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Open Source Services Come of Age

Posted by samzenpus on from the all-grown-up dept.

Rob writes "A new breed of solutions and services companies is bringing a more professional approach to the deployment of open source software. A sure sign of a maturing market is when vendors stop talking about products and start talking about services and 'solution stacks'. It can be indicative that the marketing team have taken over from the engineers in charge of presenting the company to the outside world, but also shows that customers are demanding a more professional approach towards the deployment of the technology. This is certainly the case in the open source software market, where a clutch of new solutions and services companies have recently sprung up to guide enterprise customers through the difficulties of open source software deployment."

10 of 92 comments (clear)

  1. A sure sign of bloat by saskboy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    " A sure sign of a maturing market is when vendors stop talking about products and start talking about services and 'solution stacks'."

    That kind of buzz word lingo is also a sure sign of bloat. It makes my skin crawl to hear words like "solution stack", not only because I don't know what the heck it means, but also because it doesn't mean anything. It's a fuzzy complicated way of saying, "a bunch of related software products that you'll find useful in your company".

    I guess for OSS to join the mainstream, it will have to use the same insipid lingo that the big guns like IBM and Symantec are using.

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    1. Re:A sure sign of bloat by schwaang · · Score: 4, Insightful

      From the article, it means things like LAMP (Apache+Mysql+PHP).
      Yeah it's biznomarketing speak, but it does translate to something real developers need.

    2. Re:A sure sign of bloat by mcrbids · · Score: 4, Informative

      It makes my skin crawl to hear words like "solution stack", not only because I don't know what the heck it means, but also because it doesn't mean anything. It's a fuzzy complicated way of saying, "a bunch of related software products that you'll find useful in your company"

      OK, so take a "bunch of related software products" such as, Oh, perhaps Javascript and XML, with a SQL backend. It's commonly called "AJAX" - what would you call that except a "solution stack"?

      Or, perhaps, uh, Linux, Apache, maybe MySQL/Postgresql, and PHP? Commonly called "LAMP", this would qualify as a "solution stack", perhaps?

      Oh, that phrase "solution stack" (or its close cousin, "software stack") doesn't mean anything to you? Just because you don't know the meaning of a word doesn't mean it has no meaning. What I find funny is that engineers are often accused of speaking in "engineer speak" or "tech speak" by the marketroids, because those !@#@$!@ engineers so often say things that have no meaning!

      Learn the words, and what they mean, and you'll find an amazing amount of wisdom you were previously denying yourself.

      --
      I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
    3. Re:A sure sign of bloat by symbolic · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I have to disagree. Once upon a time, software companies sold software. Today, they don't sell software, they sell "solutions". In fact, EVERYONE sells "solutions". What's a solution, anyway? I can't think of a more vague description that completely removes any attempt at intelligent evaluation.

      Using this kind of language allows marketing types to change their tune on que. A "solution" is abstract. An accounting application, on the other hand, is something I can start to evaluate.

    4. Re:A sure sign of bloat by Fizzl · · Score: 4, Insightful
      Hello Mr. Retarded Sales Droid.

      Learn the words, and what they mean, and you'll find an amazing amount of wisdom you were previously denying yourself.

      It's not that the marketroids are using terms engineers can't understand. It's that they are making up fancy words to describe trivial matters which do not need a term. They are ment to obfuscate trivial matters to make clients think it's something new and exciting. And most importantly, something only the marketroids solution can provide (as opposed to just hiring one guy to do it for them.)

      And that's god-fucking-damn annoying.

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  2. You know... by showardkid · · Score: 4, Funny

    I think that solution stacks are good, especially if you wish to envisioneer web-enabled content through branding front-end e-services.

    --
    Do, do not, or delegate to someone else: there is no try.
  3. Now we just need to stop hating on . . . by EraserMouseMan · · Score: 5, Insightful

    the OSS developers who would like to get paid for their superb work. IBM is making it hand over fist deploying OSS and we think it's swell. But as soon as a charitable developer even thinks about a dollar bill the entire OSS community takes him out to the woodshed for being so selfish and violating the spirit of OSS.

    It's not anti-OSS to get paid for contributing good code, people!

  4. A sure sign of marketing by AB3A · · Score: 4, Insightful

    My skin crawls whenever marketeers speak too. Marketing murders language. It's that simple. If customers knew precisely what they were buying, most probably wouldn't bother. We don't buy ground up dead bovine animal. We buy hamburger.

    However, that said, Salespeople (like managers) are a necessary evil. If they didn't create the sizzle, open source would still be a hippie programmer's toy.

    This is the development I had hoped for. Marketing "solution stacks" of open source software customized for individual clients is where the real money will be made for most open source firms. Migration of older to newer OSS is also where reasonably good individual consultants can make a living.

    It may be yet another abuse of the language, but it it isn't nearly as bad as some of the nonsense I see used. I say suck it up and smell the money...

    --
    Nearly fifty percent of all graduates come from the bottom half of the class!
  5. "Solution stacks"? by Caspian · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Great. Just what we need... for our beloved FLOSS community to become buzzword-compliant.

    Maybe they could make some use for my buzzphrase generator...

    --
    With spending like this, exactly what are "conservatives" conserving?
  6. You need... by DavidNWelton · · Score: 4, Funny

    ... a linguistic solution stack in order to take away added value from your interaction with the marketing engineers. The correct solution stack will enable your business to meet your customers' complete needs for delivery of verbal content designed to maximize their confidence in your area of core expertise - providing software solutions. This is a win-win situation that allows you to focus on excellence while obtaining a higher margin for the same mature products, and maintain a high-quality relationship with your clients. ...Phew!... that's hard...

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