Open source strategies for IT service firms

Abstract

This document is the result of the project undertaken in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the PGSM (Post Graduate Programme in Software Management) programme at Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore. We, the authors, have more than 24 person years of combined experience in the IT industry, both of us have been with the Wipro Technologies for significant time and have witnessed several practices(like Data warehousing, Centre of Excellence for Storage, Linux) taking birth, growing and maturing into full fledged business units. The outcome of the project, documented herein, is a result of the research based on, the information available with regard to open source movement, the secondary information(from open source business reports published by firms such as Gartner, Forrester etc.),the several brainstorming sessions that we had to analyze the business case and the interactions with key people in the organization we work for. We would like to acknowledge the able guidance of Prof.Kumar, 11MB for providing valuable inputs in framing the business strategy, which has been proposed in this document. We believe this report will be very useful for IT services firms (especially from India) to address the market opportunities the open source movement has brought about in IT services. The report addresses how an IT services firm can setup an open source practice aligned to an open source business strategy to deliver value to their customers and gear up to address the emerging open source IT services market.