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Non-Tech : LINUX STOCKS: FIND THEM NOW, RETIRE EARLY -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Hoatzin who wrote (318)	12/25/1999 11:17:00 AM
From: puborectalis	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 377

Evolution Or Revolution? Linux Rattles the Business Model By Carol Ellison VARBusiness 11:16 AM EST Fri., Dec. 17, 1999 In the fast-paced world of enterprise and Internet integration, where the competitive landscape, partnerships, and business models can turn on a dime, there are few more fluid environments than that of the Open Source Movement. Young, energetic, and still possessing the backroom cook-pot character of many of this industry's early and most successful innovations, it's a realm that's ripe with business opportunity. This week in VARBusiness University, we bring you a comprehensive inroduction to the free operating system--complete with How-To articles, interesting Linux solutions, and timely tips to point you toward the rewards of participation in the fast-paced and collegial Linux world. Few are more familiar with that environment than VBU Linux advisor, Dallas integrator Tom Adelstein. With a formal schooling in accounting and business processes and a 20-year real-world education in business IT consulting, Tom has worked with every operating system designed for desktop and server. But none have fed opportunity in his firms in quite the way Linux has. Bynari Inc., in which Adelstein is a partner and CIO, started less than a year ago doing Linux integrations, quickly incorporated a service and support model that provided call center help to non-clients as well as clients, and now finds itself poised to get into product distribution--a move is prompting the company to develop its own reseller organization. The company's evolution makes an interesting case study for other integrators investigating the opportunities that Linux offers. In developing its call center operation, Bynari has forged international alliances with Linux developers and professionals around the world who field trouble calls that come into the center and do local integrations when callers find themselves in need of on site help. This fall, when Bynari developed a Unix mail client that works with Microsoft Exchange and posted the kernal for public download on its Web site, it was suddenly swamped with calls that its alliance was not equipped to keep up with. What callers wanted was not help with installation and integration but a finished product to install themselves--packaged and documented, complete with finished installation routine. The rush in demand caught Bynari by surprise, Tom told me. "It's like that commercial where one guy says to the other as they peer over a computer screen - what do we do now? Then the other guy says something like - bolt the doors," he said. Incorporating a product distribution scheme into the integration business has proven to be easier said than done. "Aside from transaction volume," says Tom, "almost every business process in distribution differs from integration. Marketing and advertising messages have to change. It's suddenly a whole different ball game--from planning cycle to budgeting and forecasting, distribution facilities, returns, accounts receivable, cash management, revenue assurance, customer care, manufacturing, packaging, sales management, compensation agreements, training, legal issues, like employee contracts, customs, the government agencies with whom we interact. So, I need to acknowledge those areas we don't have covered and admit the need for help." So Bynari is now looking for new kinds of business partners and looking at a business model that is the pace of th eindustry quickens and partnerships evolve. Says Adelstein: "Business today differs so much from when I started. I don't see a top or a bottom. I see a more horizontal structure. It reminds me of real clustering of several computers. Each one is in the whole and the whole is in each one of the parts. They all work together to produce a job and often the work simultaneously on different jobs."