This past October 2009, I was lucky enough to be invited to participate in the Free Libre Open Source Summit and Think Tank in Paris, France. It was an opportunity for me to learn from the best and brightest that the world of open source has to offer – but more importantly, it was an opportunity to understand why, given the global relevance and reach of open source, Europe has so clearly established itself as the most dominating “consumer” of open source enterprise applications.
If you take one look at the global deployment footprint of say, a SugarCRM, or say an OpenBravo, clearly something is going on across the pond, that makes them more receptive, more successful, more bold and more committed, to the adoption of open source enterprise applications. Given the spirit of innovation, and the burgeoning commercial open source business emerging in the US, I was curious…why there? why not here in the States? why not in Asia? Whats different?
At the conference, I came across folks from a number of VARs and integrators. I was introduced to Smile consulting (www.smile.fr), a 300 person firm focused on Open Source implementation in France. The team from RedPill-Linpro, the open source stalwarts from the Nordic region. There were countless mid sized open source firms, all successful, all bullish about the future.
I immediately started to wonder, where the hell are the open source firms in the US? Sure, we’ve got an abundance of innovators at the individual contributor level. But large going concerns, exclusively focused on open source? You’ve got us – Levementum, and maybe Optaros, and maybe 2-3 others that are out there…but thats it. And none of us are close to the big European players in size or reach. So…Why? After 6 glasses of Beaujolais in a bar on the Champs – I started to get some answers. I’d name the individual references, but I suppose they were casualties of the investigative process(!).
I’ve come up with a few reasons. Its not comprehensive, but its a start.
1. The reach of Government and the power of associations in Europe: No one doubts that the reach of government in Europe is far deeper than we’re accustomed to in the US. Invariably, as is the case with most agencies of the state – there is a need to do more with less. The notion of ROI tends to be “cost reference” versus the traditional “value reference” as it relates to implementation of technology. Of course, value is paramount with respect to implementation, but the purchase profiles and criterion are different. Additionally there is a clear distrust that the EU has for the big “IT gorillas” of the US…the Oracles, the Microsofts, et al. The combination of cost sensitivity, government policy, and mistrust has led European government agencies to supremely value “control of their destinies”…perhaps more so than their US counterparts. Clearly open source gives them this control: on cost, on features, on scale, on customization. This explanation, provided by my dear friends in Paris, made a lot of sense to me.
2. The need for regionally customized solutions in Europe. As a native of Boston, Mass, I can tell you there’s a lot of difference between Beantown and say, the Big Apple. It starts with the Sox and the evil empire…but thats another story. Back to point…even with the great diversity of the US, we still have a fairly homogeneous culture of business. Try and contrast French business practices with say Italian business practices. Try and take your Spanish salesforce, and send them to close a deal in Copenhagen. Doable yes…easy no. Europeans are fiercely proud of their language, culture and history, and it permeates the business sphere in every way imaginable. The walls start with language differences, and follow through to customs and legal practice. Invariably, a business solution that works in Kiev, is likely not going to seamlessly work in London. Open source applications, buttressed by their optimal flexibility, clean architectures, and open development environments, offer the European regions to shape a core of business features to their regional needs. The US regions have much less of a need in this dimension. These characteristics, that are inherent to open source, are vital in Europe.
3. The fall of the wall and the influx of skilled Eastern European engineers into the European market. With the fall of communism in Europe, millions of eastern European engineers and scientists were emancipated, armed tremendous skill, unparalleled resourcefulness, and a hunger for tools. With a dearth of capital available to them…many of these great scientists and engineers jumped head long into open-source. This created not only a skilled mass of open source experts and professionals, but also created new innovations that served to accelerate open source application adoption throughout Europe and the World. If you want proof of this…take a look at odesk.com or guru.com. Eastern European software developers outnumber just about any other global region (with respect to open source technologies).
In summary, its the perfect storm of demand, culture, and supply. This European tempest will rage for quite some time…and frankly, I’m happy about it. There are some lessons learned that I’m sure we can apply here in the new country!
NOTE: Ok…so, so what…what have I learned that we can apply here in the US? I’m going to crack this code somehow – the elements related to government don’t seem to be that different than today’s US. There’s an opportunity there I’m sure.
Industry, Insight & Thoughts, Software & Technology
compiere, europe, Geoffrey Mobisson, levementum, magento, mindtouch, mobisson, open-source, optaros, oss, oss strategy, pentaho, smile, sugarcrm
