5 FLOSS Business Models

The scope of this post is to analyse 5 companies Business Models according to  will be inspected in order to identify their business models among the the different FLOSS Business Models according to Daffara's Taxonomy:
- Liferay
- Eucalyptus
- BlackDuck
- Acquia
- Funambol

- Liferay: Liferay is an Open Source CMS (Content Management System), oriented to Enterprise. Among its main customers, some important Companies from very different business, such as Cisco, T-Mobile or Barclays.

  According to Daffara's Taxonomy on FLOSS Business Models, Liferay's business is oriented to being "Product Specialists".
  In particular, Liferay Inc. main revenues streams come from its superior knowledge on the Liferay CMS. According to their web, Liferay Inc. sells an Enterprise Edition of the product, which basically grants additional services to the customer, such as [1]:
  * Guaranteed SLA (Service Level Agreement), in two manners: Gold / Platinum [2], what means 9/5 or 24/7 support respectively.
  * Regular Service Packs
  * 5 Year End of Service Policy
  * Customer Portal
  * Optional Indemnification
  So, taking into account previous consideration, Liferay Inc. revenues streams come basically from additional services, such as [3]:
  * Enterprise Support
  * Training
  * Consulting

- Eucalyptus: Eucalyptus Systems Inc. is a company that sells AWS(Amazon Web Services)-compatible private and hybrid cloud services, by levering existing virtualized infrastructure to create on-demand cloud resource pools. These highly elastic pools can be dynamically scaled up or down as customers application workloads change [4]. Among its main customers, enterprises from very disparate environments such as Puma, Electronic Arts, Fujifilm or Nasa [5].

  According to Daffara's FLOSS Business Model Taxonomy, Eucalyptus Business Model is based on being "Platform provider". Eucalyptus Systems Inc. integrates services around a set of FLOSS projects, such as KVM or Xen Hypervisors,integrated in a single, tested and verified product, in particular, Eucalyptus. Despite the fact that Eucalyptus is FLOSS, the product name and logo are trademarks.
  Being a platform provider, Eucalyptus main revenues streams come from:
  On the one hand, a verification proccess to meet high quality standards, via key factors such as [6]:
  - Organizational Agility
  - Operational Efficiency
  - Infrastructure Flexibility
  - Dynamic Scalability
  - Resource Control
  - Cloud Reliability
  - Regulatory Compliance
  - Hybrid Capability
  - Workload Portability
  On the other hand, different type of services:
  * Customer Cloud Support Services, in two flavours, Standard and Premium, offering 9/5 and 24/7 customer support [7].
  * Cloud Consulting Services [8].
  * Training: offering different kind of training courses via Eucalyptus University, as well as certifications, and partnership programs [9].

- BlackDuck: According to its web, Black Duck Software helps developers build better software faster with the power of open source software and methods [10]. To do so, BlackDuck offers software and services, to provide basically Open Source Software Assessment, evaluating the use of open source technologies and methods, including community engagement, to achieve business and technology goals.

  Initially, Business Model around BlackDuck is not easily classifiable. On the one hand, they provide Open Source Software Assessment, which includes includes evaluation of a company software to analyse, by using the Black Duck KnowledgeBase, different aspects such as [11]:
  - Code search, scanning and analysis
  - Ongoing, automated license compatibility notification
  - Comparing software in any code base to the known universe of open source code, and reporting matches
  - Cataloguing hard data that documents the code origin
  So, taking into account previous considerations, BlackDuck Software company could be considered to have, taking into account Daffara's Taxonomy on FLOSS Business Model, a model associated to "Legal Consultancy", as they provide a KnowledgeBase to provide legal assessment for companies about complex problems derived from multiplicity of libre software licenses and their compatibilities.
  But, on the other hand, Black Duck Software offers the The Black Duck Suite, which is a comprehensive set of governance and compliance automation tools that enable development organizations to harness the power of open source technologies and methods, offering [12]:
  * Automated governance with a customizable approval work-flow.
  * Automated compliance with code scanning and auditing.
  * A catalogue for open source, commercial and internally-developed software that allows developers to easily find, track and reuse approved code.
  * Comprehensive code search to help developers find and choose components.
  * A tool integration framework that is repository-neutral, including easy integration with issue tracking and build systems, software configuration management systems (CMS) and tools.
  Apart from that, Black Duck Software has a division, named "Olliance Consulting", which provides OSMA (Open Source Management Assessment), offering a quick and easy way to learn about industry best practices and assess organizational readiness and governance maturity around FLOSS [13].
  So, from this perspective, Black Duck Software could be considered as well a "Consulting Company", offering Assessment about selection and evaluation of software products and services, by means of its Black Duck Suite and its Olliance Consulting Division.

