Large VARs add open source to armoury

Interactive Ideas claims open source is finally being taken seriously in the channel after posting a 45 per cent sales leap

Mike Trup: In the last year we have seen some of the big resellers turn around and say ‘we have to offer our clients an open source alternative’

The growing acceptance of open-source software has forced some of the UK’s largest VARs to break from a proprietary-only strategy for the first time.

That is according to open-source distributor Interactive Ideas, which today announced a 45 per cent surge in annual revenues to £23.7m.

Interactive Ideas draws the bulk of its revenues from Linux operating system duo Red Hat and Novell, back-up vendor Acronis and network management specialist SolarWinds.

Interactive Ideas managing director Mike Trup said: “All are growing strongly and all represent lower-cost alternatives to the incumbent solutions.”

Trup claimed the downturn had transformed end users’ attitude to open source, forcing sceptical resellers to add it to their armoury.

“All IT managers are under pressure to get more from less,” he said.

“In the last year we have seen some of the big resellers turn around and say ‘we have to offer our clients an open source alternative’, especially if it is the government.”

He predicted open source database software from the likes of Ingres and EnterpriseDB would take off this year.

“While Red Hat and Novell have been in mission-critical areas for a long time, the sense now is that it makes sense to look at a complete open-source stack,” said Trup. “People are looking at things like EnterpriseDB on Red Hat on JBoss.”

Interactive Ideas has increased its headcount by about a quarter to just under 50 over the past year. Trup said the firm would immediately take on another four sales heads.