[OSGeo-Discuss] Question about FOSS4G Business Models

[Miles Fidelman]

Venkatesh Raghavan wrote:
> I think what Daniele is looking for is some kind of
> a "How to convince a venture (or social) captitalist
> to invest in FOSS4G technnologies and/or companies".
> Guess the venture capitalist would be inerested to
> see some statistical data on how FOSS4G based companies
> are growing elsewhere and what are their core business
> stratagies.
>   
I just went back and re-read Daniele's initial post, and now realize
that it's not
entirely clear what Daniele was asking for. So.....

Daniele,

When you said "convince his company management and finances to invest in
FOSS4G technologies over the next 5 years. The company presently does a
small part of
its business using FOSS4G tools but is wondering if it should take
a deeper plunge into the FOSS4G world." Does this refer to investing in
FOSS4G tools for:
- internal use
- as part of the toolkit used in company engagements
- as a service offering (e.g., supporting FOSS4G tools)
- as components of systems built for clients
- as products to develop and release/market
- as something else
- as a combination of the above?

A little scoping along these lines would be very useful in providing
input to "a document
with concrete data about "how companies elsewhere in the world are
profiting, growing,
increasing market share and the kind of clients that they are catering to."

Also... when you say "The company also wants to consider marketing broad
based services for SDI" - I sort of infer that you're not talking about
Strategic Defense. So...
who are you expanding the acronym?

Finally, when you're done - how about sharing a copy of the resulting
paper, or at least a
version with proprietary information removed?

Cheers,

Miles


-- 
Miles R. Fidelman, Director of Government Programs
Traverse Technologies 
145 Tremont Street, 3rd Floor
Boston, MA  02111
mfidelman at traversetechnologies.com
857-362-8314
www.traversetechnologies.com