Walking The Open Source Way

Dirk-Peter van Leeuwen, Senior Vice President and General ManagerRed Hat, APJ and Neeraj Bhatia, Director - Partner, Alliances & Commercial Sales at Red Hat India talk about how organizations in India are embracing open-source solutions to thrive in the digital economy, the benefits of open source software vis-a-vis proprietary software and how Red Hat is hand-holding its customers in their cloud and digital journey. Excerpts:

- Soma Tah

A lot of customers are looking to work with you because you are offering open source products. What value do you bring to the table vis-a-vis the other providers in the market?

Dirk-Peter van Leeuwen: Customers no longer want to pay for a product. They want to pay for the experience, for service, and for simpler access to technology. That’s what our business model has been. We give our customers access to the latest open source technology and that is worth the price they pay for. It’s a big world of open source solutions out there and picking the right one out of the many choices you have is extremely important. They also need to consider the future of the solution, the support, the compatibility and the portability. This is not something you can do without expertise and that is exactly our domain. So having the combination of our understanding about all the solutions and technologies along with the business model we offer, I believe we are in a very unique position and honestly, with very little competition.

How do you see the competition with proprietary vendors?