Involving providers of commercial ICT services is advantageous to public administration's using open source, says Cenatic, the Spanish government's resource centre for this kind of solutions. Earlier this month, it presented actions and accompanying tool sets that prove helpful to "draw companies to the community, without changing their business culture."
It is not only public administrations that benefit, having commercial support options, writes Cenatic consultant Pop Ramsamy. These companies benefit themselves too from the community solving problems, fixing bugs and helping integration with other solutions, the consultant says. Interacting with open source communities helps companies to demonstrate their work and outshine the competition. It is a way to get to know talented individuals and points to potential allies for future joint-projects.
Resource centres should work on getting companies involved in open source, Ramsamy argues. Companies can provide public administrations with technical support, yet at the same time reinforce the communities, for example by testing and integrating community-based solutions, sponsoring events and hackfests.
Visibility
In his report, Ramsamy lists nine actions and solutions that can help resource centre's to get companies involved. This includes the transfer of knowledge about specific ICT solutions. "Training allows developers and their companies to hone their skills while increasing visibility to potential customers."
Resource centres also need to share the roadmap of their open source solutions. This allows service providers to discover where their support offerings can bring the most. However, to avoid future lock-in, a roadmap should include providing training to new members of the community.
Cenatic's Ramsamy recommends the building of a business forum, matching system integrators, maintenance specialist, developers and trainers with customers looking for professional services. "Getting business interested is not too hard. The real trick is to keep them involved."