Srivibhavan Balaram, GM & MD at Vocera Communications India, has spent over 25 years in the software Industry building servers, switches and storage systems at HP, Novell, Business Objects and AT&T Bell Labs. He was the Founder & CEO of CloudByte, a storage company with a vision to deliver guaranteed quality of Service in shared (as in cloud) storage.

Open Source technology is often leveraged to build the technology backbone faster and cheaper. Since this has an impact on speed-to-market and burn-rate, these advantages are very important for Startups. However, understanding the terrain and how to play in it is key. Bring your thoughts and questions to the session so we can better understand how open source can be leveraged to build Startups.

“Leveraging Open Source To Build Startups” conveyed several important messages to Startups considering Open Source.

1) Contribute before you consume, because Open Source is a community-driven model and being part of the family helps you understand its future direction, a detail which could be important to your Startup

2) Contributing to the Open Source pool gives companies, especially Startups, extra credibility with customers

3) Using Open Source allows you to narrow down and focus on your key challenges, the net result being that Startups gain time and a good quality crowd-tested foundation

4) When used correctly, investors would regard Open Source-usage as a means to reduce technology and execution risk

5) Startups should also consider employing continuous due diligence to ensure that engineering staff follow the intended fit of Open Source within the business.

6) Since it has strong licensing clauses, founders should use Open Source with care – and see if it matches their vision of building the company.