Be competitive!

Driving business in an open source environment can be challenging - just ask anyone who runs a software service and support effort on top of and open source software stack. Being creative, leveraging relationships and defining a role in the community can all create a means for establishing a business position, developing a customer base, and deriving growth as a service provider in an open source world.

Working without the safety net of deep (and unique) knowledge of proprietary software can be seen as just asking for trouble - proprietary commercial vendors can not only charge a premium for that knowledge, they can closely control who has access to critical information such as the current and future APIs, software release plans, and marketing collateral like logos and branding. With that kind of advantage, authorized vendors can have the double benefit of access to an established customer base, and the ability to charge premium rates for their work. In this environment, becoming an authorized vendor means a clearer path to profitability than being just another provider of services.

Into this context, providing services in an open source context can seem much more difficult, where trying to compete with a whole range of other companies, all of whom have equal access to the underlying codebase can appear to dilute opportunities and decrease profitability. In order to develop business, service providers can do some specific things to increase their profile, establish their street cred, and develop a strong customer base. Here are a few examples:

• Spend quality time with the community. By being present at the meetings attended by the customer base, a provider can raise their profile, develop personal relationships, and both learn and teach what they know about the open source products they are supporting. Almost every open source project has a community behind it, and whether they meet online, via teleconference or face-to-face, those meetings provide a unique business development opportunity.
• Answer questions and participate in forums. Most open source projects have forums / wikis where the collective knowledge around the products are collected and developed. By answering questions and participating positively in discussions, capable service providers can demonstrate their knowledge and identify where there are opportunities for business development. There is a thin line between using these forums as a means to demonstrate goodwill and develop relationships and spam/hard selling. Being able to tell the difference between the two is a critical distinction for success...
• Participate in the development of the code. The cool thing about open source code is that it is really owned by everyone. Becoming one of the contributors to the codebase is a very good way to both gain deep experience with the tools, as well as demonstrate goodwill and community engagement. One of the positive effects of this effort is that often work for clients that extend the shared codebase can itself be relevant to the broader community, and can be the basis for the contributor who added it to become the obvious expert on those components (obvious because it was shared with the community, and because the contributor was an active community participant - see above.)
• Become formally identified with the program. When there is a way to get formal recognition of the status as a designated provider of services around the open source codebase, it can contribute to raising a vendor's profile, and gain a not insignificant amount of credibility as an expert in the underlying software. This is particularly useful when the potential customers are new to the field, and are looking for someone with credentials or other concrete demonstrations of capability.

By getting out there and getting involved, interested organizations can rise above the noise, get noticed, and engage in a virtuous circle that itself can create more business opportunities. Working in an open source environment is never easy, and developing business is hard no matter where that business is located, but by placing effort in community contribution, that work can be pay off downstream.