An emerging and ongoing trend that should be a concern to open source software vendors is the use of free versions, SaaS, easy deployment and credit card payment for easier access and low-friction sales by non-open source competitors. Proprietary vendors are finding that they can match, or at least come close to matching, the availability, cost and convenience that have typically been associated with open source software. If the open source players are not careful, they may be on the losing end of the same kind of disruption that characterized their own success. On the upside, we are seeing examples of open source vendor response to this threat as some seek to better accommodate pay-as-you-go and similar models that are part of the new IT economics (also considered cloud computing economics by some).

One example is open source BI vendor Jaspersoft, which this week announced a new e-commerce site offering training and tools for not only its paid Professional version users, but also for free Community version users, who nonetheless are willing to open their wallets for incident support, training, utilities and documentation, the company reports. This highlights a significant demand among customers: the ability to purchase what they want when they want it, whether it is incident support, long-term support, code enhancements, software tools, training or other services. Jaspersoft is not the only open source vendor that is looking to serve the many customers who only want a small slice of commercial product, at least to start, with their open source code.

There are other examples of open source companies, such as security vendor Untangle, that have found customers more receptive to flexible, a la carte offerings rather than packages or subscriptions, which still account for a healthy share of open source software revenue in general. Other vendors, such as Ubuntu distributor Canonical, say a lot of commercial business comes from customers asking what support and services are available after they have begun testing and using open source software, further illustrating the desire for flexible options when it comes to supporting open source.

Another case of some different pricing and availability of open source software comes from systems management and monitoring vendor Hyperic, which just released its latest version of HQ 4.0, making the software available in Amazon Web Services. Hyperic is among those facing the threat of non-open source rivals leveraging open source-like aspects to compete. SolarWinds, for example, mixes free version availability, low-cost, low-friction sales with a slick UI and easy deployment to present an appealing alternative, priced and purchased so customers can start small and go from there. While Hyperic’s availability for use and purchase in Amazon Web Services is the open source vendor’s natural progression and not necessarily a response to the competitive threat referenced here, it is good to see the company, among others, adapting its open source software offerings to better fit the new economics of IT.