The Power of Open Source for Marketing

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Marketing open source solutions presents different challenges than traditional software. The fact that in many cases these tools “sell” themselves certainly helps! Yes, the most frequently cited reason for the popularity of open source is the TCO, but running a close second is that open source solutions compare favorably with proprietary tools in functionality, performance, and reliability. And indeed - a product that doesn’t work is truly false economy!

Open source: a better cost of doing business

To get started using open source technologies, users only need download the product over the Internet. They don’t need to negotiate with a vendor, sign a contract, or put a hard-stop on the time they have for testing the product. And, because there are no up-front costs and no licensing fees, they don’t necessarily need buy-in from management or an earmarked budget.

When it comes to adopting the enterprise version - which is usually sold as a subscription - open source provides a stable and predictable pricing model. For example, in the data integration field, proprietary vendors levy a “data tax” which increases the cost of processing additional data - adding servers, data sources/targets, or even transitioning to multi-core CPUs requires the purchase of additional licenses. These infrastructure costs aren’t predictable and may lead to rude surprises because companies can’t determine when they will reach their limits.

With Talend, the cost of the solution is based on the number of developers of data integration processes. Users can access new data as needed - for example, when setting up a new application or acquiring a new business, operations sometimes hard to predict in advance - they don’t need to buy additional licenses.

Let the product fit the project

To see if a product is a good fit for a project, just download it and use it. If you need assistance, the open source community and its vast resources are at your fingertips. You’ll also get free product upgrades as they become available simply by downloading new versions. No face time with the vendor and no time wasted on administrative tasks.

Before going ahead with the technology, you’ll know exactly what you’re getting; there are none of the unpleasant surprises that abound in the proprietary world. Open source means complete transparency.

Open source also makes it easy for a product or a technology to disseminate in the enterprise, because open source isn’t constrained to a given project, a given feature, or a given functional parameter. Open source is very adaptable. Typically, customers choose it for one type of project and quickly realize that they have other projects that would benefit from the same technology. Because there are no budgetary constraints or license fees, open source expands very easily to other parts of the enterprise.

Marketing open source today

Like many of my colleagues in open source marketing, I discovered open source three years ago, when I joined Talend. I came with an extensive high-tech marketing background, but had to learn the ropes of this new trade. Marketing open source technologies is exciting, and always changing. We have to fight pre-conceived ideas, FUD (Fear Uncertainty & Doubt) spread by proprietary vendors - who often know better, but pretend not to - hard core conservatism from an (always shrinking) part of the ecosystem, etc.

But maybe the most important aspect of the job is that we help make change happen. Open source is the future of IT. Welcome to the future!

Yves

PS: Recommended reading: IDC White Paper - Talend Uses Open Source to Deliver Low-Cost, Easy-to-Use Enterprise Data Integration

Note: the original version of this post appeared in Talend’s Newsletter #16 - September 2009




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