Selling Open Source As A Service

The winning open source model turns open source 1.0 on its head. By packaging open source into a service (as in cloud computing or software-as-a-service) or as a software or hardware appliance, companies can monetize open source with a far more robust and flexible model, encouraging innovation, and on-going investment in software development.
Many of today’s most successful new companies rely on an ecosystem of standardized open source components that are generally re-used and updated by the industry at-large. Companies who use these open source building blocks are more than happy to contribute to their ongoing success. These open source building blocks are the foundation of all modern cloud and SaaS offerings, and they are being monetized beautifully in many cases.
Depending on the company and the product, an organization may develop more open source software specific to their business or build some amount of proprietary software to complete the product offering. Amazon, Facebook, GitHub and scores of others mix open source components with their own proprietary code, and then sell the combination as a service.
This recipe – combining open source with a service or appliance model – is producing staggering results across the software landscape. Cloud and SaaS adoption is accelerating at an order of magnitude faster than on-premise deployments, and open source has been the enabler of this transformation.
Beyond SaaS, I would expect there to be future models for Open Source monetization, which is great for the industry.
So what are you waiting for?
Build a big business on top of and around a successful platform by adding something of your own that is both substantial and differentiated. Take, for example, our national road and highway system. If you view it as the transportation platform, you start to see the host of highly differentiated businesses that have been built on top of it, ranging from FedEx to Tesla. The ridesharing service Lyft is building its business on top of that same transportation platform, as well as Amazon’s AWS platform.
If you extend that platform worldview, Red Hat’s support model amounts to selling a slightly better version of the road – in this case, the Linux operating system – which is already good enough for most people.
Sure, when you first launch a business built using open source components, it’s important to grow the size of the platform and cater to your early adopters to drive initial success. So you might start off looking a little like Red Hat. But if all goes well, you’ll start to more resemble Facebook, GitHub, Amazon or Cumulus Networks as you layer in your own special something on top of the platform and deliver it as a service, or package it as an appliance. Becoming the next Red Hat is an admirable goal, but when you look at the trends today, maybe even Red Hat should think about becoming the next Amazon.

OpenDaylight Delivers Open Source Software to Enable Software-Defined Networking

The OpenDaylight Project, a community-led and industry-supported open source platform to advance Software-Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Functions Virtualization (NFV), today announced that its first open source software release “Hydrogen” is available for download.
OpenDaylight is an open platform for network programmability to enable SDN and create a solid foundation for NFV for networks at any size and scale. Enterprises, service providers, equipment providers and academia can download Hydrogen today and begin to evaluate, commercialize and deploy SDN and NFV. With over a million lines of code, Hydrogen is the first simultaneous release of OpenDaylight delivering three different editions to help a wide array of users get up and running as quickly as possible--Base Edition, Virtualization Edition and Service Provider Edition.
“OpenDaylight formed with the goal of tackling one of IT’s toughest challenges: simplifying network management,” said David Meyer, Technical Steering Committee chair, OpenDaylight. “This first release is a great step forward and the community is already looking to build on its work to address a variety of additional capabilities and features in subsequent releases that are being discussed at the first OpenDaylight Summit this week.”
Hydrogen Base Edition is for those who are exploring SDN and OpenFlow for proof-of-concepts or academic initiatives in physical or virtual environments. Hydrogen Virtualization Edition for data centers includes all the components of Base plus functionality for creating and managing Virtual Tenant Networks and virtual overlays, and includes applications for security and network management. Service Provider Edition is for providers and carriers who manage existing networks and want to plot a path to SDN and NFV. It includes Base plus protocol support commonly encountered in service provider networks, as well as security and network management applications.
Key features of each Hydrogen edition:
Base Edition

• Controller: A modular, extensible, scalable and multi-protocol SDN controller based on OSGi.
• OpenFlow Plugin: Integration of OpenFlow protocol library in controller Service Abstraction Layer (SAL).
• OpenFlow Protocol Library: OpenFlow 1.3 protocol library implementation.
• OVSDB: Open vSwitch Database configuration and management protocol support, e.g. for Open vSwitch and other OVSDB servers.
• YANG Tools: Java-based NETCONF and YANG tooling for OpenDaylight projects.

Virtualization Edition (includes Base Edition)

• Affinity Metadata Service: APIs to express workload relationships and service levels.
• Defense4All: DDoS detection and mitigation framework.
• Open DOVE: Multi-tenant network virtualization based on overlays, including control plane and Open vSwitch-based data plane.
• Virtual Tenant Network: Multi-tenant network virtualization application using OpenFlow.

Service Provider Edition (includes Base Edition)

• Affinity Metadata Service: APIs to express workload relationships and service levels.
• BGP-LS/PCEP: Support for traffic engineering with BGP-LS (BGP protocol library and topology model) and PCEP (path programming model).
• Defense4All: DDoS detection and mitigation framework.
• LISP Flow Mapping: Locator/identifier Separation Protocol plugin, LISP mapping service (can be used to implement virtual networks).
• SNMP4SDN: SNMP protocol support and APIs to manage commodity Ethernet switches.