Making a Business from Collaboration

This integrator uses open source solutions to deliver unique products to unusual customers, building a collaborative business by peeling an onion in reverse, serving customers that others had abandoned.

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Managing Editor [January 12, 2006]

So you see, eating at the sushi bar at ISPCON was worthwhile. Sushi is a good, quick, healthy meal while you're on the road and still have work to do after dinner.

But we didn't expect to get some work done during dinner. It turned out we were seated between an IBM executive who didn't want to talk about what he was doing and David Pikal, vice president of sales and marketing at Walnut Creek, Calif.-based Tachometry, who was eager to talk about business (and hockey).

We explained to Pikal that part of ISP-Planet's mission for 2006 is to explore how ISPs can become more like VARs (the other key part is to become a better advocate for independent ISPs). So we arranged for an interview later in 2005 with Pikal and with Tom Evans, Tachometry's CEO and president. Pikal promised we'd learn about a company doing something unique. We get this promise all the time, but in this case, it was the truth.

Your open source strategy
Evans says that doing something unusual is both an advantage and a disadvantage. "We do face an education hurdle. You can get a blank stare when you ask, 'what is your open source strategy.' But once you work through the education, it leads to real problem solving."

Evans feels that there's a real opportunity for Tachometry in the gap between the open source community and business customers. "We talk to business customers about their business needs, not about technology. Then we bring to the open source community the business requirements. Open source projects are often driven by tech people, not business people."

Demand for open source will blossom in the near future, Evans predicts. "Demand will be unleashed. We think of unleashing demand as like digging a hole in a dyke. The hole doesn't have to be big to unleash a flood."

The demand trigger could come from any of several sources, one of which is ISPs. "We went to ISPCON because we see much open source being used in the ISP space already, and we expect to see a demand trigger from the ISP industry."

Pikal adds that he sees a clear opportunity for Tachometry to produce products for small ISPs. "We care about the small players because we know that they are spending more money than they have to. They need to put something in place that works, and all too often that means they use the short term solution. Open source allows companies to break this cycle with alternatives that are cheaper, and to avoid the forced upgrade path and the integration costs of upgrades."

Building the onion
Everything they're saying makes sense, but we would like a concrete example of success. Evens tells us the company has been successful in several verticals, including education and a business type he calls "real estate and home inspection."

When he mentions education, we ask whether Tachometry does e-rate. "We looked at doing e-rate ourselves, but did not want to be an ISP," replies Evans. "Schools are tech starved not because they don't know what they need and want, but because funding is so difficult and complicated, hindered by multiple layers of bureaucracy."

The company's educational software is a tool for the classroom called CCP Homeroom.

Evans is clearly enthusiastic about doing good while doing good business. "The business case for this is that the collaboration between teachers, students, and parents that exists particularly in grade school is transformed between about fifth grade and the following grades, sixth, seventh, and eighth. Students begin to become more accountable for classwork while also needing to move around more. They now have multiple teachers."

The role of parents changes too. "Parents are getting a bit more detached from the homework cycle."

Tachometry saw a role for technology, but the company needed to avoid overwhelming the users. "We needed to dig deeper before slinging software."

The company needed to speak the teachers' language and design software according to work flow processes already in place. "Teachers were already storing homework in file cabinets by grade level, subject matter, and date. The curriculum repeats each year, so that translates into reusable data. We talked with educators and parents. The parents need to be able to do it from work. The kids get home while their parents are still at the office. It therefore required the internet."

The company tested its software. "We went through prototypes. We had one teacher who was an educator and a technician, and he was instrumental in helping us translate the language of the education properly into technology. The school system is geared to certain performance requirements. Administrators are keeping track of the quality and effectiveness of the curriculum."

The initial metaphor was exquisitely simple. "We started with a manila folder metaphor. We wanted to effectively distribute homework to students and parents, to allow them to just look up what they needed by grade level and subject matter. From the point of view of the user, it's straightforward. The complexity burden falls on the architect. We needed to allow a simple user interface, but accommodate extensibility on the back end. Soon we were involved in curriculum development and working with publishers, and the software evolved into our Curriculum Collaboration Platform. It's like peeling an onion in reverse. Collaboration can involve more and more parties as you invite them to participate."

The open source revolution
Tachometry's open source strategy for this project was in place from day one. "We looked at open source, the supply side, and started out by laying out the architecture. We identified components and used internal and contract resources to put together those pieces. Our hidden resource is all those developers already writing open source software.

CCP Homeroom is not, however, open source. Evans says that about 90 percent of the components are open source, and about 10 percent are Tachometry's proprietary integration code. He says that schools do not pay for the software. "Schools are not paying license fees. They are paying for an integration service, generally on a per school basis."

"The teacher doesn't know and doesn't care whether it's open source. The teacher just wants it to work," explains Pikal. "The IT people in the school do care. They use us because they know we will find the best of breed components for them."

Evans emphasizes that owning part of the project isn't a bad thing. "The 10 percent we own doesn't represent us holding the secret sauce. It's us having skin in the game with the support contracts."

It's like the Moodle project, which is a free and open source curriculum management system, but which has a commercial services arm, moodle.com. This is true of many other open source projects, such as Asterisk, with its commercial arm, Digium, and sendmail.org with sendmail.com.

"This is the revolution," concludes Evans. "It enables organizations that have always been second tier technology consumers to move into the first class. It enables them to envision what their business should be like, and get custom tailored technology at a fraction of what it cost in the past. The SMB would never think, in the past, it could write its own software to automate its business processes. The best it would hope for is to buy an off the shelf tool and adapt the business to meet the needs of that tool. Open source integration allows smaller organizations to build custom solutions at a fraction of the cost."

The secret is an open secret. "We build from pieces that are already there," says Evans.

"We don't try to create a killer app, host it, and sell it," says Pikal. "Our business plan is to understand our clients' needs and convert them into a business plan."

— End