OpenLogic launches open source enterprise support program 14 May, 2006 By Liam Lahey

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The Broomfield, Colo.-based provider of software, stacks, and services to deploy and manage customized open source environments, announced its' first-ever program to provide consolidated, commercial-grade support across a wide range of open source products vis-à-vis tapping the open source development community for enterprise support.

Through the OpenLogic Expert Community program, OpenLogic says it will pay qualified experts within the open source development community to provide in-depth support for open source products.

"OpenLogic is partnering with qualified individual developers of open source products to provide support for large enterprises," explained Kim Weins, vice president of marketing for OpenLogic. "We will provide enterprises with commercial-grade support across 150-plus open source products and OpenLogic will cover tier one and two support and we will leverage the experts in the OpenLogic Expert Community for tier three and four support."

The OpenLogic Expert Community is a new business model that directly compensates open source developers for their time in fixing enterprise issues.

Open source companies have typically hired open source developers as employees, but OpenLogic's model enables community members to get rewarded for their support efforts without requiring them to switch jobs.

Weins told eChannelLine many enterprises have curtailed their use of open source software because they can't get commercial-grade support. OpenLogic's announcement would enable enterprises to accelerate their official use of open source software, she said.

"Many of these companies have told us they don't necessarily want the world to know how they are using open source products," she said. "This hesitation can result in them not participating as vocally as they'd like in a community. OpenLogic is creating a conduit between enterprises and the developers that are creating open source solutions."

In addition, the OpenLogic Expert Community provides payment to the individual developers for doing the work they love, she continued. Individuals can choose to be paid in cash, merchandise or by donating the money to qualified open source organizations.

In doing so, OpenLogic is fostering participation in the open source development community while removing one of the barriers to open source usage in the enterprise, she added.

"Enterprises we talk to are using dozens, sometimes hundreds, of open source software in a mixed environment along with commercial and proprietary software," Weins said. "The problem is that these enterprises want to have commercial-grade support for all of the open source products they are using and until now, this has been difficult or expensive to come by."

From an enterprise perspective, the OpenLogic Expert Community will enable companies to further leverage open source software by providing broad access to commercial-grade support. Today, enterprises find it difficult to get commercial-grade support for most of the dozens, if not hundreds, of open source products they are using.

"We have heard loud and clear from our larger enterprise customers, some of whom are using more than 400 open source products, that they want one throat to choke for open source support," said Steven Grandchamp, CEO of OpenLogic, in a statement. "Our Expert Community program is being launched to help address this need in a new, creative way. Enterprises get the support they require and open source committers and contributors can earn money to support the work they love to do."

The integrated support service from OpenLogic is available to users of OpenLogic Enterprise.

In addition to consolidated support, OpenLogic offers a technology platform that offers customers a library of more than 150 pre-certified open source software packages, including the most popular open source databases, applications servers, IDEs, and more.

OpenLogic officials said its' platform is flexible and extensible, enabling companies to build customized stacks by choosing any combination of open source, commercial and proprietary software.

"Initial response to the program has been extremely positive from both open source developers and enterprises. In the space of a few weeks, we have already signed up individuals to cover over 50 leading open source projects," she said. "We have built redundancy into the Expert Community, providing us with coverage for when Expert Community members are unavailable."

The OpenLogic Expert Community currently has experts representing over 50 open source projects, including Apache HTTP Server, Ant, Hibernate, MyFaces, Spring, Struts and Tomcat. To qualify as a member of the OpenLogic Expert Community, individuals must have "committer" status (enabling them to update source code for an open source product) or must be referred by a committer for one of the open source products supported and certified by OpenLogic, officials said.

Interested open source developers can visit www.openlogic.com for more information.