Failure or Success?
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| number6x Aug 02, 2006 5:16 AM EDT |
The lead in states this is one of the first failures of the current rush to open source business models. However, a quote from the article states: "Pervasive Software President John Farr said last week that the company "underestimated the high level of quality support and expertise already available within the PostgreSQL community." " This may be a failure for a business model that Pervasive was hoping to 'port' to the open source world. Selling support for commercial databases is a viable business model because the demand for that support is so great. The level of support and expertise already available for PostgreSQL from the community for free has eliminated much of the need that Pervasive was hoping to sell to. This may be a failure for Pervasive, but it is a success for Open Source. |
| grouch Aug 02, 2006 5:21 AM EDT |
Exactly. It's a tribute to the PostgreSQL developers and the community. |
| dcparris Aug 02, 2006 7:58 AM EDT |
Hear! Hear! |
| dinotrac Aug 02, 2006 8:11 AM EDT |
Well, that's the pretty language says. It doesn't answer questions like: 1. Did Pervasive actually find a value-add for it's services? 2. Are enough business types interested in postgres to create a market for support? 3. Is there enough room to make money between postgresql support and commercial support. That last question is poorly worded, but I'm not sure how best to express it. Put in long and clumsy english, it's like this: I could picture a scenario where postgresql, which is a wonderful database, is attractive to businesses, if only they could be comfortable of the support level. However, as established, the postgres community provides a good level of support. What happens if that support level is good enough for most, but not quite enough for enterprises? If you're pervasive, you're stuck selling a service that's a little bit better than what's available for free. The PHB set is, ahem, capable of incredibly stupid financial analyses -- applying straight line judgements when threshold effects are appropriate, etc. If you're a support business, it costs a certain amount of money to keep your doors open. You don't have the flexibilty to be 75% cheaper just because the community can provide 75% of the needs. Your paying customers will come to you and they will want answers --- now!! Now, Mr. Einstein bean-counter comes in to ask, "But why should we pay them as much as we would pay to support anything else when most of what we need is for free?" Ignoring that, for this business and this application, the increment matters, the Bean Counter sends IT into a vastly more expensive Oracle package, which everyone approves of because, well, we all know that Oracle is an enterprise package with great support, right? |
| grouch Aug 02, 2006 10:26 AM EDT |
SELECT *
FROM companies
WHERE sellme_smo_support IS NOT NULL; 0 rows returned |
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