While the number of open source players continues to grow, there remains a niche for companies to act as business matchmakers, says Obsidian director Anton de Wet.
Speaking at the Cape IT Initiative's (CITI) open source event on Thursday, De Wet called these matchmaking companies beekeepers.
These "beekeepers" will perform an increasingly important role as business looks for open source alternatives, said De Wet. Beekeepers are open source businesses that are able to match what software makers produce with what the business world needs.
Continues Below↓"It clear that the open source movement has gone far beyond the web page development stage, which is set to revolutionise communication," he said.
De Wet also said that open protocols were needed for the industry to fully exploit open source software as a service.
By way of example, De Wet said: "We are going to reach a stage where open source software will translate voice into a users language. So if someone was speaking English to a Spanish-speaking client, the software will do the voice translation to
Spanish".
