Last week I wrote about JasperSoft announcing a more complete business intelligence architecture to fill out their open source reporting package. In my view, this was sort of their open source coming-of-age, when they developed from a niche open source firm into an ambitious firm that will compete aggressively with the big boys and just happens to be open source. As it turns out, today marks JasperSoft's one-year anniversary, and they've hit some big milestones, with several hundred paying customers and a 300% increase in downloads over the last year. Interesting to note that their growth stats from this past year have dwarfed what the project saw in the previous three years, before it had any commercial backing. As soon as JasperSoft was formed to monetize and support the project, it took off, despite the same core technology.
In my experience, the startups, open source or otherwise, that crash and burn are usually the ones that try to do too much too early, instead of producing solid growth and good partnerships. There's such a stigma against picking the low-hanging fruit - open source companies are afraid of getting pigeon-holed as small-time so they try to take on the whole world before they have the means.
JasperSoft's success underscores the better way to build an open source business: with the right commercial sponsorship, an ambitious growth strategy, and some humility about its place in the market, a small open source company really can mature into a major market player. We're seeing it all over the market--that the model works and that sustainable revenue can be generated if you do the right things.
Posted by Dave Rosenberg on May 1, 2006 07:17 PM