- Acquia: Acquia company sells support on a FLOSS CMS, in particular, Drupal. In particular, they offer a set of different product, services and technical support for this FLOSS CMS.

  Regarding products, Acquia sells a set of free downloadable software, such as [14]:
  - Acquia Drupal: combines Drupal with useful modules to make web publishing faster, easier, and more feature-rich.
  - Acquia Dev Desktop: free package that installs Acquia Drupal on Windows and Mac OS X.
  - Drupal Commons: free software for building and hosting collaborative website.
  Regarding services, Acquia offers cloud Drupal based hosting [15]:
  - Dev Cloud: provides Drupal-optimized hosting with professional administration tools.
  - Managed Cloud: provides Drupal-optimized hosting in an elastic, high-availability configuration.
  - Drupal Gardens: a SaaS to design, build, and host Drupal-based sites.
  Acquia offers as well support services, such as [16]:
  - Acquia Network: Answers, Tools and Support for professionals who build websites using Drupal.
  - Drupal Support:  With Client Advisors that guide customers in quiet times and respond to urgent needs.
  - Remote Administration: assigning Drupal experts to apply fixes, monitor backups, and test changes to keep sites secure and up to date.
  Last, but not least, Acquia offers training around Drupal as well [17].
  Taking into account previous considerations, it can be asserted that Acquia's Business Model, according to Daffara's taxonomy of FLOSS Business Model, is being "Product Specialist", selling the "best knowledge here" around Drupal CMS.
  Their main revenues streams come from services such as:
  - Training and consulting
  - Specialized support
  - Remote assistance
  - Specialized cloud hosting services, but always, based on Drupal together with additional products made by Acquia.

- Funambol: Funambol FLOSS project started as a mobile cloud sync solution . The open source version consists of a sync server, clients/applications/SDKS for mobile devices and computers, and connector software to interface with other mobile systems [18].

  Apart from this fact, Funambol company provides OneMediaHub, a commercial product based on Funambol that tries to address commercial needs in the market. OneMediaHub allows to secure, sync, and share digital content on mobile devices and computers, automatically and wirelessly, via the cloud. OneMediaHub software represents the company's latest technology. Meanwhile the open source software is not meant for large-scale deployments, and, obviously, it iss not commercially supported.
  So, basically, Funambol Business Model is based on a "Dual Licensing" model according to Daffara's taxonomy of FLOSS Business Models.
  Funambol is available in two editions with different licensing model [19]:
  - Community Edition: uses the AGPLv3 open source license that lets you offer your software to all who wish to use, modify and distribute it freely.
  - OneMediaHub is available under a traditional commercial software license. It consists of a superset of Community Edition functionality that makes it suitable for large-scale deployment. For example, it includes an AJAX web portal and provides capabilities to sync rich media and files with the cloud.
  Revenues streams for Funambol come for selling the commercial version of OneMediaHub. Together with the commercial version of Funambol, OneMediaHub, Funambol has also additional revenues streams, associated to [20]:
  - Annual Software Maintenance and Technical Support: Funambol provides software maintenance and technical support including technical assistance, troubleshooting and software updates.
  - Professional Services: Funambol offers consulting services, offering professional services to help companies architect, design and deliver the highest-quality services.
  - Training: Funambol offers a five day KickStart training program.
 
