Why Open Source Systems Management is the Best Choice for Small to Medium Sized Enterprises

By now, it is widely understood that the open source software development model represents a profound change from traditional, proprietary development models. Less well understood, but equally important, is the revolution that open source represents in the way businesses acquire and use software. The GPL and similar licenses are conspiring with mass collaboration to usher in a totally new, and fundamentally superior, way for small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) to get and utilize software. Nowhere can this be seen more clearly than with Open Source Systems Management.

The Way We Were

In the proprietary world, a software company invests massive dollars in development, sales, and marketing. They recoup their investment in license fees, which have strict provisions regarding redistribution of the product (you can’t), accessing the source code (are you kidding?), and making changes to the source code (call your lawyer). Open Source licenses turn each of these three provisions on their head: distribute it, look at it, customize it. In so doing, OSS offers a vastly different value proposition to SME users, enabling application and stack customization for every size company - a benefit that, in the proprietary software world, is typically only available to large customers with deep pockets.

One Size Does Not Fit All

One of the key benefits of OSS is that users have the option to customize the product to meet their business’s exact needs. Whether that means integrating the system with other legacy solutions, or adding an additional feature or capability in order to make the system more useful, the ability to customize the software gives users this freedom. From a vendor perspective, the customizable nature of open source enables much faster feedback, which translates into faster innovation.

Mass Collaboration

In their new book Wikinomics, authors Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams describe how the new collaborative Internet (epitomized by Wikis), Open Source licenses and related concepts, ubiquitous broadband access and a new generation of consumers that view hacking as a birth right, challenge suppliers of all types of goods and services to open up and embrace customer-driven innovation.

I love the book, but one area they don’t really discuss is how mass collaboration manifests itself in a business-to-business context when the sales relationship is indirect, as is traditionally the case for most SME technology.

Proprietary software vendors supply their products through distributors (such as Ingram, GE Access, or Tech Data) who in turn supply, and, to various degrees, educate, finance, and support the Value Added Resellers (VARs) who ultimately provide the product to the SME. This is the way most technology is sold, with some vendors selling 70% or more of their product through the channel.

Proprietary Software Feedback Loop: Effective? Sometimes. Fast? No.

Since proprietary software vendors maintain tight control over their source code, any changes to their products must be carefully and centrally orchestrated by the vendor. In this model, customer feedback on the product flows in the opposite direction as sales: the customer tells their VAR, who is typically the customer’s trusted technology adviser, what they think of the product. VARs act as sort of collection points for customer comments, passing them upstream to the vendor, either through their distributor or, frequently, at the vendor’s partner event. This feedback mechanism tends to be slow because it’s indirect.

Also, the feedback loop to the vendor is only effective sometimes because vendors are businesses, and, as such, they focus their energy on solving the problems that, in their judgment, will have the broadest appeal to the largest number of users. If the specific thing you want their product to do is either not widely shared among other users or if the amount of money your company spends on the vendor’s product does not represent a substantial percentage of their total revenue (that is, if you’re not really big), then your comments are not likely to be acted upon quickly.

In the traditional proprietary model, resellers are largely shut out of playing an active role in this feedback process. Sure, they can provide feedback through such vehicles as user groups and partner conferences, but this does not offer the agility or the flexibility to respond to varied and quickly changing customer requirements. An example of something that a proprietary vendor may be slow to implement, if at all, is translating their product into a “small” language, let’s say, Bulgarian. Though potentially very important to the speakers of the language, the expected net new revenue to the vendor may not justify the cost of implementing, and then maintaining over time, the product in that language.

Open Source Software Feedback Loop: Effective? Eminently So. Fast? Wicked.

The open source development model fundamentally transforms the relationship between vendor and channel. Where the proprietary software distribution model is hierarchical and primarily uni-directional, with open source, channels are empowered to not just distribute the product and take their cut, but to extend and customize the product to meet their clients’ specific needs. When feedback is received by the open source VAR/developer, they are empowered to act on it immediately and in such a way as to maximize the utility of the product to their customer base. These extensions can then be contributed back into the product through the development community that surrounds it. In this way, open source software products can develop additional functionality that satisfies real customer needs more rapidly than traditional proprietary software products can.

Open Source and Systems Management – A Perfect Match for SMEs

Considering the above, let’s take the typical SME’s systems management needs. If you’re thinking “wait a minute - there is no “typical” SME systems management need,” then we’re in total sync. Sure, every business needs certain capabilities, like event, application and system monitoring, and they need this to be easily deployed and affordable. But the precise mix of devices they need to monitor, the ways they want to monitor them, and the other complimentary systems with which they want to integrate monitoring, like service desk and configuration and change management, will vary greatly from company to company. Furthermore, across industries and geographies, there exists a wide diversity of regulatory requirements that must be satisfied.

Proprietary vendors have big product management and marketing teams whose job it is to determine which of these requirements will be the most profitable – that is, which will meet the most number of customer’s needs. That’s fine if you happen to be among the companies that fits the vendor’s profile. If not, then you’re SOL.

Along comes open source. Because Open Source solutions like Zenoss Core rely on open standards, and because the licensing allows not just you the end user, but also your VAR, to customize the solution to meet your precise needs, you no longer need to be a Fortune 500 company to enjoy a tailor-made management solution. And as you and/or your favorite VAR develop extensions to your preferred open source systems management solution, and as these extensions are contributed back to the community, the product gets better. Multiply by hundreds of thousands of other SMEs, and you get a solution developed using mass collaboration that innovates faster and costs less than proprietary solutions.

Beyond bringing the benefit of customized solutions to SMEs, open source systems management solutions like Zenoss also lower your costs and risk. You can download the full version from any number of locations, deploy it in any number of ways, and use it for as long as you want without paying a dime. When you’re satisfied that the solution is robust and flexible enough for you, then you can plan your next step – keep running it with in house support, get a support contract from Zenoss, contract with your preferred SI/VAR to develop extensions for you.

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