connected into the community,” Prentice said.

“You have to get onto the appropriate discussion boards and blog sites, you have to see what contributions are being made and think about what contributions you are going to make.

“This requires the channel player to reevaluate their position in the greater scheme of things. In the Open Source world they’re becoming a node in a greater network, interconnected with everyone else, whereas in the proprietary world they were a spoke on a wheel and the vendor was the hub. This means in the Open Source world they have to make a commitment to participate in the community. If they are not going to be engaged in the community then their ability to execute effectively and deliver quality service to their customers is going to be hampered.

“Also, any customer who understands the Open Source world is going to question whether a channel player that isn’t participating in the community can really meet their needs. They’re going to ask serious questions about whether they want to engage with somebody who isn’t tapped into the community.”

source:- crn.com.au/