Businesses of all sizes are moving to Linux and other open source software because the up-front investment is low, even though the learning curve for installation, support, and validation might be steep. New companies are springing up to help the enterprise deal with complexities that come into play after open source adoption.
One such company is SpikeSource, founded in April 2003 by Murugan Pal and former Oracle President and COO Ray Lane. Nick Halsey, the company’s vice president of marketing and sales, says that Pal and Lane talked to dozens of potential customers to determine the needs of a business with an open source software infrastructure. The number one response was that as open source becomes mainstream, they needed a trusted third party to handle integration, interoperability testing, and change management and support.