Support Strategy
OpenCrowd's Support Strategy offering helps clients understand their support needs for open source technologies and create a customized plan to effectively operate applications and technology environments.
Challenges
One of the perceived barriers to the adoption of open source technology is a lack of traditional vendor-style support for individual products and the open source platform. In reality, there is a wide array of support options available for open source technologies.
Open source software's support needs vary significantly and depend on:
- Technical maturity of the open source software and the strength of its community
- Its usage within the environment (development vs production) and within the application stack
- Available skill set and open source adoption with the enterprise
In the closed source software environment, organizations are locked into the support models of the software vendors. With the emergence of open source, a fundamental value proposition is choice, in not only selecting the software, but also the ability to take control of the software environment and take advantage of the competitive support infrastructure. Depending on their needs, organizations can choose any of the following support models:
- Commercial support model where they pay a company to provide support
- In house support team that provides support to the rest of the organization
- Depend on the open source community for getting support
However, because of the newness of the open source environment and the availability of various support options, choosing a correct support model can be a burden. Traditionally, IT departments had not been required to perform this task. Now, they have to have a thorough understanding of their support needs and skills to evaluate the emerging open source support offerings and providers.
What we offer
Getting support in open source environment bridges a gap, both in terms of product maturity and available skill set within the enterprise. To have an effective open source support policy, enterprises have to have the necessary skill set to embark on a well thought out support program
OpenCrowd with its thorough understanding of open source technologies, vast experience in developing enterprise wide solutions, and a strong partnership network assists clients solve these support challenges.
Specifically, the Support Strategy helps our clients:
- Assess support needs across inventory of open source software and its usage within the organization
- Identify support skills and gaps to support open source software
- Create and implement a customized support plan
- Evaluating ongoing support and training needs
On an ongoing basis, if the support needs change or new open source software is adopted within the organization, OpenCrowd can assist in reevaluating and refining support plans.
Our process and experience allows clients to choose and implement the best support option for using open source technologies.
For more information on our Support Strategy Offering, please contact our sales team.