References:
- Liferay:
[1] http://www.liferay.com/products/liferay-portal/ee/overview
[2] http://www.liferay.com/products/liferay-portal/ee/service-levels
[3] http://www.liferay.com/services
- Eucalyptus:
[4] http://www.eucalyptus.com/eucalyptus-cloud
[5] http://www.eucalyptus.com/customers
[6] http://www.eucalyptus.com/eucalyptus-cloud/iaas
[7] http://www.eucalyptus.com/services/support
[8] http://www.eucalyptus.com/services/consulting
[9] http://www.eucalyptus.com/services/education
- BlackDuck:
[10] https://www.blackducksoftware.com/getting-started
[11] https://www.blackducksoftware.com/products/knowledgebase
[12] https://www.blackducksoftware.com/products/black-duck-suite
[13] https://www.blackducksoftware.com/consulting/strategy-development/open-source-management-assessment
- Acquia:
[14] https://www.acquia.com/products-services
[15] https://www.acquia.com/products-services/cloud-hosting
[16] https://www.acquia.com/products-services/drupal-support-tools
[17] https://www.acquia.com/products-services/drupal-training
- Funambol:
[18] http://sourceforge.net/projects/funambol
[19] http://www.funambol.com/solutions/licensing-editions.php
[20] http://www.funambol.com/support

- Economic Aspects of Libre Software:
  http://docencia.etsit.urjc.es/moodle/mod/resource/view.php?id=4418

2012: Great year for Linux

To summarize, 2012 was a great year for Linux Operating System. The Linux Foundation has released a video to announce the increasing popularity and achievements of the Linux Operating System.

Among all the achievements obtained by Linux Operating System, from my perspective, these are, from more to less important, the ones to highlight [1]:

• Red Hat achieved $1 billion in revenue, the first time an open source vendor reached that milestone. It is a key data to demonstrate that, a company whose core business is based on FLOSS, can be profitable.
•  Android has increased its position to control more than 50 percent of the American mobile market. Moreover this, it is considered that world globally, Android has reached 75% of global market share, reaching 136 million units shipped in 2012 Q3.
• The availability of the Steam distribution platform for Linux. This fact can be a key factor for Linux to start being used in Desktop computers, the only Operating System Market where Linux is pending to place a decisive position.
• The automotive industry’s adoption of Linux-based solutions.
• HP became a Platinum Member of the Linux Foundation. Apart from the important economic impulse that this means for the Linux Foundation, the key factor is the importance of having another huge company interested on Linux Operating System.

Apart from previous facts, there has been other occurrences that must be distinguished, as they are less important in terms of economic aspects, but are important as well to clarify Linux Operating System good health in 2012:

• Linux founder, Linus Torvalds, has received the Millenium Technology Prize.
• Dell‘s Sputnik Ubuntu-based laptop.
• The advent of Chromebooks, which is a clarifying movement from Google to bet on Linux Operating System for the Desktop market.

To summarize, it seems that Linux Operating System is in one of its best moments, and project sustainability is ensured. Apart from preserving its market position in other environments, year 2012 has supposed big advances in other markets, such as Mobile Operating Systems. On the other hand, year 2013 will clarify if Linux ends to play a key role in Desktop Computers market, depending on success of Chromebooks and together with Steam as gaming platform.



References:
[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Unfx2qCj6Ao
[2] http://www.thevarguy.com/2012/12/14/measuring-linuxs-success-in-2012/
[3] http://www.linuxfoundation.org/news-media/blogs/browse/2012/12/what-year-linux-please-join-us-celebration
[4] http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/02/idc-android-market-share-reached-75-worldwide-in-q3-2012/
[5] http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/19/coming-to-a-car-near-you-linux-goes-automotive-signs-up-harman-intel-toyota-samsungs-tizen-and-more/
[6] http://www.engadget.com/2012/11/05/hp-linux-platinum-member/

Linux Foundation Income Quick Numbers

The Linux Foundation is expected to continue to grow in year 2013.
New members that will start donating money to Linux Foundation include companies such as:
- FreeScale
- Amarula Solutions
- SIM Technology Group
- Superb Internet Corporation
- Symphony Teleca Corporation

