[TriLUG] Novell & Microsoft - sleeping with the enemy

[rleathers]

Just another example here:

My employer, American Research Institute, has adopted a business strategy of
selling services with the goal of helping our customers extract business
value from their technology investments.  In the overwhelming majority of
cases, this is built around open source software.  JBoss, MySQL, Liferay,
Alfresco, and Moodle are all important items on the menu, along with
applications we have built in-house, and a few commercial titles we have
licensed.

We actively market the fact that we use open source, and claim to be able to
help our customers realize greater flexibility and productivity by making
the most of what open source is all about.  

ARI is almost 5 years old now.  The company has been on board with this open
source play since day 1.  Revenues have more or less doubled every year
since the doors opened and we are now about 50 employees strong.  The
strategy works.  Our customers love it.  I can assure you that our sales
people do indeed make some cold calls.  Explaining our open source strategy
is a big part of how we differentiate ourselves in our marketing message.

    

-----Original Message-----
From: trilug-bounces at trilug.org [mailto:trilug-bounces at trilug.org] On Behalf
Of jonc at nc.rr.com
Sent: Thursday, March 15, 2007 3:48 PM
To: Triangle Linux Users Group discussion list
Subject: Re: [TriLUG] Novell & Microsoft - sleeping with the enemy

You don't work in the VoIP industry.

Open Source is one of the driving engines of that new industry, and
cold-calls are dirt cheap for folks in the industry :-).

Con Jarnes

----- Original Message -----
From: Shawn William Taylor <STaylor at torexretailna.com>
Date: Thursday, March 15, 2007 12:33 pm
Subject: Re: [TriLUG] Novell & Microsoft - sleeping with the enemy
To: Triangle Linux Users Group discussion list <trilug at trilug.org>

> I have been working in technology for 10+ years and have never 
> received a 
> cold call from a company that is trying to generate its revenue by 
> marketing or selling Open Source technologies.
> I don't think the failure is with the technology piece, I think 
> it's in 
> the sales and marketing piece. Most people (From what I can gather 
> by 
> being a pretty green linux user and observer) on this list are 
> either 
> using open source or contributing to open source (or both). 
> However, I 
> don't see a lot of people marketing those solutions or actively 
> selling 
> those solutions.
> 
> The reason the manager in Jim's example will buy the name brand 
> recognized 
> solution is the same reason we all make our everyday buying 
> decisions. 
> Either:
> 
> 1> We have used the product and continue to buy it.
> 2> We trust someone enough to value their opinion about the product 
> as a 
> referral.
> 3> We have a relationship with an existing brand that adds the 
> product to 
> their portfolio.
> 
> Companies selling Open Source technology need to be more aggressive 
> about 
> getting that piece of their operation functioning and it's not an 
> easy 
> task. Especially for a small company that doesn't have large 
> marketing 
> budgets.
> 
> Shawn
> 
> Jim Towers Wrote:
> 
>  I believe Novell thinks SUSE is netware and will try to sell it 
> the same
> way. Maybe in their mind they are not providing Linux but are 
> selling 
> SUSE.
> I guess this is probably a good business strategy for them.  
> "Linux" costs
> more but not "SUSE". E.g.
> novell salesman: "You're not thinking of using that Linux distro 
> are you?"
> bank VP: "Oh no, we need reliability."
> techie (former microserf): "Send me to SUSE training. I like GUI's."
> softie: "But don't forget you need the Windows OS for Sharepoint 
> and other
> stone soups." Heck, why not port those stone soups to Linux? As 
> long as 
> they
> have GUI's and the big name then some manager will buy them even if
> mediawiki, tikiwiki, egroupware, zope, joomla!+docman etc are free.
> 
> My $.02,
> TimJowers
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