What is Open Source Support?

Posted by: Ilan Sehayek, CTO, June 15th 2008

I responded to an industry open source survey yesterday and one of the questions was "Does your company use a support or dual-license business model?". I instinctively answered "support" and moved on.

In hindsight I wish I'd taken more time to answer because "Support" means different things to different vendors in the rapidly growing commercial open source industry.

This industry survey was missing a follow up question, "What is included in your company's support offering?"

Below are common offerings that you may see:

Product Support - this is the most basic form of support in which the vendor promises that their product will work in accordance with documentation. These subscriptions typically provide remedies and consequences if a product continues to fail in providing its promoted functionality.

Product Maintenance - this is typically provided with Product Support and entitles the customer to patches, fixes and upgrades as they are made available.

Production Support - this entitles customers to direct assistance from the vendor in the event that the software malfunctions during production and pre-production operations. Production Support is typically accompanied by terms that classify the severity of malfunctions and service level agreements by which the vendor is obligated to respond to an issue reported by the customer.

Technical Support - this entitles customers to request technical assistance in operating the software provided by the vendor. Technical Support is very tactical in nature and is typically defined by the amount of time it takes to provide this assistance. A typical technical support incident takes under 60 minutes to resolve. Larger efforts would either be covered through training or professional services.

Technical Account Management / Dedicated Support - usually entitles a customer to dedicated engineering support so that a vendor can prioritize development of new features on behalf of the customer or is proactive in providing ongoing support to a customer's project teams.

Some vendors offer a handful of these options and others provide the entire menu, allowing companies to choose a support plan based on the amount of support they need and the money they can spend.

When you ask an open source vendor if they offer support for their product their answer should be more than "yes".