Is delivering IT operations management as “software as a service (SaaS)” a viable option?

I think it’s a question worth contemplating for anyone involved in IT Ops. Yes cloud hysteria is everywhere, and yes a lot of what’s going on is vendors rephrasing the same products with the latest buzzwords. Nonetheless, there are also signs of a major shift, that can potentially have a major impact on IT Operations Management.

There is no doubt that IT Ops will be drastically different going forward when organizations start using more and more “cloud” services but this is not the focus of this post. What I wanted to hash out is whether SaaS is a viable model for delivering IT management itself.  And even going further, whether it will become the dominant model in not so distant future.

Let’s start with a look at the current state of IT Operations Management first. Is there actually a problem that needsa solution? I’m pretty sure we all agree that there is indeed a problem.

Most organizations are stuck in the muck

Currently implementing just the base solutions take so much time and effort that only few organizations have the means and the will to proceed any further. There has been little innovation in the field and even the ideas and technologies that have been around for many years don’t get applied.

For example, let’s think of what it takes to implement and maintain an event management solution in a large network.IBM’s Netcool suite is widely accepted as the defacto standard product for event management and has a very large user base. Yet the solution has many moving parts:

• Probes
• Tiered Object Servers for aggregation, presentation, etc.
• Bi-directional gateways for replication,
• Webtop, TIP, etc. to provide web based UI
• Reporter and Oracle for reporting
• …

At least a dozen application processes. Just installing the right versions of the included software, avoiding compatibility issue and integrating the components is a major undertaking, let alone mastering how to develop solutions using them. This is just to consolidate events in a single repository, nothing advanced at all.

As a result of this complexity, highly skilled resources get bogged down implementing & maintaining the base solution, struggling to find the bandwidth to implement features/techniques that would truly add value: enrichment, automation, correlation, visualization, service management etc.

It is also very costly and difficult to build sophisticated solutions on top of such complicated and hard to maintain foundation. Hence organizations find it hard to show ROI, and justify any further investment. Solutions at best stagnate where they are, performing the bare minimum, and at worst they degrade in time to become eventually unusable.

So how may SaaS help ?

SaaS is not a magic bullet. If someone took the same product suites and attempted to provide as a service they would have little to no chance to succeed. The dominant products from Big 4+ vendors are quite old and not designed for the “cloud”. But a solution that is designed from ground up with new constraints and opportunities of introduced by cloud and other modern technologies may have a significant impact.

What if event management was available as a SaaS offering? An event management solution that has high availability, no scalability limitations, modern web based UI with impressive visualization capabilities, correlation using complex event processing techniques, workflow, integrated reporting etc. ? Even more, what if they also offered a development platform for others to build solutions as well, similar to SalesForces’s Force.com? Would it not change the entire landscape?

Such an offering can potentially solve majority of the problems, Ops organizations currently struggle with (the muck), freeing up their resources to move up the chain and tackle more value add projects. It would also potentially provide substanstial savings, making it quite attractive to business.

SaaS as a model has moved to mainstream. It is no longer necessary to explain to people what it is, why and how it provides value. Although it may not have been embraced by everyone in the enterprise world, there are signs that it may even becoming the preferred approach for many organizations.

And SaaS offerings have come to IT management as well. Service-now.com ITSM service is a stellar example of the power and potential of SaaS in IT management. It has already changed the ITSM landscape, forcing established players to scramble to offer their own solutions as SaaS.There are also already number of SaaS offerings in the market typically targeting SMBs. Can an event management solution for the large enterprises be far behind?

No doubt there are obstacles, both technical and organizational, that may hinder adoption of SaaS in IT Operations. Most obvious ones seem to be security concerns and integration, but are these show stoppers or just issues that need to be worked out? These concerns are valid for any application and although they are source of concern, they do not seem to hinder adoption of SaaS in other areas. Is there something that makes IT Operations Management so unique that it can be immune to the SaaS tidal wave?

One thing is for certain that if SaaS gains traction in IT Ops, our lives will never be the same! I think it is time to assess what the implications of SaaS may be and figure out what we need to do to surf the wave rather than getting swept by it.

What do you think? I would love to hear what your thoughts and compare notes…

In the post Tarus says:
“I’m often surprised by the success of open core software, especially in the US. To me it is a bit irrational. Why give up per-node priced proprietary software with the attendant vendor lock-in for cheaper per-node priced proprietary software with vendor lock-in, even if there is an open component? ”

Good question. Why indeed?

