A Bold Move To Open Source Your Core Business

The part of my job I enjoy the most is meeting interesting people and companies from all over the world. One such company is Allevo in Romania. They have decided to open source their core business.

A bold move, to shift the business model and competition from a pure commodity space to a more diversified services space. I’m following their progress in this endeavor – initially surprising, their analysis and reasoning is I think valid and innovative.

Who is Allevo and what do they do? They are a software vendor and consultancy in financial transactions and payment processing, focusing on banks, micro-finance institutions and corporate treasury departments. An important part of their business is related to connecting the back-office payment related systems of their clients to SWIFT. As such, they are a SWIFT partner in Romania and some Eastern Europe countries. The reason I noticed them  is because their 30-ish strong team has a strong innovation culture, and have been in touch at several occasions with Innotribe.  They participate to and love the Innotribe events, to the point of adopting some of our tools and techniques themselves.