Thoughts of an IT professional

I have moved my blog to my site.

One of the revenue models for open source (OS) companies is the selling of support services and documentation. JBoss is widely known for pioneering the model of making money off support rather than off selling a product. The question that is posed is how do they protect this revenue stream? You can set-up a shop somewhere in Eastern Europe, staff it up with committers to that particular open source project in order to gain credibility, set-up a workforce that masters the product and costs 3 to 4 times less than their Western counterparts and start selling support services. Chances are that you will be able to leap ahead of the original open source company because of the pricing power you yield due to lower costs.
So, how do the OS companies protect themselves from this threat? One great protection is thru the use of trademarks. Take a look at Red Hat, MySQL, and JBoss. Boy, do they protect their brand. MySQL goes as far as to prevent the use of its trademark on documentation. An IT shop selling support services for MySQL (for example) could be taken to court by MySQL because they are using the MySQL trademark (when they are advertising "Buy great MySQL support from us") without consent from the MySQL group. An IT shop planning to compete with them on support should make sure it flies under the radar and doesn’t make a significant dent in the original OS company’s revenues. The moment it gains traction in the market and starts having an effect they should prepare to meet the original OS company’s legal team. Chances are they will not be able to sell their services in a country/region that takes intellectual property (IP) seriously.
Eastern Europe could sell support for OS software to small and medium business in the West mainly because this is a market that is not in the OS companies’ cross-hairs. Western small and medium business could gain from this service (no-cost software and low-cost services) because currently their other alternatives for troubleshooting their Linux desktop are googling their problems or calling tech-savvy cousin Joe.
I really like the way these OS companies manouver. You may have the impression that OS is run by a bunch of pony-tailed hippies fed on utopia, the fact is that these guys grok IP and grok it very well. These guys seem pretty well prepared for an environment in which IP is the main expenditure. A lot better than some closed-cource establishments…

I was talking to my cousin in the beautiful(??) country of Romania about developments in the IT industry over there. From what I remember it looks like the wages in the IT industry have shot up significantly, being one of the very few drivers of salary growth over there. From some email I got from a friend in Romania it looks like positions which require 3 to 4 years of experience are going for at least 1000-1500 euros a month. Unfortunately for IT professionals some costs (such as the cost of owning a home) have greatly outpaced salary growth…
One of the effects on the locals will be the slow disappearance of in-house IT departments. Many businesses have in-house IT deparments covering pretty much all the spectrum of an IT operation: Oracle DBAs, JEE specialists, sys-admins, etc… Obviously, this cannot be supported anymore because of the migration of IT specialists towards better-paying jobs coming from foreign corporations. The local businesses are left with a problem: who will continue to carry out our in-house, incredibly customized and brittle IT operations?
In the problem lies the opportunity: an entrepreneur could create an IT company that implements these processes (preferrably using an open-architecture in order to accomodate customers as diverse as possible), have the businesses shed their IT departments (they cannot afford them anyway) and have them outsource their IT operations to its company. Outsourcing in the land of off-shoring seems contrarian, but it is one of the few viable options that a business can use in order to continue to automate its processes (book-keeping, customer relations, etc…).
Open-source could play a very important role in the implementation of an outsourced environment, please remember that SE Europe is dirt poor. Operations Support Systems for Java could answer some questions about an open architecture for creating very diverse and customized implementations of various business processes.
Opportunity lays with providing IT services to home-grown businesses as well as to the off-shoring behemoths that are visiting the area.

I decided to create this category in order to keep up with the latest developments in that part of the world. I happen to call Romania my home country and I am interested in what happens over there, IT-wise or otherwise.