A cloudy future for open-source applications
The best open-source projects have little problem with adoption. Their problem, increasingly, centers on monetization of their popularity. From Drupal to MySQL to Audacity, sometimes the best things in life truly are free...which can be a problem. The solution, however, may be cloud computing.
I've articulated this before, but theory met reality this past week with announcements from DimDim, an open-source Web conferencing provider, and Acquia, the focal point for Drupal support and value-adding services. Both have interesting new cloud strategies that promise to deliver customer value while funding the vendors' payroll.
DimDim, as TechCrunch reports, recently launched DimDim Webinar, a hosted webinar service targeting small and medium-size businesses (SMBs). The service "is accompanied by a couple of helpful resources that guide organizers through the necessary steps to monetize and analyze the performance of their webinars," making it easy to set up and track the value of the webinars. This is just the sort of offering my own company (an SMB) would find useful.
Acquia, for its part, isn't really targeting its new Drupal Hosting to the SMB market, instead focusing on helping companies "scale [their] site[s] to millions of page views, and more if necessary." While small and midsize businesses will undoubtedly also sign up, Acquia's service promises to be a great way to minimize the IT investment required to successfully deploy Drupal-based websites.
In both cases, DimDim and Acquia are improving upon their open-source code offerings...by making the code somewhat irrelevant.
Some, like Gartner, warn that cloud computing threatens to undermine the appeal of open source. But this is only a problem if open-source communities fail to offer cloud-computing options, as SugarCRM has, options that also include source code in case the buyer ever wants off the cloud.
Recent data from the United Kingdom suggests that cloud computing promises to be a winner for Microsoft alternatives like Google Apps. There's no reason that open-source companies can't also benefit from this shift. Microsoft has billions of dollars in profits tied to its 'desktop' dominance. Open source does not.
Open-source companies should be leading the shift to cloud computing. Some, like Red Hat, clearly are, with Red Hat actively seeking to become the platform for cloud computing, just as it's the dominant Linux platform for Linux server-based computing in the enterprise.
Cloud computing is the fulfillment of much of the marketing behind open-source software, promising to shift value to services and away from software. DimDim and Acquia are two examples of open-source companies that "get it" and will marry the best of cloud computing with open source.
They're among the first. They won't be the last.
Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.
Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay. 
And what do I do if the Internet if off or something of that nature?
Yeah, no, I think I'll stick to downloading or buying boxed copies, thanks.
I'm not crazy like Larry Ellison's vision of cloud computing. (Watch the end of the third episode of Triumph of the Nerds to see what I'm taking about. In fact, here's a link to the transcript: http://www.pbs.org/nerds/part3.html)
Here's the silly quote:
"I hate the PC with a passion. Me going down to the store and buying Windows 95, I've got to get into my car drive down to a store buy a cardboard box full of bits you know encoded on a piece of plastic CDROM and you bring it home and read a manual install this thing - you must be kidding you know, put the stuff on the net - it's bits, don't put bits in cardboard, cardboard in trucks, trucks to stores, me go to the store, you know, pick the stuff out, it's insane. OK I love the Internet - I want information you know it flows across the wire."
Still, watch the video. His eyes look like he's a demon.
This model is what I want to see out there. I want to see the source code "not matter" to the business. In that scenario the source code can be made freely available. That gives me as an individual the ability to download the code (as I have already done with Drupal) and deploy it for my personal uses. It also allows me to utilize the code for a very small business for free, and then if my business grows the company providing hosting and management services is available at the point I can no longer manage the program on my own. This provides a self sustaining user base, it allows for the distributed development advantages of having a project open source (a subject you have completely ignored in previous open source/cloud computing articles), and it keeps the companies honest because I as a customer can always use the code on my lonesome. This requires them to maintain a certain quality of service.
I do hope you highlight similar models, and I hope they perform well in the market. It will make a healthier market for all of us.
It is also a nonstarter. A company would have to be shortsighted to allow a third party to hold their data hostage. Even if a business put everything in the "cloud", they would still need to hire an IT staff to maintain the office network and computers and make sure the companies they are paying for services are secure enough.
"Cloud computing" is a pipe dream for companies to get paid every month instead of 1 shot sales + the chance of selling support on the back end. In short it is a scam.
Gary Brooks
http://www.cloudaccess.net
Individuals may or may not use it, depending on their connection speed - almost half the U.S. still has dial-up.
Josh
- by roderickm September 14, 2009 1:54 PM PDT
- How far removed from open source does a company need to be before Matt Asay and other clueful bloggers stop using the open-source label?
- Like this Reply to this comment
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(11 Comments)Dimdim last published source code published nine months ago for version 4.5. They've shut out potential contributors and user/promoters and are now touting a cloud-only v5.1. Why would anyone contribute bug patches or new features to an old version? Today, Dimdim is about as open as Salesforce.com.
In contrast, Acquia wraps valuable cloud-oriented services around Drupal, which is developed openly with a highly engaged community.