IBM Expands Paid Open Source Strategy

IBM is making a bid on professional open source with the acquisition of privately-held Gluecode, officials announced Tuesday.

Financial and operational details of the merger were not announced at press time.

Gluecode’s operations will be assimilated into IBM’s software group and expand the company’s WebSphere application integration middleware product line.

Officials plan to offer customers and business partners Gluecode’s application server software and sell software and support services on top of the offering, as well as let customers upgrade to IBM WebSphere products.

”With the Gluecode acquisition, IBM enables customers and Business Partners to tap the low cost of entry of open source technology to quickly develop and deploy applications, and migrate to WebSphere software as business needs expand,” Robert LeBlanc, IBM software group general manager of application and integration middleware, said in a statement.

The Gluecode software stack is comprised of three Apache Software Foundation (ASF) projects: Geronimo, an application server; Pluto, a portal framework; and Derby database.

The company uses a professional open source model to garner revenues and fund operations. After customers download the free software, Gluecode provides a subscription-based premium service for technical support issues and software updates.

The deal highlights an increasingly popular business model in a world where more and more companies are looking at the cost benefits of open source software but need the support that a paying customer would get in order to trouble shoot technical problems.

This article was first published on internetnews.com. To read the full article, click here.

RELATED NEWS AND ANALYSIS

• Ethics and Artificial Intelligence: Driving Greater Equality

  FEATURE |  By James Maguire,
  December 16, 2020

• AI vs. Machine Learning vs. Deep Learning

  FEATURE |  By Cynthia Harvey,
  December 11, 2020

• Huawei’s AI Update: Things Are Moving Faster Than We Think

  FEATURE |  By Rob Enderle,
  December 04, 2020

• Keeping Machine Learning Algorithms Honest in the ‘Ethics-First’ Era

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Guest Author,
  November 18, 2020

• Key Trends in Chatbots and RPA

  FEATURE |  By Guest Author,
  November 10, 2020

• Top 10 AIOps Companies

  FEATURE |  By Samuel Greengard,
  November 05, 2020

• What is Text Analysis?

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Guest Author,
  November 02, 2020

• How Intel’s Work With Autonomous Cars Could Redefine General Purpose AI

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Rob Enderle,
  October 29, 2020

• Dell Technologies World: Weaving Together Human And Machine Interaction For AI And Robotics

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Rob Enderle,
  October 23, 2020

• The Super Moderator, or How IBM Project Debater Could Save Social Media

  FEATURE |  By Rob Enderle,
  October 16, 2020

• Top 10 Chatbot Platforms

  FEATURE |  By Cynthia Harvey,
  October 07, 2020

• Finding a Career Path in AI

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Guest Author,
  October 05, 2020

• CIOs Discuss the Promise of AI and Data Science

  FEATURE |  By Guest Author,
  September 25, 2020

• Microsoft Is Building An AI Product That Could Predict The Future

  FEATURE |  By Rob Enderle,
  September 25, 2020

• Top 10 Machine Learning Companies 2021

  FEATURE |  By Cynthia Harvey,
  September 22, 2020

• NVIDIA and ARM: Massively Changing The AI Landscape

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Rob Enderle,
  September 18, 2020

• Continuous Intelligence: Expert Discussion [Video and Podcast]

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By James Maguire,
  September 14, 2020

• Artificial Intelligence: Governance and Ethics [Video]

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By James Maguire,
  September 13, 2020

• IBM Watson At The US Open: Showcasing The Power Of A Mature Enterprise-Class AI

  FEATURE |  By Rob Enderle,
  September 11, 2020

• Artificial Intelligence: Perception vs. Reality

  FEATURE |  By James Maguire,
  September 09, 2020