Steven Schuurman’s biz.blog

As open source business models evolve #2
Last time I found some time to write a blog entry, I explored the idea of open source business models requiring someting like sustainable agility to survive the unavoidable aging process. I’ve given it quite some thought since, and I truly think that it’s very important that companies that generate revenue around open source software that’s free, should be aware of the direction in which an industry is moving. Or even better, understand the direction in which client needs are evolving. The moment you’re able to provide an industry in its needs, you’re in the right position, especially if you saw it coming before everybody else did…

Continuity in practice
Over the last year, I’ve answered numerous questions about the continuity issue that companies are facing that have an open source software centric business model. The reason people ask question about this, is because they wonder are wondering about what happens with the commercial company behind the open source product, if people might loose interest. In other words, what happens if your product becomes a commodity or suddenly faces mean competition and it becomes harder to generate revenue off your value added services? Good question of course, but in my opinion not really hard to aswer.

Product dependency
This is the topic people are in fact wondering about, when asking about the economic continuity of Interface21; the question behind all other questions regarding this topic: “Does the continuity of Interface21 depend on the success of the Spring Framework?” I think this is a realistic question, and definitely worth answering in public. To get to the point right away; the continuity of Interface21 is not dependent on the success of the Spring Framework. Even though the company is well know for developing the Spring Framework and offering value added services around it, in fact Interface21 has quite a bit more to offer, thus reducing its dependency on the success of Spring. As a matter of fact, there are a significant amount of customers among the i21 clientele, that are not doing business with the company because of the Spring Framework connection. They require high level input on their enterprise Java application landscape, and found a valuable partner in Interface21.

Products vs. Services
Our company is essentially a product company, there’s no denying in that. However, as anybody can download our products for free, revenue has to come from somewhere else, which in our case is by offering services. This means that Interace21 has basically two ways of limiting its economic dependency of the Spring Framework; by differentiating its product offering and by differentiating its services offering. Since both make a lot of sense from an entrepreneurial perspective, Interface21 has in fact ensured from the very beginning that its corporate strategy facilitates both.

The product angle
The product angle is most important to Interace21; this is what builds our brands, leverages our services, and offers immediate value to anybody that’s interested. That’s why at this point -as Spring still continues to gain momentum- the company has already started to claim market share in other markets: such as the AOP space. Having AspectJ project lead Adrian Colyer (former Senior Technical Staff Member of IBM) join Interface21 in the role of Chief Scientist, Interface21 has claimed authority in that market area for quite some years to come. Besides developing AspectJ, Interface21 continues to build WebFlow; a powerful pageflow engine that populates more web-tiers of modern application architectures by the day. Without going into further detail, it’s no secret that more products will become available in the forseeable future. Many more products are on the Interfac21 wishlist, which one will be released is depenent on what we think serves the industry best and what we think we’re qualified to develop.

The services angle
The Interface21 services portfolio is without doubt of lesser value to the companies visibility in the industry, but nonetheless does help create value for our customers. Most people don’t know this, but Interface21 does a lot of high level consulting for companies that have a wide range of questions about their application landscape. In fact, a significant percentage of our consulting services is provided to companies that are not using the Spring Framework at this point. They ask Interface21 consultants to think along when it comes to moving away from classical application architecture to a more lightweight approach. Especially in large enterprise class environments, these complex processes require experienced experts. Regardless of whether Spring is involved or not, Interface1 is happy to support these organisations.

Then there are the people
Over the last year, Interface21 has grown nearly 400% in headcount, and all of the people that have joined made a significant contribution to the enterprise Java community before joining. This means that if we look at the list of names on our payroll, it’s actually quite an impressive team, without any doubt capable of accomplishing impressive things. When answering the question whether Interface21 is dependent on Spring, it’s sometimes hard to repress the tendency to say something along the lines of: “Of course not, these people are about so much more than Spring.” But on the other hand, I agree that it’s always good to remain critical and keep asking questions, in fact, you can never be too critical when it comes to continuity.

And look at it from my perspective; it’s always nice to get questions that can be answered properly…

Rgds,
Steven

As open source business models evolve #1
In my previous blog entry I wrote about the role of products within the Interface21 open source business model. As mentioned, I think that in the case of Interface21 our open source products are, more than anything else, a demonstration of our drive to simplify our industry. Especially when it comes to end-user companies to whom the use of custom enterprise software is a necessary evil. Corporates don’t want to spend money at building custom made software, they want to satisfy a business need as effectively and efficiently as possible. The Spring Framework does just that, problem solved right? Well, almost.

