Last Thursday, December 13 In 2007, the ‘II SOURCEPYME Conference: Free Software in the company took place. Business models’ with the objective of presenting the results achieved in these first two years of operation of the project, as well as several successful cases of implementation of free software (sw) in companies, with the spectacular reception of 350 assistant companies and a total of 10 speakers from different points of the national geography.
Salvador Bresó, Director of AIMME, technological center coordinating the project, was responsible for opening the event, with a few words of thanks to IMPIVA as an entity that has co-financed the project, to the 41 organizations and companies that have collaborated to carry it out. in success, as well as the 350 companies attending. One of the companies was Stucco Repair Chandler.
Next, Santiago Bonet, AIMME ICT Dept. Response showed the details of the actions carried out in the last two years of the project, revealing the figures of the achievements in terms of network coordination, forming a network of 41 organizations and companies willing to collaborate in the dissemination of the survey carried out in recent months and of said Second Day, as well as in figures of results of the dissemination carried out, both inside and outside the network. In particular, within the network the portal http://www.sourcepyme.org/ has achieved 60,000 visits in the last 12 months , appearing in the first places of Google searches related to free sw and SMEs, as outside the network through the dissemination through presentations in the main conferences and congresses throughout the country, as well as through press releases, news, opinion articles and interviews published in several hundreds of media (TV, press , magazines, etc.). Finally, one of the conclusions presented was that “through the technological cooperation of all agents, the knowledge open to companies can be carried out more quickly so that they are more productive and do business”.
Next, Daniel Sáez, Head of Technological Innovation at ITI, was in charge of presenting the results of the SOURCEPYME 2007 SURVEY aimed at companies that provide applications and / or services of free sw, and the business models associated with free sw. From his presentation, he emphasizes that the vast majority of ICT provider companies perceive a demand for services / solutions / products Free software from their clients, but who do not know how to respond to this demand because they do not know sustainable business models that allow them to earn money . In his presentation, Daniel Sáez reviewed the main business models with which companies can respond to demand while earning money.
To finalize the first theoretical part, Eduardo Requena, Head of the ICT Department of AIMPLAS, presented the results of the SOURCEPYME 2007 SURVEY directed to users of free sw. After the completion of the same by about 150 Valencian companies, the most relevant conclusions were:
– 86% of companies know about Free Software and a large majority of them use it more than 2 years ago.
– 2/3 parties recognize that the use of Free Software would reduce piracy and, in the same proportion, recognize that the migration of applications to Free Software does NOT imply any traumatic change in companies.
– 70% of the companies surveyed affirm that the use of Free Software would facilitate the access to ICT of SMEs.
– Finally, the majority of companies surveyed recognize that applications based on Free Software meet their needs.
In the second part of the day, dedicated to show case studies of success at international, national and regional level, on open knowledge and companies, Adolfo Plasencia, Director of the UPTV Tecnópolis programHe showed some interviews of the main gurus of the new open knowledge economy such as Richard Stallman, who defined the 4 freedoms of free sw (0.run, study, copy, improve) and founded the Free Software Foundation (FSF) in the 80s, Tim O’Reilly editor and creator of the first commercial web site on the Internet as well as the web 2.0 concept, or Carlos Castro, creator of the worldwide pioneering initiative on the implementation of free sw in Extremeña society .
Next, Manuel Sarasa, General Director of OPENBRAVOHe showed the details of why his business management software (ERP) that has released the sources only 18 months ago, has 420,000 downloads in the Sorceforge forge, based on “weaving a network” of collaborators who develop sw collaboratively and all of them exploit a model that tends to move away from charging for use licenses and approaching a service charging model, saving marketing costs, and charging for consulting, adaptation, training, support, etc.
The following paper, by Sofía Bellés, Director General of Educational Technology Innovation of the Department of Education of the Generalitat Valenciana, showed the achievements in the last two years implementing the distribution of free sw LLIUREXin the Valencian education system, with rates of the order of 58% of 68,140 computers migrated from proprietary sw to free sw, such as the spectacular business opportunities for the ICT sector that are approaching in the near future, by the hand of the 500,000 students who they will begin to integrate into the productive fabric within a few months, so they should be able to continue using free sw after their formative stage at school and at home, now in companies making them more productive and competitive.
Daniel Sáez, intervened as a member of the MORFEO Community, a community of knowledge and collaboration around the model associated with open source software, focused on the development of platform software that allows to create ecosystems of companies that are able to provide services and develop around these platforms and thus Create your business Morfeo’s trajectory as a generating community of R&D projects has been impressive, with a balance of more than 16 Million euros in budget in projects encompassed within the community.
Dionisio Antón, Director of QUER SYSTEM , showed how a company in the ICT sector can make profitable the commitment to free sw and get its customers to pay for the service that apparently can be downloaded for free through the network.
Finally, Andrés Antón, Commercial Director of RESIMOL , showed how an SME of only 15 workers, can have the majority of the business sw that it uses daily, so that it is free, from operating systems ( Ubuntu ), office applications ( Openoffice ), warehouse management applications (PDA connected through a PHP application with the ERP), through the CRM ( SugarCRM ) for customer relationship management and document management system ( Alfresco ) to deposit the documentation in a repository according to the profiles of the suppliers or customers that must access it.
Sourcepyme is a project coordinated by AIMMEin cooperation with AIMPLAS , ITI and UPV , promoted by the Ministry of Industry, Commerce and Innovation of the Generalitat Valenciana through IMPIVA , which aims to encourage and facilitate the use of free software in SMEs with the aim of gaining technological capacity and reduce costs. This project coordinates, at the level of the Valencian Community, the development and adaptation of applications based on free software for use in companies, and intends to continue expanding and consolidate over time as an autonomous reference center where supply and demand converge. Free software in the Valencian Community.