Matt Asay suggests in this Infoworld post that open source service vendors should pick their battles, and focus on a particular set of open source projects/packages.

We couldn’t agree more. (And Matt mentions us as one of the successful companies doing so!)

Of course, this is just fundamental business strategy that applies to companies of all types — open source or not. “Differentiate or die” applies to everyone in the marketplace.

How does this drive our business strategy?

1. Select the best in class open source projects in the domain areas in which we have experience.

2. Invest a tremendous amount of energy in deeply understanding the selected technologies, and in applying them to solve real world business problems. This includes partnering closely with the open source technology vendors and projects, and contributing to their communities in numerous ways.

3. Find voids in the marketplace and transform our open source technology investments into market leading, clearly differentiated services and solutions.

4. Deliver tangible value to our customers using our differentiated expertise.

5. Wash, rinse, and repeat.