SMU Cox School of Business MBA Program
Students from the SMU Cox School of Business Professional MBA Program teamed with Architel®, a Dallas based information technology company to help spin off an internally developed software application as a separate business entity. The PMBA team is lead by Vikram Habbu and is comprised of Terrance Turpin, Shrinivas Raghavan. The faculty advisor for the team is Dr. Richard Briesch, assistant professor in the marketing department.
The software application now known as SimpleTicket, was developed by Architel® to track computer and network problems generated by their IT support clients. Known as a trouble ticket system, it soon became apparent that the application was perfect for any small or medium sized information technology staff who needed a ticketing system. The company, a big proponent and consumer of open source applications and tools, decided that it would release SimpleTicket as an open source application under the OSI’s General Public License (better known as the GPL).
The Professional MBA students will help Architel® develop a viable business model for SimpleTicket. The challenge for the MBA students will be to figure out a way to make money when you are giving your product away for free. The task may not be as insurmountable as it might first appear as several other open source projects have turned into viable businesses including JBoss, MySQL, RedHat and SugarCRM to name a few.
“We are excited that Vikram and Dr. Briesch will be working with the SimpleTicket team to develop an open source business model that works,� said Alexander Muse, general partner of m|ventures the holding company that owns Architel® and SimpleTicket. “The Professional MBA students bring a component to the project that we could not have otherwise afforded.