Machiavelli wrote books on barks of tree in 600AD. The publishing of knowledge continued to innovate. The barks of tree got converted to paper. Paper became the primary agent to transfer knowledge. We have not seen any innovation in the medium for so many centuries.
Is it poised for disruption ??? Are e-books, the next medium of knowledge ??
e-books, the electronic form of rendering book knowledge became popular in late 20th century. Most of the publishing houses still think that the revenue model of hard copy books is the most profitable model. I tend to disagree on that.
Like google, the publishing industry can also move towards the ad-based reveniew model. The e-books can have targeted ads and get the revenues out of it. If the e-books are free, the better the ebook is, more will be its circulation. The more the circulation, the more eye balls an ad gets. Like any content on website, its the content in an e-book.
Ebook can have targetted Ads. A Finance book can have ads from Investment Banks and financial institutions etc. All those Ads can be clickable ads and it can again be a Ads-per-click model.
This will not only make the good content free and widely avalaible but also remove the middlemen from the industry. This will be open sourcing of the content in the publishing industry. The costs of the publishers will go down in publishing the content from the authors.
Today the biggest threat to publishing industry comes not from piracy or used books but from the you-tubing of the content. Most of the big universities have set up their online universities on I-Tunes, YouTube and Open Course Ware formats. Wikipedia is the biggest threat for all the publishers. There is no content which is not available on Wikipedia.
So instead of being shy of technology, the best way is to adopt it to their advantage !!
Does open source matter ?? does it matter to you and me or is it just for the geeks and evangelists....
Open source term originated from the mouth of geeks when some people like you and I started saying that the programming code should be open. Unlike other brick and mortar industries, software was unique in itself. You could sell software but the keep the source code to yourself. Whereas in other industries, the moment you sell a product you inadvertently sell the source too. Anybody can dismantle the product and know the source or technology. That's how the term, 'Open Source' came into limelight.
When Henry Ford made the car for the first time, he thought he would be the only one selling all the cars ever in future. He didn't realise that with the car, he was also selling the source code. Very soon, people learnt the technology and started making better cars and in many colors. Similarly in other industries, companies sell the source code without realising it. Another classic example is Coca-Cola. They knew right from the beginning, the composition of the soda water that they sold was crucial to their business. They never divulged the details of their secret formula to make coke. They did realise that sooner or later anybody can produce the same drink with same taste as the drink is a tangible product. They built a huge wall of being the world's most famous brand which was difficult to emulate.
When software industry evolved, people thought that they would be better off keeping the source code to themselves and sell the product. With the intangible nature of the product, it made sense too. Few years down the line, some people were quick to figure out that if they made the source code open, it not only led to the betterment of the product very quickly but also made it more robust and secure as more eyes could catch more bugs. With the statistics from Coverty, a software defect analysis company, the average defect in open source software is much lower than proprietary software. This way, open source made the difference to the software industry.
If we analyse other industries in the world, most of them have open source hidden in them in some form or the other. Either they are industries based on open source or very soon they would be. Now the question is how the companies have managed to keep it proprietary. What is good for everyone - proprietary or open source. Let analyse some of the industries.
Education is considered as the most noble business. Educationalinstitutes are coveted the most. Even though the top institutions have produced so many intellectuals over centuries, education still remains one of the most protected proprietary products. The source code is not open. MIT was the first institution to make its courseware open for all. I don't see any reason why Harvard Business School should have a closed courseware. Why can't everyone benefit from what intellectuals teach at Harvard. Why HBS has to sell its case studies when it has millions of dollars in its corpus fund. Is the premier institute afraid that they would lose the competitive advantage by opening up their system. If it is so, how is it different from Microsoft.
Encylopedia may be or may be not aka Wikipedia, is another classic example of David - open source challenging closed source - Golaith. In early 1990's, Microsoft and other companies came up with a concept of selling encyclopedia in 6 cd's of voluminous data. To many, it appeared to be the most profitable idea until it was all of sudden made look silly by Wikipedia, an open source initiative. The success of wikipedia heralded a new era of open source content. The same company has also started its sister websites named Wikibooks, Wikiversity and many more. Many professors in top universities have already started putting up their classes in the form of webcasts, podcasts, wiki and e-books. Are we turning to open source in education.
