A Whole Product
I hope it was no surprise that my keynote at FOSS4G this week was partly about open source business models and the whole product, because that’s what I’ve been thinking about (and to an extent, blogging about here) for the last six months or so.
And the good news (to me) is that the concept appears to be striking a chord among right folks: managers and system integrators. We are getting lots of good feedback at the booth from those folks in addition to the regular stream of highly technical folks who are happy to chew the fat with our team of core developers.
On the business side, I think the system integrators are the really important ones. They can move from coming to clients with three or four different projects pulled from different places with different support options to coming in with just one infrastructure piece, the OpenGeo Suite. And on top of that, they can make use of the facilities of GeoServer and GeoExt to build nice tightly focussed business apps. The sales proposition for them with conservative customers gets a lot cleaner: the business app the client wants plus a single infrastructure piece with simple support story.
I have also been hearing tales of woe about the local distributors for the Leading Brand elbowing out independents for services work, which will seed a nice collection of disgruntled folks looking for an alternative.
So the challenge comes back to us: execute, execute, execute, on the technical side of polishing the Suite into a whole product worthy of the mainstream market, and on the business side signing up local partners to carry the message forward.
Tags: foss4g
Perhaps not directly related – but you seem to know alot about open source software. Can someone point me in the right direction for an application capable of viewing aerial images in stereo mode and “constructing” vector data with xyz based on this? Input is aerial images which are aerotriangulated with some sort of software. If it currently does not exist, which opensource software is “best” suited to try to start to implement this (I assume perhaps GRASS?)
Keep up the good work with this blog!
I agree in general. System integrators can breach opportunities for Open Source Geospatial Solutions. However, there is a catch. System integrators here, in the Netherlands, have not yet shown to understand that they have to take a new approach towards software developed by communities. They have to put effort in creating continuity by providing feedback to communities and, where possible, support communities. My experience up to now is that they often use open source geospatial solutions but simply ” rob the candy store”. So a change in mentality and understanding communities exists of people is of great importance.
@STH: I don’t know of anything open source like this. The closest may be OSSIM (see link on osgeo.org). With respect to image handling capabilities, I am not sure if the java side would make sense. But you have a look on the imageJ library. Grass is an option because I would guess it has already lots of related stuff, for all other free desktop GIS (i.e. MapWindows, QGIS, etc) I would say you would need to build a lot things from the ground to get stereo done.
For a general overview on OS desktop GIS projects, I would refer you to: http://www.spatialserver.net/osgis/ and the two publications linked there by Stefan Steiniger. So you would need to do a bit of reading before making a decission.
@Paul: I really really value your work, read your blog notes with interest and I enjoyed you keynote (online). Keep going to convince the business world (!), and I will try to do so for the research world (as long as somebody founds me to stay in that). So far, my campain seems to have some success
Paul,
I’ve been closely following your posts and links on the business model. The core developers on OSSIM have been primarily funded by US government programs that enhance functionality for various government prototypes. Recent successes have brought on new opportunities and challenges. For example, established integrators are seeing our business model as a threat to their traditional business and are actively trying to discredit the model. This has caused us to focus on a commercial open source model for one of the OSSIM based derivatives (OMAR). As I’ve always said, the goal is to make a living on what we love to do.
Mark, we share your goals!
Collaborative knowledge building, and tool building is the best bet all around, and it seems like professionalizing and commercializing is the road the long term project stability. Keep on keeping on!