How to make money for open-source companies with profits of over $1 billion

How to make money for open-source companies with profits of over $1 billion
GuideVenture companies, such as Cloudera, MongoDB, and Docker, have begun to look at the open-source software market. After making some achievements, they all claim: their market value has reached $1 billion. However, they all share the same pressure on the same issue: how can they earn profits through free open-source software?

Today, many startups supported by venture capitalists are focusing on open-source software markets, such as Cloudera, MongoDB, and Docker, all claiming that their market value has reached $1 billion. However, they all share the same pressure on the same issue: how can we make profits through free open-source software?

In fact, there are also some answers about how to make money, such as selling open source code and providing paid services. Now, the answer to this question has finally been confirmed. The "first crab-eating" company proved through actual action that it could make money through free open-source software. That's right. Red Hat is the world's most famous open-source company in North Carolina. In fiscal year 2016, Redhat's revenue broke through $2 billion for the first time, which has maintained growth for 16 consecutive years.

Founded in 1993, Red Hat is an open-source solution provider that provides software and services for key tasks for operating systems, storage, middleware, virtualization, and cloud computing. Simply put, it is To productize open-source community projects, making it easier for common enterprise customers to consume open-source innovative technologies. The free Linux operating system provided by it has become the most popular UNIX operating system in the world today, and the number of users is still growing rapidly.

Big Data, cloud computing

To explain why the red hat is so successful, we need to start with its business model. RedHat has adopted the open source code mode since its launch to provide professional technologies and services for global enterprises. Red Hat shares the source code of the system to qualified users, and these users can use it for free and customize the RedHat products, but a certain service fee is required.

RedHat calls its billing method "subscription mode". No matter whether new and old customers enjoy the support for free during the subscription period, users do not need to purchase product upgrades again, updates can be made as needed at any time. The fee is relatively transparent and fair.

In addition, the development of Cloud technology and big data brings new opportunities to the red hat with open source software as the core business. For RedHat, the most important profit secret is how to compile Linux code, record detailed log data, and create indexes based on raw log data (Rawdata, saves the index and raw log Content. In the big data era, a wide range of logs can be quickly analyzed to find the content you need. In this way, every company can download the Red Hat code and customize the compilation according to their own needs.

As an open-source software vendor, RedHat has nothing to do with storage. After all, storage has always been a hardware field. However, with the advent of the Software Definition era, this situation has undergone fundamental changes. According to whitehirst's Red Hat Summit last week, the Red Hat storage is distributed enterprise storage and has been verified on a large scale, users can expand services such as Object Storage and file storage according to their own needs. The Ceph-based technical architecture is emerging. Ceph can make the technical architecture more transparent and make all possible technical problems more transparent. Ceph allows you to manage and monitor data centers visually.

Can I copy data in Red Hat mode?

The success of RedHat proves that "open source is a good way to buy and sell". In fact, it is not difficult to understand the open source software model, that is, to filter, integrate, and optimize open source code, then, it will be engineered, systematic, service-oriented, and commercialized.

Although Red Hat CEO Jim whitehust has proved that free open-source software can make money, he is skeptical about whether the Red Hat model can be copied. For enterprises, the use of open-source Linux products needs to be examined. If you plan to use open-source Linux, you need to consider your own technical capabilities from the very beginning. If you are very confident in your own technology, you can use it with confidence. This does not involve legal issues. If you cannot handle open-source Linux, in the beginning, you still pay for it. In this way, you save the cost for senior O & M personnel and indirectly support open-source Linux developers.

"People always choose the free one on the things they need to spend and things they don't. However, you must admit that enterprises that can adapt to this market rule and provide free services in the Early Days are at the forefront of the market. They are working hard for you ."

"When you provide free services, you will get this group of users. If you want to get money from their pockets in the future, it is not that difficult," said whitehirst; those enterprises that have not yet taken the lead in the beginning have lost these users. Of course, whitehirst is not pessimistic about the development of all open-source startups. For example, for MongoDB, whitehirst agrees with its business model, although he admitted that MongoDB needs to do better in separate paid and free versions.

How to make "hard" profits through "soft" technology to become the mainstream of the market is the key to the problem, and Linux desktop has not yet obtained the essence. Whitehirst admitted that it is still difficult to establish a persistent business model around the consumption of Linux Desktop. To be honest, Linux Desktop is not our core business. As a company, profit should be the first. In terms of Linux Desktop consumption, the market development difficulty is far higher than that of servers.

In the Internet Big Data era, the way to create value is changing. The power of Information Technology Innovation for production cannot be underestimated, such information technology innovation should be open rather than closed, because the value of it lies in openness and sharing. This is the value of open-source software. It is a kind of "crowdfunding" of group intelligence. Open, sharing, collaboration, and ecology are the core of open-source, it is in the same spirit as the Internet.

From: http://www.cnbeta.com/articles/527597.htm

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