First there’s: motivation
New products do create new challenges within organisations and those need to be tackled too, because as Einstein’s mentioned quite a while ago, we should “Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler”. Meaning that even for people that have adopted the Spring Framework as the infrastructural backbone for their enterprise applications, there’s still some work left to do. What this saying does give us is a something along the lines of an industry mission. A motivation, or goal if you will, that we’re keeping in mind as we’re building our business. Even though this might seem trivial, I think it’s important to have a goal like this. Understandable, short, and simple.

Then there should be: sustainable agility
Besides the question of what you’re aim is, I think the question of how you’re going to achieve it in a sustainable fashion, is also worth giving some thought. Here’s a proposition that intrigues me in this context; true continuity really isn’t about finance, it’s about understanding the needs of your target group. These days our clients seem to be looking more than ever for high quality solutions that last. Agile applications, architectures, and development processes that are designed to facilitate their own business agility. If an IT company is able to develop products and services to facilitate a target group in these specific needs, it’s probably on the right track. I think that at this point in time there are only a few companies out there that are able to do this. Most companies are pushing their own products and services, without the intrinsic drive to provide their clients with products and services from which they can benefit in years to come. This drive is very important, but I also think that it isn’t the biggest challenge for IT companies. As clients evolve, the business models of IT companies should evolve, just to make sure they continue to be able to live up to their own promise. In the case of Interface21, this is the aim presented in the previous paragraph. Our business model should therefore be as agile as the services we’re delivering, now and in the future. This sustainable agility might very well be a critical success factor in next generation business models. Especially in an ever so rapidly changing industry as ours.

Rgds,
Steven

The fuel
It’s no secret that I’m rather fond of what I do for a living, and that’s an understatement. Working with people is great, working with great people is even better and watching great people work at great things is probably the main reason I hardly ever have to snooze my alarm clock more than once each morning before I hit the shower. Most days I wake up very early and get to Amsterdam well before the frat boys from Delft University of Technology even start thinking about getting sober again. I’ve been asked many times why I do this, but the only answer I seem to be able to come up with is based on the fact that I simply love what I do.

Pieces of the puzzle
Come to think of it, I’ve been giving the latter quite a bit of thought over the last few months. As a people person, I’ve always thought that the interaction with a group of highly skilled professionals was the main reason I enjoy what I do. But as I’m closing in on the big 3 – 0, I find myself focusing more and more on building a company that has something different to offer; both to our customers as well as to the people that make the company to what it is. It’s facilitating the birth of this X-factor that makes it all worth while. Even though I’m convinced we’re getting much closer to a really stable mature version 2.0 of our company, we’re not quite there yet. But then again, it is tough to put together a well-oiled international organisation that’s home to some of the most demanding people in our business, when in comes to quality - on multple levels. In the Netherlands we’ve just hired hard-hitter Steven Devijver, a great personality and the lead of Spring Modules. Guys like StevenD are valuable pieces of the puzzle that when combined in the right way, provide you with something that’s clearly meant to be. On an international level we’re currently talking to several high profile though leaders who have taken an interest in Interface21. I’m currently wrecking my brain on how these guys might fit into the bigger picture. At this point I’m sure we have to be very careful about whom to hire and whom not, because high profile individuals do tend to influence the direction of the company in one way or the other. The more reason to look for people that drive our business in the direction we want it to go. I’m sure we’ll have some truly special surprises coming your way in the near future regarding this aspect of our growth.

Where does the software fit in?
Being a company that’s basically founded on an open source product that has given the J2EE world what it was looking for, there’s always the question of how to find the right position of the product piece in a puzzle that doesn’t have an example printed on the outside of its box. I’ve studies many business models based on open source driven strategies, but in literally every case, these models seemed to lack just that little bit of magic that I was looking for to make Interface21’s better, more sustainable, and more flexible than most things out there right now. I think it’s all depending on what you’re looking for with your business. In the case of Interface21 our objective isn’t to be the biggest, but it is to be the home of the best. Great people make a great company and that’s what we’re building. We strive to offer best of breed solutions to enterprise class customers that wish to benefit from our knowledge and experience. As we grow, I’m becoming more and more aware of the fact that this proposition isn’t about products or services at all, it’s about facilitating agility. Our customers simply want to be able to focus on their core business, rather than worry about application stacks, development efficiency and vendor lock-ins.

The offering
This is in fact what Interface21 is all about. We love using our knowledge and experience to solve difficult problems and avoid future misery. We have found that many claim to understand this field of expertise, but only few are truly capable of providing sustainable practical solutions for todays enterprise software challenges. In the Interface21 business model, our software isn’t a piece of the puzzle. I think it’s the table on which we spread our pieces.

I’m going to get some shut-eye now.

Cheers,
Steven