Borrowing from Tarus’s food analogy, let’s analyze different options available to people in the IT management field.

(Big 4) proprietary management software vendors are like expensive restaurants. They use loads of resources to convince people that they have a great, luxurious restaurant with exquisite food. They promise that they use the best ingredients, but don’t let you in the kitchen or tell you what the ingredients are. There is no menu with the prices; you have to pay upfront for the meal, will likely have to pay more later and there are no refunds. You may even be asked to sign a paper that says you won’t tell bad things about them to others.

In short, you take a big risk as you have no idea what is in what you’re eating but hey,  most people eat in these places, so how bad can it be?

Smaller proprietary vendors are like more economical restaurants. They are similar to expensive restaurants described above, but more accessible and attentive to your needs since they are smaller. They often (not always) do have a menu and lower prices. As the costs are lower, it is less of a financial risk, but you may instead be worried about their survival or associate cheap with low quality.

Open source projects are like communal cookouts. People invite you to come cook and eat with them. You can not only see the “kitchen” but also get in it and cook yourself. If you’re not a good cook or into cooking, no worries. You can still help out other ways: wash the dishes, clean up etc. Recipes are not secret, but may not be written down clearly either. Nonetheless, you can observe others cook, ask questions (nicely), and learn the recipes.
You don’t have to contribute but no one likes a free loader

Open source services vendors (like OpenNMS group) are cookout organizers. They typically volunteer to do most of the work, organize the cookout, publicize it, help people join in the action etc. They may also offer services for a fee. If you just want to eat, don’t have time, don’t really like cooking yourself, don’t want to bring your own silverware, or don’t like cleaning up, you can pay them to these things for you.

Open core vendors are restaurants that also organize cookouts. Like the open source services vendors, they organize and participate in the cookouts, and do a lot of the heavy lifting. Their cookouts are often more polished as they typically have (human and material) resources dedicated to make the cookouts success.
For them, cookouts are a way to showcase some of their dishes and cultivate a community familiar with their offerings. If some people prefer to have a sit down dinner or eat some of the dishes like “Broiled lobster with crab stuffing, vegetable, rice and mango salsa” that may not be available in the cookouts, they can always go to the restaurant and have a more traditional dining experience.

I may have pushed the analogy little too far, but it does make sense to me

So going back to Tarus’us question: Why do people choose open core solutions?

In my experience, most people don’t care whether the software is open source or open core or even proprietary. I can anticipate that Tarus may not agree with this statement. In contrast to Tarus, majority of the people I meet in IT management field are quite far from the open source world. As a result, I have a different experience.

People I meet often prefer eating in a restaurant, have good service, and willing to pay a fair price for it.  They don’t necessarily care whether they are paying for the meal or the waiters time. Having tried the free dishes and seen the ingredients and how the food is cooked; they have a certain level of trust. In short, they may feel they have the best of both worlds in open core companies.

The difference between the open core and open source models may be vast if you’re inside the open source world, but it’s not significant if you’re outside it. At the end, it comes down to how good the food tastes and how much does it cost to eat it (not just to buy it).

So far, the development is still done by iFountain employees. It should be no surprise to anyone, it wasn’t to us. Building a community is not easy, and takes time. Int he foreseeable future, we don’t expect a lot of external developer help (though it would be more than welcome) but we hope that we can establish a community that would guide where the project is heading. Most IT management folks (including this one) are not software developers, hence they may not be able to contribute code, but they are the subject matter experts, have first hand knowledge of what is needed in the field, hence can help the project immensely by guiding it with suggestions, feature requests, evangelizing etc.

The importance and value of the community for a project, even one supported by a commercial entity, is well explained and understood, so no need for me to repeat it here, needless to say, we will continue to build our community as the project takes shape. Sooner the better.

Netcoolusers is a lively mailing list based community and I started following it after I got my NCC back in 2000. There has been several discussions on the list about alternative web based interfaces that take advantage of web 2.0 technologies, etc. in the past. Several people had were interested in alternatives, stating that Webtop does not meet their requirements and some had to build in-house solutions themselves. I had not mentioned RapidInsight in the list at the time, even though it was such a solution since it was a commercial product.