Automobile Industry, one of the most popular old economy businesses, has always kept their source code open. Not because they wanted it, but because they had the limitation that they could not keep it closed. With the recent research in the hybrid and greener vehicles, Toyota spearheaded the concept of being open source evangelist in the research for greener technology for automobiles. On the other hand, Honda is betting on closed source approach by keeping their research proprietary. Only the time will tell, which approach is more beneficial for the company and the consumers.
Media industry is not too far from being affected by open source revolution. Hollywood studios which were so adept in protecting the media rights and making billions of dollars are having tough time dealing with emerging technologies. These technologies of peer-to-peer sharing, video sharing and online streaming have made it almost impossible to protect their media copyrights. The only way to fight out this threat for them is to go open source. Take out all the copyright protection elements and make it free over the net. They will have to think of newer sources of revenues other than traditional sources of revenues. Youtube is already changing the traditional way of internet surfing. Porn media houses have been shattered with video sharing websites sprawling all over the place. It has changed the way business was done.
Retail sector is the only one that is farthest from the impact from open source. The only open source thing that touches the retail sector is ebay. It started with a great idea of providing online marketplace for the people selling and buying all over the place. It not only granted the buyers the power of buying at their quoted prices but also gave them the power to rate the sellers. It stills is far away from being open source concept.
My mind fails to see the open source future trend in retail. If anyone can see that trend, please let me know. This is the beauty of open source in blog that you can contribute to my ideas and enhance it for the next reader.
There are many more industries where open source is not very clearly visible. It, definitely, is one of the forces which is changing the economies and business.
It is changing the world, you and I see !!
I'll continue writing about open source and how does it matter .....
I'm sharing with you all a piece, that I wrote today, regarding the buyer's guide for Open source consulting Services. It helped me to get an insight. Please feel free to comment.
Open source consulting services: Buyer's Guide
Target Audience: Vendor Management Professionals
Six Criteria for Choosing Consulting services:
Broad Experience across variety of products and platforms: Since open source products are being deployed in organizations having variety of platforms, the most common problems for clients can be related to interoperability issues and patch and version issues. Providers with many years of experience in supporting such type of configurations can be best suited for open source consulting relationships.
Open Source Products and Resources: Customers should evaluate the number of vendor's trained resources and also the depth of their knowledge of open source platforms and commercial open source software. Providers who have experience in multiple open source platforms and products are well suited to deployment, migration and integration services. Training, Certification and number of years' experience should be seen while choosing the resources from the provider.
Open Source community Leverage: The company having good reputation of working with the open source community in development and evolution of the product is very likely to have strong knowledge and strong support from the community. This leverage not only helps during consulting but also helps in bringing customers closer to the open source community. This leads to long term gradual smooth movement towards the open source platform and products bringing in long lasting cost benefits and strong industry standard solutions.
Complete Stack Offering Leverage: Companies offering complete stack of open source products and platforms have leverage over the ones having individual products. Such provider's can deliver real value, since they can create standard suite of products or services tied to a specific stack that can be leveraged over multiple customers. This allows vendors to keep costs low, higher quality consulting, reduce problem resolution time and adhere to industry standard Service Level Agreements. Additionally, intellectual property can be created for and bundled with complete stack of open source products.
Global Footprints: Companies should look for vendors with global footprints as it allows them to have 24X7 delivery and support time for on-site and offshore services. For multinational companies looking for vendors, its extremely important that the vendor has multi-lingual, multiple time zones capability and knowledge of cultural and business challenges unique to a particular geography and region.
Client's Success Stories: Most of the consulting practices are long term agreements which gradually expand to multiple departments across the organization. Therefore, the customers should look for the vendors which have multi-year relationships with the other companies and their customer references. This is the true test of the good consulting provider and their vendor/client relationship because the long term contracts entails at least some complex projects requiring excellent quality consulting services.
