Enterprise open source Toolkit

Company profile: Open source specialist SpikeSource

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Open Source

Matthew Broersma ZDNet.co.uk

Published: 09 Nov 2006 12:52 GMT

...sitting on top of an operating system. The stacks are made up of more than 50 components, including Apache and JBoss, down to more obscure subcomponents. They run on several platforms, including Red Hat, Suse Linux and Windows, with support planned for Solaris and other Linux distributions.

Customers can buy pre-built stacks or have SpikeSource make one to order. SpikeSource provides tools and services for managing the stacks, called the SpikeIgnite platform, and manages patches and updates via SpikeNet.

Key to all this is integration. The company's technology ensures all the components of the stack will work together seamlessly, in all their possible configurations. Unlike collections of proprietary applications, the resulting stack is genuinely integrated — it is deployed with a single installer, and a single patch can update the entire stack.

On the support side, too, SpikeSource manages the relationships with the various providers of tech support, giving customers a single point of contact for support calls. The customer's contact with all of this should be transparent, coming through their reseller — as of earlier this year, SpikeSource does all its business through the reseller channel.

The channel is now central to the company's strategy, the aim being to foster an ecosystem around open-source technology and support providers, such as that which already exists, for instance, with Microsoft and its many resellers.

"The emergence of this ecosystem is one of the critical factors for open source to take off," says Ovum's Lachal. "It's not just about the vendors offering support directly, they're also helping other people, VARs [value-added resellers], ISVs, to provide that support. Instead of having one customer, and that's it, there are several layers of support."

Polese says there is at the moment a "perfect storm" of factors coming together to support the emergence of the open-source applications market — ISVs needing a channel and wanting to get applications to market quickly, the channel wanting to offer support for open source and businesses needing low-cost, high-quality software.

"There are economies of scale for open source on the developer side. We're helping to drive those through the channel to the end customer," Polese says. "You can't expect customers to be their own ISVs to do that. We're providing efficiencies."

On the channel side, SpikeSource sees an important role for often small, locally oriented integrators who want to offer open-source alternatives to their customer base. "These are often small 'mom-and-pop shops'. The value and attraction is that they can sell a turnkey, tailored solution, whether it's around CRM, business intelligence, or what have you. This allows them to expand their business, offering enterprise-class maintenance and support, and also sharing in the margin of that ongoing subscription."

Similarly, the "federated support" model is a way of contributing back to the open-source community, since the open-source organisations providing the support also share in the support revenue.

Progress
The company has made significant gains in recent weeks. In October SpikeSource initiated its push into Europe, signing up technology providers such as Germany's Open-Xchange, with its well-regarded collaboration tools, and the UK's Alfresco, which makes content management software. The UK's Interactive Ideas signed up as a region-wide distributor, on top of integrators in France, Portugal, the Netherlands and Germany.

Perhaps more importantly, NEC last month agreed to bundle SpikeSource infrastructure software on NEC server hardware, making SpikeSource NEC's strategic global open-source solution provider. The deal should bring in more ISV partners as well as giving SpikeSource a higher profile and added credibility.

"It's a hard world out there, but they are getting some traction," says Lachal. "It's not just smaller ISVs and VARs, but also bigger ones. Their number-one objective should be to get more high-level partners." SpikeSource must also focus on getting its message across, following several shifts in its strategy. "They have to keep explaining what they're doing. Some people are puzzled," Lachal says.