Open source reshaping services market

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If you buy, they will sell.

I was agreeing with you until I understood what you were talking about.
During the period you reminisced about, IT was a cost saver and competitive advantage. Now it's a cost center. Companies will sign contracts increasing their expenditures in order to reduce their in-house IT resources.
Service contracts are a way to obtain functions without having to hire and retain staff. That can sound appealing.

Looking at your argument form your concluding paragraph.
Quoting:
... building a service company on the idea of long term service contracts would appear to be questionable if not right down foolish.

If people are willing to sign the contracts, the service provider will, too. Question is only about the demand.


You say that the demand will be eliminated by increased ease of use of open source:

I have said it before and I will say it again,
[straightforard and ... unsurprising]

when the open source community stops with the fascination of copying Microsoft and instead looks at OSX as the right way to implement Linux,
[Microsoft will assure that aspects of Apple's approach reach open source users]

then you will see a massive paradigm shift in the public's mind that you can have both, ease of use, and open source OS/Software without the need of expensive service contracts...


Unless the service contracts are closely associated with the product for the company producing it.

I've already pointed out that companies like to outsource IT these days.

Now consider it from the point of view of the companies, particularly public companies, that provide the software. They need to make a profit.

They get a piece from the software itself, selling proprietary components and restricting what can be done with the components, and trying very hard to associate services.
How can the software company's own expensive services be avoided? By getting the services more cheaply from someone else.

The tools that come out for open source programs will come out slowly and lag far behind those from proprietary companies. After all, use of the software has to be only the start of profit-making opportunities for open source companies.

Posted by: Anton Philidor   Posted on: 01/10/05 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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