--- In [email protected], Sanjiva Weerawarana <sanj...@...> wrote: > > On Sun, Dec 13, 2009 at 7:17 PM, Gervas <gervas.doug...@...> wrote: > > > > > Rather as we would have thought about General Motors and Lehman Brothers a > > couple of years ago?? Open Source is changing the business paradigm. It is > > probably those large software houses who are mainly dependent on huge > > licence fees that are looking the most vulnerable strategically. IBM to > > their credit have seen this coming for some time, hence they being the first > > major player to shift the emphasis from hardware and software licences to > > services. > > > > While changing the model indeed is happening, it is interesting to note the > difference in margins. Most of IBM's profit comes from software licenses
For the moment, yes, but they realise that the balance is changing which is one reason that they were the first major software vendor to put so much effort and resource into building up their lower-margin service divisions. The other major software vendors are going this way too, more than most people realise. > ... > > Our target is to eat at IBM & Oracle's software licenses .. we offer much > better value at a much lower price ;-). One of the factors working against the major vendors is that where a particluar marketplace is highly competitive, the resellers make pitiful margins. In such an instance they might as well sell services and not worry about minimal licence revenues. > > I fully understand and appreciate Ozawa-san's assertion of "no one ever got > fired for buying IBM|Oracle|SAP". True now, but SOA could contribute the gradual dismemberment of their monolithic offerings. We are working to get there but it'll take > time. IBM didn't get there in 5 years and neither will we .. but we're > patient :-). Furthermore, by adopting technology that's truly 100% open > source (not bait-n-switch open source), the customer always has some > protection anyway - they always have ALL of the source with them if they > want to get someone else to support it. This also means that code escrow services become less relevant. Gervas > > Sanjiva. > -- > Sanjiva Weerawarana, Ph.D. > Founder, Director & Chief Scientist; Lanka Software Foundation; > http://www.opensource.lk/ > Founder, Chairman & CEO; WSO2, Inc.; http://www.wso2.com/ > Member; Apache Software Foundation; http://www.apache.org/ > Visiting Lecturer; University of Moratuwa; http://www.cse.mrt.ac.lk/ > > Blog: http://sanjiva.weerawarana.org/ >
