Euros try multi-product open source support

Credativ, a 10-year old open source support company launched by Postgres contributor Michael Meskes, is bringing its act to America. The Open Source Support Center aims to solve your open source problems no matter in what program the problem lies, president Joe Conway told ZDNet.

"The concept of the support center is we'll take on support for any open source software, in a holistic way. We're not just supporting Postgres or Debian or RedHat. We give the customer some place to call to get their problem solved."

Conway's description gave me a distinct feeling of deja vu. A bit of Googling found my old story on Covalent, which also tried multi-product support in the middle of this decade. Covalent was eventually bought by SpringSource, now part of VMWare.

One difference might be that Covalent specialized in Apache products, while Credativ will work with any product. Another difference is that Credativ has 10 years' experience making its business model work. " They've more than doubled their staff in Europe over the last two years," Conway said of his strong European arm.

The U.S. operatives of Credativ, under the trademark The Open Source Support Center, will be just east of  San Diego in the suburb of El Cajon.

So can Credativ succeed where others have failed? Will companies buy open source support that is not tied to a specific product?