End of drive by shooting: Free software transforms BI
It’s not often that an industry changes irreversibly, but the advent of Open Source Software / Free software (OSS/FS) is having exactly that effect. While many Open Source advocates will not be surprised by the assertion, it has particular relevance to the Business Intelligence industry which has remained largely untouched by this new model.
I was prompted to this conclusion by a discussion with a customer that had downloaded the SeeWhy Community Edition and was using it to build a pilot implementation in conjunction with Open Source Business Intelligence software from Pentaho. [Incidentally I’m really excited about this project since it elegantly demonstrates the fit between BI 2.0 and traditional query based BI.]
Business Intelligence in particular needs incremental and iterative development. Business users are generally very bad at describing what they need, and requirements in BI projects invariably change through the life of the project. Consequently starting small with a series of small incremental steps, responding to evolving requirements, generally works best for BI.
Traditional software licensing models don’t support this mode of development. The vendor wants you to pay upfront for their software, which drives you and them to make the project bigger and therefore riskier.
Here’s why: in order to justify the return on investment needed to make the business case for the software purchase, the project grows in size. The vendor will gladly help you to increase the scope of the project, seeing more commitment and services. You will be looking for a big ROI number to help smooth the purchase through the purchasing process.
OSS/FS changes this fundamentally. You do not need to produce a theoretical ROI. You do not need to build a business case justifying a purchase.
Instead you just do it. Download it. Deploy it small. Evolve it. Get value.
Only when the project is delivering value, might you then consider support or maintenance, or upgrading to a professional version as the project grows in scope. But by this point the project has been proven to succeed, with (hopefully) a measurable ROI.
This path is also fundamentally different because it engages customer and vendor into a symbiotic relationship. The risks are aligned: the vendor wants to get your application into production (as you do) not simply to do a ‘drive by shooting’ where the vendor disappears as soon as the software license is sold. Under the new model, the vendor’s subscription pricing reinforces this: you pay only when the software delivers value, and only as long as it continues to do so into the future.
