Comments on: The Open Source Channel Meets Amazon Web Services http://www.thevarguy.com/2009/02/11/the-open-source-channel-meets-amazon-web-services/ What's Next In the IT Channel Fri, 19 Mar 2010 01:53:23 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=abc hourly 1 By: Paul Comerford http://www.thevarguy.com/2009/02/11/the-open-source-channel-meets-amazon-web-services/comment-page-1/#comment-95791 Paul Comerford Fri, 13 Feb 2009 11:38:18 +0000 http://www.thevarguy.com/2009/02/11/the-open-source-channel-meets-amazon-web-services/#comment-95791 Another great example of Opensource SaaS or as we call them OSaaS applications can be found at www.workclouds.com the founders are seeking MSPs to white lable the service and given the lack of capital spend in our customer base we see the addition of OSaaS as critical this year for any MSP looking to make a dramatic impact on their recurring revenues numbers. Another great example of Opensource SaaS or as we call them OSaaS applications can be found at http://www.workclouds.com the founders are seeking MSPs to white lable the service and given the lack of capital spend in our customer base we see the addition of OSaaS as critical this year for any MSP looking to make a dramatic impact on their recurring revenues numbers.

]]> By: D Guilbeau http://www.thevarguy.com/2009/02/11/the-open-source-channel-meets-amazon-web-services/comment-page-1/#comment-95518 D Guilbeau Wed, 11 Feb 2009 08:15:27 +0000 http://www.thevarguy.com/2009/02/11/the-open-source-channel-meets-amazon-web-services/#comment-95518 VAR Guy - your observations are astute as usual. This is a trend that will continue and accelerate in the next 12-18 months. It was a major topic at SugarCON last week among the partners and channel team. At Levementum, we are now offering cloud hosting and administrative programs for the commercial open source applications we represent (SugarCRM, Compiere, Talend, etc.) on EC2. There is strong interest by our customers in this approach, as well as great support from the software companies themselves. Almost every new customer inquires about the approach. It's one of the primary value propositions of open source applications. The best ones are designed to give the customer ultimate control over the deployment approach. Customers can host it with the application provider, do it themselves on-premise, or put it in the 'cloud'. And more importantly, if down the road they find a better cloud service or approach, they can move without constraints to the new cloud offering. Just last month we moved 4 SugarCRM customers from a various smaller hosting providers to EC2 over one Saturday. These were each separate instances of Sugar, two of which had CTI integration. Each instance of Sugar including all configurations and data was moved without just 2 hours disruption in service. I propose this is a critical differentiation between open source and proprietary applications. Would Salesforce.com let you move a 'platform as a service' app to another cloud provider? Or within your own data center? I doubt it. Ultimately once the customer builds that app on the sfdc platform they are locked. If they want to move, they have to start over from scratch. In the long run, enabling the customer's ability to leverage the cloud - hardware, available information on companies and people (e.g. from sources like Jigsaw, Hoovers, Linked-In, Facebook) in a process - will drive the real value of commercial open source applications. Our role as VAR's is to educate and facilitate. www.levementum.com opensource-pragmatist.com VAR Guy – your observations are astute as usual. This is a trend that will continue and accelerate in the next 12-18 months. It was a major topic at SugarCON last week among the partners and channel team. At Levementum, we are now offering cloud hosting and administrative programs for the commercial open source applications we represent (SugarCRM, Compiere, Talend, etc.) on EC2. There is strong interest by our customers in this approach, as well as great support from the software companies themselves. Almost every new customer inquires about the approach.

It’s one of the primary value propositions of open source applications. The best ones are designed to give the customer ultimate control over the deployment approach. Customers can host it with the application provider, do it themselves on-premise, or put it in the ‘cloud’. And more importantly, if down the road they find a better cloud service or approach, they can move without constraints to the new cloud offering.

Just last month we moved 4 SugarCRM customers from a various smaller hosting providers to EC2 over one Saturday. These were each separate instances of Sugar, two of which had CTI integration. Each instance of Sugar including all configurations and data was moved without just 2 hours disruption in service.

I propose this is a critical differentiation between open source and proprietary applications. Would Salesforce.com let you move a ‘platform as a service’ app to another cloud provider? Or within your own data center? I doubt it. Ultimately once the customer builds that app on the sfdc platform they are locked. If they want to move, they have to start over from scratch. In the long run, enabling the customer’s ability to leverage the cloud – hardware, available information on companies and people (e.g. from sources like Jigsaw, Hoovers, Linked-In, Facebook) in a process – will drive the real value of commercial open source applications. Our role as VAR’s is to educate and facilitate.

http://www.levementum.com
opensource-pragmatist.com

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