A Body for the Soul

In India the penetration and knowledge of Open Source is growing and

consequently people are innovating different business strategies around it. You

might argue that since Open Source is Free as in both 'free beer and free air,'

how can somebody develop a business model around it? But if Red Hat can earn

from Open Source then why can't we?

No, I am not talking about building your own Linux distro and rolling it out

in the market. That's possible but might not survive in the face of umpteen

numbers of such distros with some very renowned, stable ones. And starting from

scratch is difficult for someone unless and until he has some really brilliant

ideas to make the distro stand out from the crowd.

Anindya Roy

To start with, there's an easy market out there. If you search the Net,

you'll find brilliant solutions for UTM devices, firewalls, mail servers, VoIP

systems, NAS, SAN, etc, all available as customized Open Source distros. And

these applications are in no way inferior to the commercial ones available

except that there is no support available out of the box. And they are just

software. But hardware or cabinets for such appliances are available in

abundance. There are some specialized companies (not Indian) who are developing

such cabinets. Such cabinets (with small footprint motherboard, Processor and

RAM included) are available for a price range starting from a mere INR 10,000 to

INR 50,000. Our research shows that you can build a full featured UC appliance

in just INR 30,000 or less when building in bulk (read this month's DIY story on

'Build your Own UC Appliance,' pg 72).

So, as a business it can be great to build custom appliances and sell them in

the market. Many are already doing so and earning pretty handsomely. The other

thought that creeps into my mind is that as such appliances are easy to build

and have the same capabilities as commercial appliances, then why do we spend a

huge amount in procuring the latter. Just get a bunch of Open Source experts in

your IT team, build your own devices, and start using and supporting them in

house. This way you can save a lot of money, particularly when such devices are

deployed across a large number of branch offices.

In our own company we use a Firewall/Content Filter/Proxy server which is an

Open Source distro running on a standard tower server. It is fulfilling



the needs of the whole organization very well. In Cyber Media Labs, we are using
IP PBX and NAS boxes which have been developed in house and



with a very low investment. And we find them very much at par with any other
commercially available product.

So, all you need to do is to get bodies for the souls (cabinets for software

appliances) and there you are the IT guru who'll not only save but also earn a

decent amount of money.