Open Sourcing a Vertical Market Application?

Posted by Cliff on Wednesday November 5, 2003 @12:30PM from the open-source-in-a-high-rise-nich dept.

BigCanOfTuna asks: "The company I work for is considering the possibility of turning over one of thier enterprise applications to the open source community. They are doing this for a number of reasons including raising thier profile in the OS community, developing relationships with other Energy companies that would be willing to hire us as consultants, and of course just for good will (if there is such a thing in business!). Since the application is very specific to a vertical market, can one expect to see the same results that other open source projects see? Are there any other successful OS projects out there that are geared to a specific niche?"

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Re:I only have one question by stienman · 2003-11-05 14:43 · Score: 4, Informative

For the Google Disabled:

A vertical market is a particular industry or group of enterprises in which similar products or services are developed and marketed using similar methods (and to whom goods and services can be sold). Broad examples of vertical markets are: insurance, real estate, banking, heavy manufacturing, retail, transportation, hospitals, and government.

Vertical market software is software aimed at a particular vertical market and can be contrasted with horizontal market software (such as word processors and spreadsheet programs) which can be used in a cross-section of industries.

Taken from here.

I personally like the "Broad example of a vertical market" phrase...

-Adam