 
It must be highlighted that, to become member, a company must pay at least between 5,000$ and 20,000$ a year, for a Silver membership.
Moreover this, Gold Membership costs 100,000$ a year, and Platinum Membership costs up to 500,000$ a year.
Taking into account that, by 2012, exist:
- 8 Platinum Members
- 16 Gold Members
- 139 Silver Members
With a quick calculations we have that, by 2012, Linux Foundation incomes, just with the Membership donations, were:
From:
8*500,000 + 16*100,000 + 139*5,000 = 6,295,000 $
To:
8*500,000 + 16*100,000 + 139*20,000 =8,380,000 $
However, Linux Foundation have also a big amount of individual members, that, together with previous number, surely make Linux Foundation incomes to be above 10,000,000 dollars.
So, it is obvious that, FLOSS is not a matter of altruism. Companies as well as individuals are predisposed to invest money on certain projects to continue growing.

References:
http://www.linuxfoundation.org/about/members

http://www.linuxfoundation.org/news-media/announcements/2012/12/new-members-join-linux-foundation-prioritize-linux-investments-2013

Opening Source: Going Forward

Jeremy Eder (RedHat) explains on this article, titled The open source advantage: Executives learn how to stay competitive,  about different movements from big Companies that are switching to an Open Source model for some of their products.

On the one hand, Jeremy explains about RedHat's Open Source software products build or acquired, such as RHEV-M(oVirt), CloudForms (Katello) or OpenShift (OpenShift).

On the other hand, he explains how Redback and NASA worked together within an Open Source model for OpenStack, with participation of other companies, such as RedHat itself. Success of the project enables it to become independent, switching to a Foundation model.

Apart from that, the interest on this article lays on the citation of Dreamworks as other company switching to Open Source, in particular, to OpenVDB

OpenVBD is an Open Source sparse volume processing toolkit. In this particular case, an analysis on the possible causes for Dreamworks to initiate this adventure, and, from my perspective, applicable to the vast majority of this type of movement:

• There is a possibility about Dreamworks considering not much more value to be extracted from OpenVBD, as industry continues moving on.
• Another possibility has to do with the company moving to other environments, in order to explore the path to profitability through new tools, techniques and processes.
• Although critical to business, OpenVDB has its own life and it would benefit from additional developers contributions.

However, Eder concludes that, from his perspective, the main reason is about the cost:

• Cost/maintenance burden for OpenVDB exceeds value derived. Setting it open and costless would mean just a better situation.

As main conclusion, recall that, moving to an Open Source model is just the unique tool to maintain certain products or projects along the time.

Complete article:

http://opensource.com/life/12/11/open-source-advantage

Carlos Daffara: "Open Source Contribution to Europe's economy: 450 billion euros"

According to Open Source researcher Carlos Daffara, the savings associated to the use of Open Source in Europe, taking into account all advantages provided, rises to 450 billion euro.
Directly using Open Source software solutions means reducing costs up to 114 billion euro.
Moreover direct costs, other aspects, such as reduction of project failures, as well as reduction of code maintenance, mean savings, from Daffara's point of view, up to 342 billion euro.

From Daffara's point of view, applying macroeconomic estimation and data from code reuse, up to 35% percent of the software used in the past five years is directly or indirectly related to Open Source software.
Meanwhile, it seems that Daffara's numbers are not far from another industry groups and analysts estimations, that consider savings aroung 374 billion and 399 billion euro.

References:
[1] https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/news/contribution-open-source-europes-economy-450-billion-year

Some numbers of Free Software on the Web

Regarding numbers to show quantitavely ciphers on the Free Software deployment, I would like to focus on those Free Software applications impacting on the Web.

Web Servers Market:

Although on Web Servers Market the leader continues to be Apache, this Web Server seems to be losing market share. Competitors, apart from Google, are increasing their market share, and doing this market to return to be considered as an Unstable Market, taking into account that Apache is again under 60% of the Market Share:

Most Reliable Hosting Site:

In terms of reliability, Hosting Site is a good example of the dominancy of Free Software based Operating Systems. Next table shows that, between the 10 most reliable sites, Linux is used in 5 of them as Operating System. Meanwhile, FreeBSD is used also in other 3 sites:

