This question baffles me.
After all, selling services around open source seems to be the future for a lot of the software world. Oracle made 70% of their revenues last year based on services. There are clear arguments to be made in capturing a large mindshare by introducing quality open source products and monetizing it with services, customization and support.
And services, customization and support are areas that the Indian outsourcing industry has already mastered!
They clearly have the manpower, they must be having an insight into industry trends and needs, and they definitely have a strong story on the services side. So why not do it ?
Why didn’t Wipro, TCS or Infosys think of JBoss, Pentaho, Zimbra or zmanda ?
I have talked to many, many people on this, and I don’t buy most of the reasons I have heard – such as “their leadership is not innovative”, or “theres not enough money for them to be bothered”, or “they are too comfortable with their current business model”. Those sort of simplistic reasons dont hold much water, in my opinion.
The only plausible explanation that I have been offered by a friend of mine is this – fear.
Indian outsourcing majors do not want to antagonize any of their potential customers by releasing software that can potentially cannibalise their customers markets.
Is that what this is all about ? Do nothing that could jeopardize any relationship with any future customer ? That seems to tie up Indian companies in a strait jacket with little wiggle room, since one could argue that any product launch competes with a potential customer.
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Define what you mean by ‘do not use open source’
a) Use open source as ‘productivity environments’ ? Yes, they do. GCC, CVS, Linux, SubVersion are all open source and used extensively across indian development organizations
b) Use open source for building libraries on top ? Depends on the licenses. If you read the differences between GPL, LGPL, Berkley and similar, each has its own restrictions on what it means to use it, ( for example, if I link my library with a GPL licensed library, I may need to distribute my source [given some conditions are met] while that is not the case with LGPL and so forth.
c) When ‘large’ corporates want to do a project, they want to make sure that they do it right both technically and legally. The first part is important: Very few open source solutions have extensive case study reports and references – most reports are written by geeks who say its ‘coooool’ or ‘I don’t want to pay M$$$$$$ any money for their evil empire’. If you want to refer a new great tool called ‘Zingo’ to a corporation, they will want to see how well it has been used, tested and validated. Saying ‘Zingo’ is in development right now, 0.01Alpha doesn’t cut it.
Productivity tools are extremely important. Good tools have a dramatic result in streamlined workflow. Solutions such as CVS, GCC and similar have been around for many years and has evolved over time and accepted. they have a well established customer base and extensive case studies. Why would I go for a tool that has neither ? Sorry, not interested in being a scape goat.
There is a reason why people pay a premium. If you think a particular open source project is indeed better (aka complete – not geeky cool), then what is needed is proof.
Indian IT Majors are obssesed with growth … sooner or later they hv to attempt to inovate …
The British Rule has left us better coolies…sorry cyber coolies.
Israel with 1/10th of our population has more than 300 products marketed in US markets and most their are companies listed on US stock exchanges. Some like Checkpoint are creating waves. We have our IT companies listed on US Stock exchanges….Infosys, SIFY, Patni,Cognizant…all staffing companies in the guise of service companies…providing employees to clients or client projects.
The biggies just want to get bigger and see any competition from medium or small companies as a threat. They are lost in emulating the strategies of other biggies..more employees…more money.
See how naive Nilkeni of Infoaya is when he commented that product development is capital intensive and costs more than $100 million( now where this figure came from is a big question by itself)…. and to prove him wrong Ramco came out with 2 blockbusters in the last 6 years with hardly $10 million.
Read the book WHEN GAINTS LEARN TO DANCE…..to get better clarity….the biggies are complacent and hardly adept at catching the trends…
IBM fumbled, MIcrosoft is moving slowly only staying active by gobbling new companies, FORD + GM are dying, Intel is scared of AMD….HM’s Ambassador in India had ruled the market for 4 decades but failed to notice Maruti’s mkt penetration.
So do not expect the biggies to lead change.
INtel Capital Mgmt’s VC team in India wondered why the IT biggies are not funding the innovative IT companies in India . They wondered that if the Indian players itself do not trust their brethern, why should a foreign player put his money here?
The British Rule has left us better coolies…sorry cyber coolies.
Israel with 1/10th of our population has more than 300 products marketed in US markets and most their are companies listed on US stock exchanges. Some like Checkpoint are creating waves. We have our IT companies listed on US Stock exchanges….Infosys, SIFY, Patni,Cognizant…all staffing companies in the guise of service companies…providing employees to clients or client projects.
The biggies just want to get bigger and see any competition from medium or small companies as a threat. They are lost in emulating the strategies of other biggies..more employees…more money.
See how naive Nilkeni of Infoaya is when he commented that product development is capital intensive and costs more than $100 million( now where this figure came from is a big question by itself)…. and to prove him wrong Ramco came out with 2 blockbusters in the last 6 years with hardly $10 million.
Read the book WHEN GAINTS LEARN TO DANCE…..to get better clarity….the biggies are complacent and hardly adept at catching the trends…
IBM fumbled, MIcrosoft is moving slowly only staying activeby gobbling new companies, FORD IS dying, Intel is scraed of AMD….HM’s Ambassador in India had ruled the market for 4 decades but failed to notice Maruti’s mkt penetration.
So do not expect the biggies to lead change.
INtel Capital Mgmt’s VC team in India wondered why the IT biggies are not funding the innovative IT companies in India . They wondered that if the Indian players itself do not trust their brethern, why should a foreign player put his money here?
“Why didn’t Wipro, TCS or Infosys think of JBoss, Pentaho, Zimbra or zmanda ?”
I am sure you know what I am going to say – but here goes.
Wipro,TCS,Infosys do pretty much what their customers *ask* them to do. I wish I could sugar coat that. There is nothing wrong with that and that is their business model. They are enormously successful doing what they do.
We really need to look at smaller more focussed players to monetize opportunities in open source.