Presentation: Business with Open Source Software - How to do business with Free Software?

You can download the presentation (OSS Business Concepts.ppt) from
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bdosdn/files/Seminar20070721/

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Business with Open Source Software: How to do business with Free Software?

Presented by
SM Ashraful Kadir
Co-founder, BDOSDN
Senior Application Engineer, IT, Banglalink

Saturday July 21, 2007

Seminar organized by
Bangladesh Open Source Developers Network (BDOSDN)
IT Bangla Pvt. Ltd.
Dhaka, Bangladesh

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Opportunities for Open Source Software Business in Bangladesh?
- Windows, Office are not the only software, large to small businesses need lot more software to run their business… e.g. ERP, CRM, Accounting, HRM and many more

- Research through internet for available open source solutions for possible niche markets… large and commodity software markets are taken by Microsoft, Red Hat, Oracle, Sun, HP… or will be taken soon

- Download the source code, you may need small modification, make your marketing plan… sell it at low price
- Offer pre-sales & post-sales supports, trainings… of course, not for free
- Open Source + Proprietary… Choose a hybrid business model for your business


Utilization of community resources will reduce production cost

















The Open Source Effect in Software Business

















From “Doing Business With Open Source” by Aaron Weiss

- “Increasingly, software vendors are developing products ranging from messaging servers to CRM platforms and releasing at least entry-level feature sets as free, open source code”

- “For the small business, this means expanding choices in free, commercial-grade software. Although the basic software is free and may be all you ever need, prepare to pay up for support, hosting, premium features or the development cost of customizing the source code to your own unique needs.”

- Few types of available open source business software:
Customer Relations Management (CRM), Procurement, Office Productivity, Accounting

Source: http://www.smallbusinesscomputing.com/news/article.php/3679161


Four Ways To Win

Investor's point of view, at least four known business models for making money with open source:
1. Support Sellers: give away the software product, but sell distribution, branding, and after-sale service. e.g. Red Hat
2. Loss Leader: give away open-source as a loss-leader and market positioner for closed software. e.g. Netscape
3. Widget Frosting: a hardware company goes open-source in order to get better drivers and interface tools cheaper. e.g. Silicon Graphics
4. Accessorizing: selling books, offering trainings

Source: http://www.opensource.org/advocacy/case_for_business.php