INDIA: THE EMERGING GLOBAL PRODUCT SOFTWARE DESTINATION Date:   Thursday , March 06, 2014 Headquartered in East. Davie Street. Raleigh, NC, Red Hat (NYSE:RHT) is a provider of Open Source software solutions, using a community-powered approach to reliable and high-performing cloud, Linux, middleware, storage and virtualization technologies. The company currently has a market cap of $11.36 billion. There is competition in the software developing community between Open Source and Closed Source where IT, which is predominantly Closed Source, is confined as a career option while Open Source has an added responsibility for aspirants to play the role of a continuous evangelist. The cost effectiveness and flexibility of the revolutionary programming methodology at a macro level in India needs implementation especially in major domains. However, this can only be realized through manpower with in depth knowledge of Open Source coding. Hence, industry specialists like us strive to provide open source methodologies to the nascent programming community in India. This can become a reality as studies conducted by bodies such as the Evans Data Corporation reveal that India will overtake U.S. on number of developers by 2017 as per latest Global Developer Population and Demographic Study. The sporadic traction is estimated to grow about 90 percent in India in comparison to 25 percent in the U.S. and Indians are on the road of emancipation from the traditional Closed Source developing practices. The whole concept of Open Source is evident by the phenomenal growth of Indian developers owing to the fact that the average age of India is less than 30 years. 50 percent of the population is less than 30 years of age, and a portion of this includes developers who have witnessed the growth of Open Source environment through portals such as Google, Facebook, eBay, Yahoo! and Twitter over the years. Red Hat is playing a percentage of the total involvement of Open Source evangelism in India. We had the opportunity to engage with aspiring developers of the movement through conferences like JUDCon (JBoss Users and Developers Conference). We, as an organization, have the whole concept of Open Source in our DNA. Further, events, seminars and conferences play a major role in catalyzing the Indian community in striving to adopt this revolutionary software innovative practice. Ahead of the Curve The universal access to a product\'s architecture through free license makes the whole development model unique. The uniqueness is elaborate for universal redistribution of the architecture along with changes or improvements by anyone. This model relates to India as it provides aspiring developers a publishing platform to compete at the same level as anyone who is well funded by a Corporation. Open Source vendors with cost effective products will present tough competition to traditional closed sourced vendors who sell their products 10 times the price for only 10 percent of features. This gives the chance for Indian customers to avail the latest software and its features at a considerable cheaper rate. Proprietary software developers like Oracle and IBM are greatly intimidated by the Open Source movement because they would have to compete with not just one Open Source Enterprise but with the broader global Open Source Community. The movement has infiltrated into critical mission deployments of not just banks but healthcare, stock exchanges and various other verticals which are pillars of the global economy. Consequently, conformity would ultimately allow the Indian ecosystem to follow suit. The infiltration is subtle without any aggressive marketing through traditional methods where even people who are not aware of its implementation are guaranteed to have used it online like Red Hat in many popular services. Edge of Future Indian Open Source Developers Indians are potential hires too because apart from having exemplary coding skills, they also have the added advantage of good communication skills in English and sound ethics of hard work. The Asian subcontinent houses programmers, who are more open minded in verbalizing their opinions and challenge authority. In contrast, eastern Europeans hardly check on what is being put on the table as inadequacies arise and there is no mutual positive interaction based on the coding practice. There is an expected explosion of adoption of our methodology in India; most traffic for the Open Source movement comes from Bangalore as it is the country\'s IT hub. Among the top 10 cities in the world, four are from India which clearly state that a share of the pie for the Closed Source market is going to get smaller as the Indian market is gradually adopting the alternative developing concept. However, Indians have to collaborate and take things to the next level to see a unique, cost-effective and efficient software technology being implemented in the economy. (As told to Mewanshwa Kharshiing)