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.