Rank	Company site	OS	Outage hh:mm:ss	Failed Req%	DNS	Connect	First byte	Total
1	Datapipe	FreeBSD		0.000	0.071	0.018	0.038	0.057
2	Qube Managed Services	Linux	0:00:00	0.007	0.132	0.071	0.142	0.142
3	XILO Communications Ltd.	Linux	0:00:00	0.007	0.331	0.132	0.388	0.668
4	iWeb	Linux	0:00:00	0.010	0.137	0.085	0.171	0.171
5	INetU	Windows Server 2008	0:00:00	0.013	0.092	0.090	0.266	0.535
6	www.logicworks.net	Linux	0:00:00	0.017	0.212	0.089	0.444	0.683
7	Server Intellect	Windows Server 2008	0:00:00	0.017	0.058	0.107	0.215	0.537
8	Multacom	FreeBSD	0:00:00	0.017	0.143	0.117	0.236	0.600
9	ReliableServers.com	Linux	0:00:00	0.020	0.371	0.097	0.200	0.282
10	Swishmail	FreeBSD	0:00:00	0.024	0.127	0.071	0.141	0.285

Meanwhile, if further inspection is done [1], 22 sites out of 37 are based on Linux, and 6 out of 37 are based on FreeBSD. So, in total, among the most reliable hosting sites, 28 out of 37 (75%) are based on FLOSS based Operating Systems.

Web Browser Market:

Web Browser Market Share is not an easy topic, as, depending on the data source, the Market varies significantly.

On the one hand, sources as "StatCounter" show Google Chrome winning the Market to Internet Explorer:

Meanwhile, other sources shows significantly different results. NetMarketShare shows dominancy of Internet Explorer in the Desktop Web Browser Market

Meanwhile, from NetMarketShare studies, Safari is the market leader in Mobile Market:

To end with Web Browser Market Share, a third study, by "Statowl", showing the Market still leaded by Internet Explorer, with Chrome and Firefox closing the three main actors in this Market:

Free Software based CMS:

Last, but not least, an study of the Market Share around CMS based on Free Software, by Water and Stone [2]

This study shows, among many other, the Alexa Top Million CMS usage, based on W3Techs. It can be infered that, Wordpress is CMS Market Leader, with Joomla and Drupal as second and third actors in the Market, but still far from Wordpress:

References:

[1] http://uptime.netcraft.com/perf/reports/performance/Hosters?orderby=epercent&tn=october_2012

[2] http://www.waterandstone.com/downloads/2011OSCMSMarketShareReport.pdf

Web Servers usage:

http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2012/11/01/november-2012-web-server-survey.html

Most reliable hosting sites:

http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2012/11/01/most-reliable-hosting-company-sites-in-october-2012.html

http://uptime.netcraft.com/perf/reports/performance/Hosters?orderby=epercent&tn=october_2012

Web Browsers Market Share:

http://www.pcworld.com/article/255886/google_chrome_overtakes_internet_explorer.html

http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-ww-weekly-201120-201220

http://www.netmarketshare.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qprid=0&qpcustomd=0&qptimeframe=M&qpsp=165

http://www.statowl.com/web_browser_market_share.php

Open Source CMS Market Share:

http://www.waterandstone.com/downloads/2011OSCMSMarketShareReport.pdf

Smartphones vs. Tablets age distribution

Who is using such device? What about that other device? Tablet or Smartphone?

For mobile markets,  the key question is to know and adapt to the age of its main customers, and their preferences.

Besides this, since Android acting as role player in Mobile Operating Systems, this is also a key question for FLOSS projects as well.

CNET clarifies some of the results obtained  by a study from Flurry Analytics, pretending to answer the question:

How, when, and why do people use their smartphones versus their tablets?

Complete analysis can be checked from next link:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57542081-93/the-smartphone-or-the-tablet-whos-using-all-these-devices/

In this analysis, the main conclusion is that smartphone users are younger than tablet users. For this reason, some numbers must be considered:

- On average, smartphone users mean age is 30. Meanwhile, mean age of tablet users is 34.
- Almost 75 percent of smartphone users are 34 or younger, while more than 66 percent of tablet users are 25 or older.

Complete analysis can be checked on next link:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57542081-93/the-smartphone-or-the-tablet-whos-using-all-these-devices/