What are the keypoints of business value generation with long term support?
Posted on 2008-08-12 15:59:47 EEST.
As the Midgard LTS stabilization approaches it's always good to start thinking the most important factors that generate value of the product.
Because we are dealing up with an open source product the business itself is totally service oriented since no license fees are collected. Nowadays mixed business models have emerged that contain both licence and service fees. But with both cases there are more or less unexpected expenses that just occur.
Basically in the long term most of the software service expenses come from repeating tasks like installing, upgrading, bug tracking etc. With coming Midgard LTS version installation part has been quite well tested. Upgrading and bug tracking should be reviewed and discussed. How do we do software configuration management? And what are the expectations that LTS version should fullfill?
Git and OBS are good starting point for the improvement. However there still some important keypoins to address like Configuration control, status accounting, reviewing of the components and the very LTS process management as a whole. This is the way now and in the future to make better value when providing consultancy services or web services built on Midgard LTS. Try and minimize the probability that something unexpected happens. That should provide us better chance to focus on relevant matters instead just trying to put out acute flames somewhere.
Because we are dealing up with an open source product the business itself is totally service oriented since no license fees are collected. Nowadays mixed business models have emerged that contain both licence and service fees. But with both cases there are more or less unexpected expenses that just occur.
Basically in the long term most of the software service expenses come from repeating tasks like installing, upgrading, bug tracking etc. With coming Midgard LTS version installation part has been quite well tested. Upgrading and bug tracking should be reviewed and discussed. How do we do software configuration management? And what are the expectations that LTS version should fullfill?
Git and OBS are good starting point for the improvement. However there still some important keypoins to address like Configuration control, status accounting, reviewing of the components and the very LTS process management as a whole. This is the way now and in the future to make better value when providing consultancy services or web services built on Midgard LTS. Try and minimize the probability that something unexpected happens. That should provide us better chance to focus on relevant matters instead just trying to put out acute flames somewhere.