Today, I’ve sent an email to netcoolusers mailing list announcing the RapidInsight open source project in the list, as it is directly relevant to the Netcool community.  Email had brief summary of the motivation for the project has come from, gave some highlights and included a link to the open source site, where interested parties can learn more about the project and take a look at the demo, download the software etc.

Next think I know, I was kicked out of the mailing list by the administrator (Jim Popovitch) for “unsolicited commercial solicitation”. You can take a look at the email and judge yourself. I certainly don’t see it as such. There is well established precedence where open source projects are mentioned freely including ones by the mailing list admins. I replied to Jim’s email explaining my point of view and left it at that. As much as Netcoolusers is a “community”, it is controlled by two people afaik, and there is no mechanism for due process. They make the rules and they are the judge and the jury.

Just sigh and move on… But it didn’t end there.

Others responded to my email, asking questions, naturally unaware that I can no longer respond to their emails, as there is no indication that I got kicked out.  Then came this email from another list admin, Jacob Steinberger.  Now hold on a minute! How about distorting the facts, and spreading misinformation. Is that not against the TOS of the mailing list? No? How about just plain decency?

Jacob writes: “While the email initially looks like a great thing to help the IBMuse Netcool GUI move in a direction that we have longed for the last half of his email and Blurry’s forwarding of his private email, shows that he (and iFountain) are out to make a buck.”

The last half of my email lists some of the RapidInsight features describing why it may be off interest to users, and asks for feedback and participation. That somehow suggests that I have evil intentions to “make a buck”? Oh no, iFountain will offer support for an open source project, run for the hills! bad, bad boy!

What I described to Blurry was that we plan to follow what’s referred as the JBoss model, as it is well established in the market. The product will be available with GPL v2 license and we will offer support and professional services. Having said that, bear in mind, I did NOT even mention any of this in my email to the list.

“Trying to sell something, whether it’s a product, consulting services or support, is strictly against the TOS of INUG. Any violators of this  policy will be removed from the list.”
There is nothing about a sale of product or services or support in my email to the list. Just the announcement of availability of RapidInsight as an open source project, that’s it. Announcement of an open source project is not a sales offer. The information on our intend to offer support was in a private email to Blurry as he asked about it directly. He chose to forward the information to the list when he found out I got banned from the list.

If that’s not bad enough, he did not stop there:
“Additionally, when a potential vendor’s website (iFoutain’s) states …

Thou shall have unrestricted access to the software. The software products will be available for download from the website without barriers. The community will be able to download and start using the software right away.
… yet requires you to create an account to download software, you have to sit back and go “humm”.”

My email to the list included one link to the ifountain.org site. From there, there is a link to download the mentioned software directly, no user accounts needed. And as I mentioned above, not only that, the source code and all its revisions (subversion) are also available directly from the site without any user restrictions, as it should be for any open source project. Why all the haste to judge?

Banning someone from the list based on rules and interpretation of those rules you’ve defined yourself is bad enough. Bad mouthing someone with false information when they can no longer respond is simply wrong. I’ve emailed Jacob before I posted this to give him a chance to correct himself but have not heard back from him.

With this acquisition, HP becomes an IT services behemoth, second largest only after IBM, and going forward, competition between IBM and HP is expected to be fierce, especially for large outsourcing deals. Obvious enough.

Yet this deal will likely to have massive impact on IT industry in general, not just outsourcing sector. Following IBM closely, as a strategy, HP has just created the second vertically integrated one stop IT shop for customers, providing everything from hardware to software to services. To appreciate the importance of this acquisition, I believe we need to consider this deal along with other acquisitions HP made recently (Mercury Interactive, Opsware, Peregrine,Trustgenix,Tower Software, SPI Dynamics, Bristol, etc.)

With these acquisitions along with already substantial Openview family, HP has a large portfolio of IT management software and now a large services organization that can deliver solutions using these tools. Naturally, HP services organization will still have to collaborate (when it has to) with 3rd parties to meet the requirements of their customers and not just push HP software, just as IBM professional services do, at least in theory.

In practice, experience suggest that it’ll become increasingly harder for other vendors to compete with internal HP products. Projects will have to justify why they need to use 3rd party products instead of internal ones and often the path of least resistance will be to use internal ones unless the customer explicitly dictates otherwise.

I think this is a major problem for any player that is not a one stop shop IT services provider. Software companies without substantial IT services organizations as well as independent IT services companies and systems integrators may find themselves cut off from significant portion of the market.

