I had a good meeting last week with a potential new partner of TSG in regards to how to work together to offer Open Source solutions across our joint customer base.  While we have had many firms download our Open Source software (Crown Partners, CSC/FCG, IBM, PWC, Cognizant and EMC themselves to name a few), most don’t understand how Open Source can improve their consulting offerings.  In our last discussion with EMC, we are the only certified partner offering all of our solutions as Open Source.  For this entry, I thought I would share the advantages to hopefully encourage more Documentum partners to join the Open Source movement.

• Codeware Version 2.0 – As consultants that see multiple clients, we often like to leverage our work from one client to another to reduce costs and not duplicate efforts.  Often, if approved by the client, we would take some of our work product to leverage at the next client.  As payback, we push to share any of the new client enhancements with the original client.  In one way, Open Source can be seen as an extension of a Codeware model. 
• Integration Services Version 2.0 – Open Source allows us to more effectively compete with off-shore resources that offer generic Java or Documentum skills but build solutions from scratch.  Open Source give us a means to offer faster/better/cheaper solutions with less development.  By removing much of the coding effort, projects are less about slinging code and more about experienced, dedicated resources that can understand requirements and analytical portions of the project.
• Software Development Version 2.0 – With a traditional software model, typical features have to be “one size fits all” to apply to the entire user base and justify the software purchase cost.  This can lead to feature creep, complicated interfaces, unutilized features and bloated software.   In an Open Source approach, customers drive new features in the code based on what they pay for rather than part of a product sale and can remove unnecessary components.  Open Source can be focused on exactly what a user wants with some integration costs given no software purchase.
• Consultative Sale rather than Software Sale – Unfortunately, the software sale can be seen as aggressive and “pitch them anything to get them to sign” model.  Open Source is much more consultative in that it is a “try it before you buy it” approach that allows us, as consultants, to deliver more value.

While most of TSG’s work is around our own Open Source tools (try ours at Active Wizard, OpenMigrate or HPI/OpenContent), we are happy to promote other certified Documentum vendor Open Source software.  If you have a tool you would like to promote or consider adding to the discussion, please enter a comment below.  We are always looking for additional offerings to promote to our customers.