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.�
March 3, 2006 |
Trackback |
No Comments
Tags: SimpleTicket , simpleticket , smu , mba , coxschoolofbusiness , mysql , sugarcrm , redhat , jboss | Bookmark on del.icio.us | Digg It
The meeting with the MBA candidates from SMU went well. The first big question was who SimpleTicket customers were. Here are my ideas:
We believe that corporate IT departments are the primary user of SimpleTicket. IT Departments with between 1 and 30 internal IT personnel (companies with between 25 and 750 employees).
The 2000 downloads to-date are likely early technology adopters (very few corporate IT departments). We feel as though SimpleTicket will not support the workflow of most IT support companies. Most IT department will wait for the hosted version to be released so they can play with the online demo.
February 17, 2006 |
Trackback |
No Comments
Tags: SimpleTicket , IT Support , simpleticket , smu , mba | Bookmark on del.icio.us | Digg It
We were contacted by students from SMU’s MBA program to help build a business or marketing plan for SimpleTicket. We are meeting this evening with the students and their advisor. Here are several Q&As about SimpleTicket Alex blogged about previously (we have also included several links that might be helpful for the MBA students:
Q. Why did Architel write SimpleTicket?
A. Architel wrote SimpleTicket because they had a very specific workflow and non of the cheap (under $10,000) solutions worked for the company. The expensive solutions (over $50,000) were so complicated and ‘heavy’ that we decided to build it ourselves.
Q. Why did Architel decide to release SimpleTicket as an open source project?
A. The more people who saw the project thought we should ’sell’ it. I was surprised that people would want our ’simple’ ticketing system. Our workflow is so narrow I figured it would not work for many types of companies. If we released the software for free, including the source code, anyone could edit/modify the code to match their own workflow. By using the GPL we could ensure that all versions/modifications/improvements would be shared with the entire community. Finally, the network effects potentially huge - imagine a network of developers working on your software (for free!).
Q. How will Architel make money?
A. First, we don’t need to make any money. The cost of development was far less than it would have cost us to purchase one of those heavy-weight packages. If we don’t make a dime we will be fine. But, surely you realize that open source projects can be very lucrative. How? 1. you can provide maintenance for a fee, 2. you can provide customization for a fee, or 3. you can provide application hosting for a fee. Revenue generated by the project can be reinvested in the project or simply distributed to the parent (Architel).
Making Money With Open Source (whitepaper) by Kai Hendry
How to Make Money Off Open Source, by Lisa Vaas
Conversation witha successful Linux services entrepreneur by Robin Miller
Open Source Case for Business by OSI
How Do You Make Money from Open Source Software? by Clark Lane
101 Ways to Make Money off Open Source
Making money with open source by Amy Kucharik
Money in the open source world by Alex
Open Source year in reivew by Alex
February 17, 2006 |
Trackback |
No Comments
Tags: SimpleTicket , Architel , simpleticket , opensource , smu , mba | Bookmark on del.icio.us | Digg It