HP has a large and effective ecosystem. The mutually beneficial relationships HP has with its channel and integration partners has long played a significant role in HP’s success in the IT management market. With this move HP is no doubt jeopardizing its relationship with its ecosystem. It is not surprising however that HP thinks the risk is worth it, and the gains that will come from becoming a one stop shop will more than compensate for the loss of business it generates through the ecosystem.

Enterprises have long been working on reducing the number of suppliers and work with handful of preferred ones and the allure of one supplier that is responsible for everything seems to be too hard to resist for many.

The impact of loosing the channel may be greater than anticipated. Independent services organizations that partner with software companies acquired by IBM in the recent years have been finding themselves competing with their old partners and some of them have been making moves to alternatives. With HP adding a large services organizations, it also becomes a competitor for any services organization that may previously be a partner that sells and implements software products from HP’s or IBM’s portfolio of products.

BMC CEO was quick to move in to take advantage of the coming conflict and characterizes EDS acquisition as “declaration of war” by HP to its ecosystem. BMC also has been in an acquisition binge lately, acquiring BladeLogic, Emprisa Networks, RealOps and Proactivenet within the last year but BMC does not have a large professional services organization so it makes to position itself as the supplier of choice for professional services companies that will be alienated by the HP EDS acquisition. CA may also make a similar move having assembled a solid set of tools through acquisitions (Concord, Aprisma, etc.).

However, if HP’s strategy works out and HP software products starts to gain marketshare, it will not be surprising to see further consolidation in the market in the form or pairing between services organizations like Accenture and software companies like EMC, CA and BMC.

IT market is more and more looking like a Highlander movie. There can be only one a few.

This business model is only available to the companies that have the IP ownership of the open source code and not an option for more traditional open source projects where IP rights are distributed among many people and there is no single holder.

The model is a win win for both the vendors and the customers provided that the open source versions of the products are viable solutions that stand on their own and not just a ramp that requires every user to upgrade to the paid versions. Customers get access to open source software that solves their problems and vendors get well established benefits of having an open source community.

Not everyone agrees with the above statement.  There is a discussion that started with cote naming the open source IT management companies “little 4″ as contrast to the proprietary “big 4″ (IBM,CA,HP,BMC), and heated up again with QClusters exit from the openQRM project, hence little 4 becoming “Little 3″ .

openQRM was not really in the same category with the other 3 in little 4 anyway, and its exit provided an opportunity to reevaluate the open source IT management companies. John Willis took a more minimalist approach, coming up with his own name, calling Hyperic and Zenoss the “mighty two“, others suggested Groundwork and OpenNMS should round up the new Little 4.

John states that Hyperic and Zenoss has a better chance to succeed in the enterprise as they are software companies with significant funding and solid infrastructure. Not surprisingly opposing view comes primarily from the OpenNMS camp (read the comments in John’s post).  Tarus is not a fan of the hybrid model. He has criticized the hybrid model (and hence Hyperic and Zenoss), claiming it to be flawed, several times in his posts and comments. He advocates the OpenNMS group’s professional services only model as the superior (and even the only viable) model and states the success of the OpenNMS project as the evidence.

The hybrid model is not an option for OpenNMS group as (unlike hyperic/zenoss) they don’t own the IP rights for the code.  OpenNMS apparently has an active developer community that contributes code (surprisingly rare as more and more open source code is developed by few individuals or companies) and OpenNMS group has one or two people who may be dedicated to development rather than services.  OpenNMS folks seem to be content with their position, but I wonder why they don’t aspire for more.

Despite being compared to Hyperic and Zenoss, OpenNMS is different product. IMHO, it is the only true (open source) “network monitoring” product available. Hyperic/Zenoss/Nagios are primarily for server monitoring with some capabilities to monitor network devices, yet still not an option for serious network monitoring.  The paste of opennms development is slow which is understandable given the fact that there is no dedicated development team. Let’s imagine for a second that OpenNMS group also used the hybrid model and external funding to staff developers to work on opennms. Could they have developed a discovery engine that auto discovers the network layers (layer 2, 3, routing, etc.)? Visual maps to represent these layers? What is OpenNMS offered this additional functionality only in the paid version but all the functionality available now was still available. What if on top of what is currently available, foss version of opennms had gotten a package that can be installed and run on windows easily 3-4 years ago? Would having the option to pay for this additional functionality be a bad thing for the community? Would removing entry barriers such as extensive documentation and easy installation packages not help increase opennms user base?

