Total revenue metrics for Plone

[Dylan Jay]

Just responded to this blog
http://www.brandinteractivism.com/2009/08/gartners-wcms-magic-quadrant-is-unfair-to-open-source.html

I've been thinking that community open source could perhaps do more to  
make itself comparable. For instance, Plone as a community is a very  
distributed and loose organisation but it is still an organisation. As  
a total organisation, including commercial integrators, it does make  
revenue. Consultancy, support, hosting etc. If Plone were a single  
company that would all be tracked and reported on so that those who  
like such things to analyse (for better or for worse) could do so.

But is it possible, even without Plone being one company?

For instance could an independent auditor collect all "plone revenue"  
figures from all registered integrators for the purposes of created an  
amalgamated figure?

How would work done with an organisation such as a university be valued?

Instead is it possible to estimate from stats we currently have?

Are there any stats about Plone's success that are really meaningful?


---
Dylan Jay, Plone Solutions Manager
www.pretaweb.com
tel:[phone]
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skype:dylan_jay


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[Karl Horak]

Dylan,

I've been looking for the silver bullet that will slay the werewolf of web statistics for several years, both for Plone and in my day-job.  Alas, I don't have a simple mechanism for pulling the answers you want (and the community needs) out of the aether.  I've gone on at some length over at PloneMetrics this morning.  

Perhaps the best thing to do is have a Marketing Monday.  Divvy up Plone.net and send individual contact e-mails out with a questionnaire.  When/if the results roll in, manually accumulate them.  Obviously, when it comes to financial matters of Plone companies, a great deal of confidentiality will be required.  

Maybe a marketing sprint would be worthwhile.  Anyone care to visit ABQ this season?  

Karl

Dylan Jay wrote:

...But is it possible, even without Plone being one company?

For instance could an independent auditor collect all "plone revenue"  
figures from all registered integrators for the purposes of created an  
amalgamated figure?

How would work done with an organisation such as a university be valued?

Instead is it possible to estimate from stats we currently have?

Are there any stats about Plone's success that are really meaningful?

Dylan Jay, Plone Solutions Manager

[Dylan Jay]

On 25/08/2009, at 10:25 AM, Karl Horak wrote:

>
> Dylan,
>
> I've been looking for the silver bullet that will slay the werewolf  
> of web
> statistics for several years, both for Plone and in my day-job.  
> Alas, I
> don't have a simple mechanism for pulling the answers you want (and  
> the
> community needs) out of the aether.  I've gone on at some length  
> over at
> http://plonemetrics.blogspot.com/2009/08/meaningful-stats.html 
> PloneMetrics
> this morning.
>
> Perhaps the best thing to do is have a Marketing Monday.  Divvy up  
> Plone.net
> and send individual contact e-mails out with a questionnaire.  When/
> if the
> results roll in, manually accumulate them.  Obviously, when it comes  
> to
> financial matters of Plone companies, a great deal of  
> confidentiality will
> be required.

Thanks. I read your blog post with interest.

Gathering up total plone revenue would be  interesting but also a lot  
of effort. It also doesn't count all the work done by resource  
internal to a company which I suspect is substantial.

Perhaps effort is better put into call back home type functionality in  
plone (which has been discussed before) to gather better install base  
stats. It would be very interesting to gather user counts on as many  
plone sites as possible, and times them by the average sharepoint per  
user license fee and give plone a sharepoint equivalent revenue  
figure. Someone is probably going to tell me that such suspect  
statistics will do the reputation of Plone more harm than good but it  
doesn't sound worse than the top 3% of open source projects figure we  
use a lot which is pretty meaningless.
I'm just trying to come at this from the point of view of how business  
decision makers judge the worth of Plone if they aren;t in front of a  
seller such as us. Plone is a 300M USD or 600M USD etc business  
equivalent is simple enough to understand.



>
> Maybe a marketing sprint would be worthwhile.  Anyone care to visit  
> ABQ this
> season?

I'm pretty sure there will be one at the Plone conference but I have  
yet to hear any annoucement.

>
> Karl
>
>
> Dylan Jay wrote:
>>
>> ...But is it possible, even without Plone being one company?
>>
>> For instance could an independent auditor collect all "plone revenue"
>> figures from all registered integrators for the purposes of created  
>> an
>> amalgamated figure?
>>
>> How would work done with an organisation such as a university be  
>> valued?
>>
>> Instead is it possible to estimate from stats we currently have?
>>
>> Are there any stats about Plone's success that are really meaningful?
>>
>> Dylan Jay, Plone Solutions Manager
>>
>
> --
> View this message in context: http://n2.nabble.com/Total-revenue-metrics-for-Plone-tp3496960p3507000.html
> Sent from the Evangelism mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>
> _______________________________________________
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[Wouter Vanden Hove-2]

Dylan Jay wrote:

> For instance could an independent auditor collect all "plone revenue"
> figures from all registered integrators for the purposes of created an
> amalgamated figure?


Simplistically said revenue equals the following equation:
revenue = cost per license x number of licenses sold  +  \
    cost per development/customisation hour x number of hours paid by client


For an open source software: cost per license = 0

How then can we make up for this "lost revenue"
and achieve the same results for clients?

 - by being more expensive developers and/or
 - by needing more hours for development/customisation (to reach the same)

But do we actually need to make up this "lost revenue"?

IMHO, we should abandon this kind of reasoning.
The logic Gartner uses is flawed and turns one of the greats aspect of open
source software into a negative one. And proprietaty companies love that.

If we agree the "revenue" for the software-company is "cost" for the clients
then "lost revenue" by using open source, means "less cost". Clients usually
love that. Open Source marketing initiatives should focus on that.


> How would work done with an organisation such as a university be valued?
I think number of involved FTE's


--
Greets,
WouterVH


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