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January 18, 2006
Differentiate yourself
Dave Rosenberg writes about how SpikeSource may be changing their business model "on the fly" to a channel approach. He is also doubtful about whether that will work - because system integrators can in the end either build and distribute their own stack or get a stack from somewhere else.
Perhaps he's right in that products lead to services and not vice-versa but I think the problem lies more in "differentiation". A company that is able to combine Open Source with vertical/industry know-how is in a far better position to provide that one-stop offering of stack and services to a corporation than companies like SpikeSource or SourceLabs can. Their current stack offerings are too easy to copy. Where's the barrier to competition? Wait a few more months and there will be oodles of LAMP stacks out there.
Companies like MySQL, Alfresco, Funambol or JBoss have Open Source products with which they can differentiate themselves - both in terms of software and the corresponding services.
So what can companies like SpikeSource do to differentiate themselves? That will be key question in the coming months when it comes to their offering - not their sales model.
Technorati Tags: opensource
Posted by Matthew at January 18, 2006 08:38 PM
Comments
Maybe if you say stack a few more times it will drive it over the edge. Stack. stack stack stack stack! I created a stack that monitors my other stacks while stacking my stack of smurfs. stack! stack stack!
Posted by: Anonymous at January 18, 2006 11:11 PM