Red Hat turns Open Source Into Enterprise Assets

Abstract

Red Hat is the biggest open source software success story - a rebuke to those who, only a few years back, wondered whether open source companies could make any money at all.

Table of Contents

• Executive summary
• The Ovum view
• SWOT analysis
• Strengths
• Weaknesses
• Opportunities
• Threats
• Making open source bigger and boring
• Expanding open source to new markets
• Making open source easier to consume
• Focus on value and opex
• A recent renewed focus on low cost may prove dangerous
• Pricing is stable, though, and value is recognised
• Focus on opex rather than capex
• A tactical approach to open source licensing
• Red Hat prefers the GPL but uses other licences
• JBoss prefers the LGPL, but JBoss projects are free to use their own licences
• Generating more money from open source
• New free-to-pay initiative
• Needs to be better structured and expanded
• Becoming an open source ecosystem hub
• A new mission statement
• Project perspective: open source contributor and defender
• Contributor and technology innovator (rather than technology packager)
• A growing contributor of acquired and internally developed technology
• Turning other organisations into open source contributors
• Red Hat as an open source community hub
• Open source defender against IPR threats
• An open standard supporter
• Partner perspective: From RHX to OSCA
• Red Hat Exchange (RHX) open source procurement hub
• Failed to take off
• Now replaced by the Open Source Channel Alliance (OSCA)
• Among other partner-related initiatives
• Customer perspective
• Some organisations already contribute
• Increasing customer involvement
• Some (wrongly) disagree
• Red Hat needs to approach the issue better, though
• Open source impact on partners
• Grown apart from Oracle
• Closer to Microsoft
• No plain sailing
• A beacon that many like to dismiss
• An awkward player
• A stunted bottom-up approach to marketing