The VAR Guy dons a hairshirt for getting five things wrong in 2008 on open source, but other than his optimism on Mandriva, there's little in his predictions to criticize. Indeed, it may simply be too soon to call the game one way or the other on his other predictions related to Novell Suse, Google Android, Ubuntu Server Edition, and Sun/MySQL.
My own biggest failed prediction actually predates 2008, but it took me all of this year to understand just how wrong I had been (or, at least, to admit it). I talked about "burning the boats" back in 2006, by which I meant that the only way forward with open-source models is to cut one's ties to past security (license lock-in, proprietary software, etc.). But I was wrong. Or, at least, I wasn't astute enough to recognize that the lock-in battle would simply shift to hosted applications, data, etc.
Tim O'Reilly got it right. In my quixotic quest to keep everything free, I got it wrong.
Having said that, I do think that lock-in changes in open source. Proprietary software gates use, meaning you can't use the software until you pay, but this is clearly not what any vendor should want. Adoption and ubiquity are the name of the game with Web-enabled businesses. Open source makes both easier.
The "right" model seems to hearken back to an experiment Trolltech made at the end of last millennium. Trolltech used the GPL license for its code, but added a clause requiring commercial users to pay. This, of course, wasn't open source according to the OSI definition, and Trolltech took heat for its position. But eight years later this is essentially the model followed by SugarCRM, Zimbra, MySQL, and others (including Red Hat, if you look closely at its business), though each company uses different means to get to this result.
Whatever the means (proprietary extensions, commercial add-ons that boost production value, etc.), the effect is the same: many users try the software for free but will upgrade to a commercial version when moving to serious production because the commercial version saves time (at the expense of money). It's a fair trade-off, and one that I should have acknowledged sooner. Mea culpa.
With as much as 60 percent of Red Hat's $680 million in FY 2008 revenue coming through its partner channel, The VAR Guy reaches a cogent conclusion: "Red Hat-driven solutions are likely a multi-billion channel opportunity now."
Granted, Red Hat's top competition like Microsoft pushes even more through its channel, but let's not forget that Microsoft is a proven entity. Red Hat, on the other hand, is training a new generation of VARs and system integrators to work with Linux and open-source solutions. It has to be both evangelist and business at the same time.
The results look pretty good:
...Red Hat is signing up roughly 8 to 10 new Advanced Business Partners per quarter. But this is more than a Linux story, folks. Roughly 40 of Red Hat's top Advanced Business Partners now sell JBoss middleware solutions, and 29 of those partners focus primarily on JBoss and have yet to take the Red Hat Linux plunge....Another key stat: The recent Red Hat Summit in Boston attracted 3.5 to 4 times as many partners when compared to the 2007 summit.
This is awesome. I'd find it fascinating (and profitable :-) to understand better how Red Hat entices and makes productive this swelling crowd of partners. Europe has traditionally been partner-driven for many software businesses, but the United States, in particular, has tended to prefer a direct model.
What is Red Hat's secret sauce for generating partner interest and productivity in the Americas?
It's perhaps not surprising that Channel Insider recently named Red Hat as the industry's top server operating system. What is surprising is that Microsoft's Windows wasn't in the top-three vendors, with Sun and Novell coming in second and third place, respectively.
Perhaps Microsoft isn't as profitable for its partners as it has aimed to be?
Channel Insider polled an "elite group" of value-added resellers (VARs) to get the pulse on VARs' preferred technology, from server operating systems to business intelligence software, and everything in between. Looking at the other categories, Microsoft fared well:
... Read moreI will admit it: I've long admired The VAR Guy's blog. It's one of the first (and last) open-source resources I read each day. It's insightful and opinionated, and generally quite smart. He was the next incarnation of the Fake Steve Jobs (minus the bilious attitude :-).
Today I got to meet him in person, along with his beautiful wife ("The VAR Lady"?). It turns out that The VAR Guy is an entrepreneur as well as a great blogger/journalist.
The VAR Guy (I can't bear to use his real name - it's like telling one's kids that Santa is actually Uncle Clark) made a great point in the midst of our conversation: "News is a commodity. If you're not adding opinion and personal perspective to it, who cares?"
I guess that's why I find blogs and op-ed pieces so much more interesting than straight news....
At any rate, if you don't read The VAR Guy's blog already, do so. Now.
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