Open source companies need to continue to innovate in the business model level to find ways to fund the projects that work both for the companies and the communities. Hybrid model is what has emerged so far as one viable option. It is not perfect but it offers an alternative that is in many ways better than pure professional services model. There does not have to be “one true way”.  The alternative may be getting squeezed out of the market. Tarus likes to compare OpenNMS with HP and the likes, suggesting that OpenNMS is a viable alternative to them. It is. but it is playing the catch up game instead of leading the field. The tougher competition for opennms (and other open source projects) is not coming from the large proprietary companies like HP and IBM, but from small, agile companies like solarwinds and adventnet with nicely packaged, easy to use products with often lower prices than the open source companies.

If open source companies cannot innovate both business model and technologically, they may get squeezed by these companies in the lower end of the market and the larger proprietary companies with massive sales forces in the higher end of the market.

The Turkish entrepreneurs now have a certified accountant to help them with the accounting. However, just when they thought that they were free to focus on software development, their accountant informs them that since they are working for themselves, they have to become member of a semi-governmental association that provides benefits (health care, etc.). Apparently, for self-employed people and this is mandatory! They are “touched” by the thoughtfullness of their government in ensuring that they have benefits. The fact that they have not made any money and will not make any for the next year or so is a minor detail. If they knew, their American counter parts would be saddened that unlike Turkish government, their government does not care enough about them to force them to pay benefits to secure their future! How inconsiderate of them.

The cost of this thoughtful burden on the Turkish entrepreneurs: $130 per month per owner. Since we have three founders, this is roughly another $400/month for our budding entrepreneurs! As stated in the earlier posts, this is a significant amount of money in Turkey (more than the minimum wage) and increases the burden on our entrepreneurs significantly. It may sound like a nobel idea, but it is not! Just like many other such regulations, the cost of these regulations prevent entrepreneurs from starting or succeeding in business.

As a reoccurring theme, Turkish system does not seem to understand the fact that the businesses have to first start and succeed (exist?), before they can be taxed. No new businesses means no new jobs, no profit, no “fees”, no tax revenue, nothing! Just three more young university graduates in need of employment (and benefits!), instead of a high value add company that can potentially employ other people, export products, pay taxes, etc.

It is important to reiterate that the government essentially starts taxing new businesses from day one, before the business gets any chance to actually make any money never mind profit. I’ve talked about several of these “fees” over the last posts, but here is a summary of the regulations/fees a new business faces in Turkey:

• Incorporation costs ( $1200 one time)
• Chamber of commerce registration ($130/year)
• “approval” (whatever that means) of the accounting books ($300/year)
• Mandatory certified accountant (~$4000/year)
• Mandatory social security for owners ($5000/year for 3 owners)
• VAT declaration ($120/year, done monthly even if there is no transaction)
• Corporation tax ($50/year even if there is no transaction)
• Opening an office “fee” by the local municipality ($250)
• …

As can be seen from above, the burden put on our small software startup by the regulations in Turkey is almost $11,000 for the first year. This is pure overhead for a company that has no commercial activity, and not an insignificant amount in Turkey.
It’s important to note that the costs do not include anything like rent, furniture, computer hardware/software, etc. just the overhead enforced by the regulations. It also does not include the administrative costs (someone has to do all this work). In our experience to handle all the associated paperwork requires someone to dedicate half of their time and it is constant source of distraction for the entrepreneurs, therefore it is safe to say that the negative impact of the regulations on new businesses go beyond the financial burden.

In such an unfriendly environment to business startups, it is not therefore surprising that there is hardly any software companies emerge out of Turkey despite the signicant amount of talent in the country. Instead of implementing utterly useless “subsidies”, Turkish government should consider just getting out of the way of the entrepreneurs. No more regulations please!

In the next post I’ll talk about yet another good idea gone wrong: Technology Development Parks, aka Technoparks!

