A Customer
Avalanche
Big IT shops are accustomed to playing
an expensive game in which first they buy enterprise applications
(big and expensive) and then they pay skilled programmers (their own
or paid contractors) to customize the application or provide
additional functionality.
But a group of big customers in
Minneapolis think they may have found a better way.
Starting in 2001, these firms formed a non-profit consortium,
Project Avalanche, to pool their resources.
The idea is simple. Each
participating firm (participants include Jostens, ePredix, Best
Buy, Cargill and Medtronics) kicks in $30,000 a year to cover
administrative and other expenses, plus code for sharing –
typically the kind of code that isn’t mission critical or
competitively advantaging, but rather the sort of thing that each of
the companies would otherwise need to write for themselves.
This way, they can be much more efficient.
Last November they hired an Executive
Director and sought a somewhat higher profile.
Their joint intellectual property library is available free
of charge to all of their members.
You can read more about it at their web site www.avalanchecorporatetechnology.com
where you will find a list of their current assets, information on
how to join the coop, and news of a meeting later this week.
Cooperative members expect to use the
Open Source model to share and improve their software.
That is, donations can be improved by any member, with
improvements potentially being returned to the Avalanche library.
Over time, the goal will be to actually
collaborate on software they can jointly use, such as an Open
Source-based office suite, integrated by their efforts, or other
types of generic software.
That could be a scary thought for
commercial software developers, who may see this determined group of
big customers as a serious threat.
In any case, even if Project Avalanche
is only about saving money on the customization on top of commercial
software, that would require some serious rethinking in the way ISVs
and their system integrator partners plan for revenue.
But the founders of Project Avalanche were looking for a way
to restore some of the balance of power to software buyers, so
perhaps they see this as merely a step in the right direction.
Big IT shops are accustomed to playing
an expensive game in which first they buy enterprise applications
(big and expensive) and then they pay skilled programmers (their own
or paid contractors) to customize the application or provide
additional functionality.
But a group of big customers in
Minneapolis think they may have found a better way.
Starting in 2001, these firms formed a non-profit consortium,
Project Avalanche, to pool their resources.
The idea is simple. Each
participating firm (participants include Jostens, ePredix, Best
Buy, Cargill and Medtronics) kicks in $30,000 a year to cover
administrative and other expenses, plus code for sharing –
typically the kind of code that isn’t mission critical or
competitively advantaging, but rather the sort of thing that each of
the companies would otherwise need to write for themselves.
This way, they can be much more efficient.
Last November they hired an Executive
Director and sought a somewhat higher profile.
Their joint intellectual property library is available free
of charge to all of their members.
You can read more about it at their web site www.avalanchecorporatetechnology.com
where you will find a list of their current assets, information on
how to join the coop, and news of a meeting later this week.
Cooperative members expect to use the
Open Source model to share and improve their software.
That is, donations can be improved by any member, with
improvements potentially being returned to the Avalanche library.
Over time, the goal will be to actually
collaborate on software they can jointly use, such as an Open
Source-based office suite, integrated by their efforts, or other
types of generic software.
That could be a scary thought for
commercial software developers, who may see this determined group of
big customers as a serious threat.
In any case, even if Project Avalanche
is only about saving money on the customization on top of commercial
software, that would require some serious rethinking in the way ISVs
and their system integrator partners plan for revenue.
But the founders of Project Avalanche were looking for a way
to restore some of the balance of power to software buyers, so
perhaps they see this as merely a step in the right direction.
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