Is OpenLogic The Future Of The OSS Support Business

Is OpenLogic The Future Of The OSS Support Business?

By Savio Rodrigues
Expert Author
Article Date: 2008-03-03

Many of you know that OpenLogic offers consolidated technical support, updates and indemnification for hundreds of open source projects. Earlier this year, OSS luminaries such as Shaun (of JBoss fame) and Rod (of SpringSource fame) questioned whether customers could receive the same level of technical support from vendors such as OpenLogic versus the OSS project owner.

Many of you know that OpenLogic offers consolidated technical support, updates and indemnification for hundreds of open source projects. Earlier this year, OSS luminaries such as Shaun (of JBoss fame) and Rod (of SpringSource fame) questioned whether customers could receive the same level of technical support from vendors such as OpenLogic versus the OSS project owner.

Well, OpenLogic just released news on the state of their business:

OpenLogic tripled its number of customers. OpenLogic now has 3 companies in the Fortune 10 and many more in the Fortune 500.
The top 5 projects that OpenLogic provided consolidated support for in 2007 were PostgreSQL, JBoss, Tomcat, Apache HTTP Server, and Hibernate.

In 2007, the OpenLogic Expert Community grew to 160 members. Field experts who OpenLogic pays on a per-incident basis helped resolve almost half of OpenLogic's support issues in 2007, with the remainder being resolved by OpenLogic's in house experts.

Projects in OpenLogic's Certified Library more than doubled to 380 projects.

It's interesting to see that customers are going to OpenLogic for JBoss and Hibernate support versus using Red Hat.

As OSS products become more mature, what value proposition will OSS project owners offer to balance the needs of customers seeking one number to call for the 10s of OSS projects in use at their company? Don't get me wrong, I doubt that Red Hat or SpringSource is going to close up shop anytime soon. But, there is a case to be made for consolidated support providers such as OpenLogic.

As with most things, there's likely room for both models...

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About the Author:
Savio Rodrigues is a product manager with IBM's WebSphere Software division. He envisions a day when open source and traditional software live in harmony. This site contains Savio's personal views. IBM does not necessarily agree with the views expressed here.