The American entrepreneurs use one of their appartments as the business address, buy a domain name for their company and subscribe to a hosting provider. They now have a website (their virtual office), business email, and broadband internet. Their monthly cost is less than $100,an insignificant amount. They only need enough money to be able to live, nothing more (other than $100/month) is needed. The only paperwork they will have to do is to file for taxes (which they will not have any) at the end of the year. It will be a simple process if they don’t have any activity, and even if they did, they can do it easily using the resources over the web. They will not have to spend more than 2 days over the year for the paperwork.
The Turkish entrepreneurs however, just found out that by law they have to have a certified accountant, further more the “fee” for the certified accountants is regulated by some semi-governmental organization. They have to pay about $250/month to an accountant for bookkeeping. This is a big blow to them, since it is a lot of money for our budding entrepreneurs. They hear that it may be possible to find an accountant that provides the service for less (against the regulations), but doing illegal things (or working with an accountant that does) makes them nervous so they decide to do the things by the book and look for a proper accountant.

They also find out that it is mandatory to register with the chamber of commerce and surprise surprise! registration is not free. (about $110/year). They will also find out that they will make frequent visits to the chamber of commerce to get some documentation and pay them “fees” for number of things, such as opening up a bank account, etc. The affair is hardly different than the “protection money” vendors have to pay to various mafias (no personal experience with this, just what I heard), other than the fact that this one (payment to the chamber of commerce) is mandated by the government. Nice! Way to nurture budding companies. I’ll have to repeat the anectode I have used for the Media in a previous blog entry, about the terrible quality of drugs in the beginning of 1900’s: if all the drugs of the time were tossed in the sea, it would be better for mankind and worse for the fish. Chamber of commerce organizations add little value and suck the blood of companies, all sanctioned by the government.

In addition to the fees they have to pay to the chamber of commerce, our entrepreneurs are told that the chamber of commerce representatives will have to come and “inspect” their business premises to validate that it is a “legitimate” business! Needless to say, our entrepreneurs are panic a bit since they plan to use the living room of one of their appartments as the office and not sure what “legitimate” is (nor they can find information on what/how they will be inspecting. Their “agent” who helps them to set up the legal entity tells them that the issue can be “resolved” and he takes care of it with some “gifts”. I’m not even get into this subject any further than this, as it is a deep deep hole, needless to say, our entrepreneurs are quite uncomfortable but don’t want the hassle so accept the proposed solution.

They have not yet managed to “produce” anything so far, still fighting through the paperwork. They’ve also started to question whether they are doing the right thing by starting a company, instead of working for a “respectable” corporation.

I’ll continue with their saga in the next post. Stay tuned …

I’ll use US and Turkey as examples, as I also had the first hand experience to start companies in both countries, hence have personal experience in addition to the available research data. In our case study, we have three computer science graduates who are high on talent and ideas that can change the world, but low in cash, trying to start up a software company. We’ll go through the motions of starting up a company for these young entrepreneurs both in Turkey and in US.
First, let’s look at the research data. According to doingbusiness.org, it takes $210 and 5 days to setup a legal entity in US vs $1,040 and 9 days in Turkey. So the cost of setting up a company is 5 times the cost of setting it up in US. Our entreprenuers in Turkey are in a disadvantage. This is bad for Turkey, in fact, it is much worse than it looks.

The income level of two countries are very different. Purchasing power parity adjusted gross national income per capita is $41,400 in US and $3,750 in Turkey. In simple terms, $1,040 is whole a lot of money for the Turkish entreprenuers. Just for reference, in Turkey, the net minimum wage is $394 per month. It’s not that easy for the Turkish entreprenuers to come up with the money. For their American counter parts however $210 is peanuts.
In US, the entire process can be completed via the Internet and over the phone. It takes very little time. In Turkey, physical presence is required in number of places, along with ridiciluous amounts of useless documents. The process is very complicated and it is hard to find explanation/help on how to proceed from websites or books.
As a result, our Turkish entrepreneurs either have to spend many days figuring out how they can set up the company and hope that they get it right, or hire an “agent” to do the work for them, which means more money! When we had tried to get an agent to do the work for us from abroad, we were quoted up to $5,500 for the setup costs. In our case, we eventually did find someone to do the work for less than $1,000 through our local contacts in Turkey. Note that although the agent route is not technically mandatory, in real life it pretty much is.
In the mean time, our American Entreprenuers were done after spending couple of hours on the web reading about different forms of business entities, have decided on LLC and used a service over the web to set up the legal entity in Delaware. Couple more hours to fill the necessary applications, and to make a phone calls etc. and they are done with the paperwork for a long time. Unfortunately for their Turkish counterparts, it is just the beginning. They are about to discover number of nasty “regulations” that will require them to spend significant amount of time and money. On the next post, we’ll continue with some of these regulations and the work environment.