Comments on: Open source evolving into SaaS?

SaaS may well prove to be the next phase of open-source business.

[tcadogan]

Great post Matt. At OpenX we're definitely trying to harness and combine the best of both the open source and SaaS revolutions in the ad infrastructure space.

Now with OpenX Hosted publishers can use the full power of the OpenX ad server in a SaaS model and can still contribute back to the software's evolution through our community efforts. Plus our downloadable version remains as accessible as ever and we're very hard at work on the next version (2.7) which is centered on a robust plug-in architecture that will make it even easier for developers to customize & extend the OpenX platform.

So publishers & developers can work with OpenX whichever way makes most sense for them. We hope we are striking the right balance and bringing these two great traditions of open source and SaaS together in the right way - look forward to learning more about what others think.
Cheers - Tim Cadogan (CEO OpenX)

[janderse99]

Good post but to me the real potential is not a vendor having both an Open Source and a SaaS model. It's not a model issue at all. The real potential is making the experience so seamless that users don't know or care if they are using the cloud or the server in the closet down the hall.

Let's face it the cost of migration is too high for a company with existing technologies to migrate to the cloud so the goal should be peacefully coexisting in a meaningful way. Thats not to say that the 100% SaaS organization does not exist but chances are they are organizations with little legacy IT in place.

[Scott_Switzer]

There is significant value in both open source, and hosted models:

Open Source:
1. Flexibility in the roadmap (you can customise your software, and build new features yourself)
2. More difficult to manage and configure

SaaS:
1. Low hurdle to get up and running, and new features appear without the need to upgrade
2. More difficult to customise

The best of all worlds would be to have a combination of the customisability of open source software, and the ease of use of SaaS. SaaS will become more sophisticated over time, where users can have additional power and flexibility by building custom plug-ins that can be loaded inside a hosted service, as well as using API's to connect their different systems together.

That is what we are going for at OpenX.