OpenSourceArmenia

Hi,

Doing some business analysis might be a good idea, I don't know if there is much of a market here. It may be like a Lotus Notes dealer trying to sell a complex software package w/ document handling etc. to companies which are well served by a single filing cabinet. Is the business community ready here? Even if it is and if the infrastructure isn't ready then you may be to early to market and find that you can't pay your bills/salaries. Waiting for massive infrastructure changes may be tough. Of course I could be totally wrong as I'm not familiar with all the options and don't know much about the reliability of the phone system.

This does not mean that this is a bad idea, but it may be a bit premature for this particular market (but what do I know). This may be a very good idea in America, Russia, Europe, or parts of Southeast Asia where the market is much larger and the infrastructure is much more reliable. If you are really interested in pursuing this you should do some market analysis, build a feature list, and maybe some sort of initial prototype and contact people locally or abroad. If you are thinking of looking abroad then you can take advantage of one of Armenia's big business advantages: skilled cheap labour. If you have a good idea and some working code it would be in the interest of a company almost anywhere in the world to have you continue building the product you know so well instead of paying more for someone who knows less.

If you are interested in doing this as an Open Source project (which naturally I think is a good idea .. but I'm biased) you should check out what OSS options already exist. Becoming an expert on one of these platforms and offering your cheap skilled labour to companies who are deploying it could turn into a tidy paycheck.

No matter what it is an interesting idea and you should definitely investigate it if it is your area of interest.

In general I think it would be great if the developers here would talk to the MBA's or other business people as the cross-pollination of ideas and skills might build some solid businesses.

• Tristan