Digium — which promotes Asterisk, the open source IP PBX — is gathering data to help accelerate the company’s push into corporate enterprises. The effort includes a comprehensive survey, conducted with the 451 Group, about the potential financial benefits of open source. Here’s the scoop.
First, a little background. Digium, which ranked near the top of last year’s Open Source 50 survey results, has showed considerable momentum in recent weeks. The company’s Astricon conference, held Oct. 14-16 in Arizona, attracted more than 600 customers, developers and channel partners. During the event:
- CEO Danny Windham disclosed that the company is profitable, growing and channel partner driven.
- Pundits like Google Open Source Programs Manager Chris DiBona essentially endorsed Asterisk.
- Digium CTO and founder Mark Spencer disclosed plans for an Asterisk applications store (AsteriskExchange), an overhauled community site (Asterisk.org) and a new developer site (AsteriskForge).
- And IBM provided the icing on the cake, announcing a VoIP phone system based on Digium’s code.
Dialing for More Dollars
Still, challenges remain. Many open source offerings — Linux, Apache, MySQL, FireFox, etc. — have gained critical mass in enterprises. But if you poll the typical CIO, The VAR Guy bets most have yet to learn about Asterisk.
That’s where the Digium-451 Group open source survey comes into play. The so-called 451 CAOS (Commercial Adoption of Open Source) survey doesn’t mention Digium by name. But you can bet Digium will use the high-level survey results as a marketing tool to help Digium’s sales force and channel partners score meetings with corporate executives and IT decision makers.
With any luck (nudge, nudge, wink, wink) the data will show how open source increased a company’s performance and flexibility or reduced ongoing business costs. Not by coincidence, Digium can surely talk up its own price benefits over traditional IP PBXes during customer meetings.
Winning Data?
Frankly, The VAR Guy is surprised more open source companies don’t participate in customer-benefit type surveys. Survey participants essentially become qualified leads for open source business solutions. And the data often provides great anecdotal information that vendors can share over and over again with target partners and customers.
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Tags: 451 CAOS | 451 Group | Asterisk.org | AsteriskExchange | AsteriskForge | Astricon | Commercial Adoption of Open Source | Digium | Digium Asterisk | Digium CEO Danny Windham | Digium CTO Mark Spencer | Google Chris DiBona | IBM Asterisk | IBM Digium | Open Source 50 | Open Source Adoption Survey | Open Source IP PBX
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The reason the survey does not mention Digium by name is that it is not a Digium-451 Group open source survey, it is an independent 451 Group CAOS (Commercial Adoption of Open Source) survey which more than 20 vendors have agreed to send to their customers on our behalf. No vendors were involved in drafting the questions for the survey, which for the most part is a repeat of the survey we conducted ourselves in 2006. We asked vendors to send this year’s survey to their customers in order to reach as large a number of respondents as possible. In return all vendors involved in sending out the survey and users who respond to it will receive a copy of the related research.
To clarify further, 451 research is never sponsored, nor is it produced to promote a particular vendor’s agenda. For more on the scope of the 451 Group’s research see http://www.the451group.com/scope_of_research/overview.php
Matt: Sorry The VAR Guy is causing you/451 some headaches today. To recap, you’ve clearly communicated that 451 handles all portions of the research and vendors aren’t involved in drafting/developing the research. But vendors are helping to spread the word in order to increase the sample size. Smart Strategy. The VAR Guy has been known to use it, too.
Sorry The VAR Guy blurred the line a bit between 451’s research and Digium’s corporate ambitions.
TVG: I don’t think it was you. The e-mail that I got from Digium certainly left me feeling that this was sponsored research:
Given current economic conditions there is considerable interest in open source software and whether open source licensing can help users lower the cost of enterprise computing compared to traditional proprietary licensing.
In conjunction with The 451 Group, Digium would like you to help create the largest survey ever undertaken into end user attitudes to the potential financial benefits of open source.
In return for your assistance, your company will receive a copy of the research results, which will be delivered in an update to The 451 Group’s second Commercial Adoption of Open Source (CAOS) research report Cost Conscious, A practical guide for understanding and calculating the financial benefits of open source for enterprise IT projects.
Brian: Thanks for backing up The VAR Guy. Yes, the wording made it seem like Digium could be involved in the research. But The VAR Guy should have checked in with 451 Group before writing the blog. So the apology to Matt Aslett and 451 Group was warranted.
Still, The VAR Guy stands by his thesis: The open source community needs to start leveraging industry research as they make their case to customers.
What exactly is the advantage of open source to a Corporation? The knowledge and investment they would require to go and edit the source of an open source application such as Asterisk would be considerable… And then they have to hope the changes will be accepted by the project or else they will remain with a version that is non upgradeable and thus a security risk.
Open source has become the ‘darling’ of the press but is it really practical for most corporations?
In this day and age, corporations much focus on their core business….
The knowledge and experience needed to edit the source of an open-source application is a whole lot less than it would take to develop something similar from scratch. Often, you don’t need to understand the whole thing to isolate and fix a bug in one part of it, or even to add some small enhancement. Also, the source is the final arbiter on finer points that may be unclear in the documentation: if the two disagree, then obviously the source must be right
.
I also refer you to the Sealed-Bonnet Fallacy. http://wlug.org.nz/SealedBonnetFallacy
Not sure why some folks think you need to “edit” or “change” open source to get a business solution going. Plenty of commercial-grade open source applications out there…