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December 06, 2005
Your stack - my stack?
The market for certified Open Source stacks heats up with Red Hat about to enter the foray. This is maybe the major gripe I have with this sort of business model. How is the customer helped when she has to choose from 42 different certified Open Source stacks that focus on Web publishing?
Which brings up a new business model - certifying certified stacks. Which reminds me of something else. And while Open Source is about giving customers a choice, we are again reminded that too much choice may not always be a Good Thing.
It will be important for companies providing certified Open Source stacks to quickly move up-market and add some sort of vertical value to their offering. It is by far a lot harder to copy an Open Source stack that focusses say on the financial marketplace compared to a generic LAMP stack. So incumbent companies like SpikeSource will have to move up-market when attacked by new entrants such as Red Hat. Now where have I read that before?
Posted by Matthew at December 6, 2005 11:54 PM