Vyatta as the next Google

Here in Silicon Valley everyone is looking for the next Google... In the VC world, it's almost a mantra. Still, we're not naive enough to think that we are really going to see the same revenues or market domination as Google, but I do think that we do have a few things in common. And, the title caught your attention, right? :-)

Google entered the search market when other believed that the market was already mature. When Google first came out, Yahoo!, Altavista, AskJeeves, and many others had been in the market for years. But, Google did not merely copy the companies in the search market, they invented a new market with new services. Similarly, we realize that at Vyatta we're entering a mature networking market and need to offer new and innovative services.

Google has a strategy of giving away their search product for free as a way of giving prospects an opportunity to work with their services. This has worked well and built a nice avenue for customers to find their advertising services. Likewise, we are giving away our OFR product with the thought that those that want a company to back the product with service and support will buy from us. If people want to use the OFR for free and never buy service and support from us, we applaud that as well - we want folks to be part of a user driven open source community rather than being handed products from a closed source vendor.

Google has continued to innovate and add customer driven services to their platform. Being an open source company, we need to foster this same innovative spirit. The growth of our community has been very encouraging and we need to keep the momentum building.

So, are we the next Google? Probably not, but I am generally an optimist. If we can emulate their ability to enter a mature market, build our community using our free products, provide exceptional service and support to those that desire them and innovate on services then we may have a chance for exciting growth.... Never say never :)