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This press release from IDC caught my eye. They published a report yesterday demonstrating the rising importance of open source among business end users, and listed the main challenges they face. In particular:
Respondents believe the biggest challenge vendors face in delivering open source-related services is integrating open source and proprietary software components.
Late last year, the OSA published its customer forum series summary report, which highlighted the same issue. As commercial open source becomes more mainstream, issues like interoperability come to the forefront. The OSA has been on the leading edge of identifying and resolving these issues, while other popular thought leaders and bloggers were asserting they didn't exist. So, it's good to see mainstream analysts and media starting to pick up on the same issues, reinforce the message, and remove the confusion around this.
The good news is these are easily solvable issues, it's just a matter of helping companies work together to solve them. OSA members have been doing this all along, delivering more turnkey, interoperable solutions. JasperSoft/Hyperic, Ingres/JasperSoft, and, of course, our own Common Customer View are great examples that can be easily replicated by other vendors in the industry. Now is not too late to join us and participate in our next round of interoperability initiatives!
As a further proof of the maturity of the open source market, the OSA (Open Solutions Alliance) has recently celebrated its first anniversary. As a reminder, the OSA is a consortium of open source software vendors dedicated to making enterprise-class open software solutions work together. It helps customers put open solutions to work by enabling application integration, certifying quality solutions, and promoting cooperation among open solutions developers. Officially created one year, the OSA has just held a new board election and has also announced earlier this year its European chapter. This European chapter has itself chosen a temporary board of directors, whose first mission will be to select where the organization will be incorporated. I am proud to say that Talend’s General Manager for EMEA, François, will be sitting on this board.
Six directions have been decided for the European OSA for this year:
- Promoting and defending interoperability
- Developing an ecosystem through the recruitment of vendors, SIs and ISVs
- Marketing and business development for and around the EOSA members
- Developing relationships with the open source community
- International exchanges and relationships with the other OSA chapters
- Promoting and defending open source in Europe
As explained by Dominic Sartorio, the OSA President, the first year of such a consortium usually carries high risks that can put in question its existence. The OSA has brilliantly worked around all obstacles and starts its second year, leveraging a growing members number (22 to date). Dominic’s article that presents this first year from the insider’s perspective calls for even more collaboration between organizations.
I have no doubt that even more of us will celebrate the OSA’s second anniversary next year.
Bertrand
OK, time to wave the white flag... I'm a former developer, and while it's been over six years since I've written a line a code, I couldn't resist spending an unhealthy amount of time today wading through the 30,000 new pages of APIs and interoperability documentation on the MSDN site.
In particular, I'm looking for solutions to our "Top 5" hitlist of interoperability challenges, as measured by customer feedback during last fall's customer forum series. My fading developer skills must be failing me, or call me an old fogey, because I'm simply not finding what I'm looking for. Rest assured I'm not trying to express skepticism in a back-handed way - Judging from the announcements and resulting coverage, I really believe this is there - or soon will be there. Perhaps it's staring me in the face, but am just not recognizing it. So, a little help, please? If you find it, please reply to this blog or email me directly!
Continue reading "Our Top 5 Microsoft Interop Issues: A Little Help, Please?"
Once again Microsoft is in the news - This time with a significant announcement regarding interoperability. The media response has been tremendous, and reactions from the open source community have been as varied as ever, ranging from giddy enthusiasm that this is a "major turnaround" to skepticism that this means anything or nothing more than tactical self-interest.
This blogger is taking the view of cautious optimism. While it doesn't represent a fundamental change in business for Microsoft, we see it as a pragmatic reaction to customer demand, and nonetheless resulting in a significant net positive for the industry.
Continue reading "Microsoft's Interop Announcement: A Practical Response to Market Reality"
A day has passed since the end of this year's Olliance Think Tank in Napa, California, and I've had a chance to reflect (and recover).
   
This is a unique event on the open source calendar, well-attended by numerous entrepreneurs, executives, industry experts and thought leaders in commercial open source. Key trends and issues facing the industry were discussed, plus ample opportunity for offline networking. Not to mention the all-important choice of venue (Napa Valley is the capital of the USA's wine industry) and numerous opportunities to partake in the local product, which helped dull the edges of the many Type A personalities in attendance!
There were several takeaways from this event, with the most significant being that it's no longer a matter of whether open source will succeed, but how. The was a pervasive sense of optimism and excitement at this event, permeating every presentation and offline conversation.
Continue reading "Olliance Think Tank 2008 - OSS Comes of Age"
If you can understand French, you will certainly enjoy these three videos from Solutions Linux:
In addition, the multiple announcements we did at Solutions Linux generated lots of interesting coverage. I won’t list them all here since many are in French, but all of this testifies to the phenomenal growth and relevancy of open source in general, and especially business open source.
Yves
These past few weeks featured a lot of announcements by Talend, by the OSA, and by the open source community in general. The timing of Solutions Linux was very good with that regard, and many members of the press are highly interested in hearing from open source thought leaders.
 On Wednesday alone, Bertrand was interviewed and filmed by three different media outlets: LCI (the French 24-hour information channel) - see photo, VNU.net, and NetEco. All segments are expected to air within one week, we’ll post links to them when they are available online. Topics addressed in these interviews ranged from open source adoption to interoperability, from the launch of the OSA in Europe to the Attali Commission report, and a few others.
Dominic, the OSA president, and myself were also interviewed by several high profile media outlets in the US, the UK, France, etc. on the OSA Europe launch.
Yves
 Today during my keynote at Solutions Linux in Paris this morning, I announced the creation of the European Chapter of the Open Solutions Alliance, the open source consortium Talend co-founded one year ago. For the OSA, this means “acting local”, while still “thinking global”.Indeed, more open source projects have originated in Europe than anywhere else in the world, which gives the region a unique foundation for building business value for users. Even for global vendors like Talend, it is important for open-source companies to work together to maximize the opportunities for open solutions in the European market.
This new chapter structure will better enable the OSA to address the needs of vendors such as Talend, who are deploying business-ready open solutions all over the world, but with a regional focus that is tailored for regional differences in culture, business practices, regulatory environments and open source adoption patterns.
Over the course of the next three months, we will finalize the creation of this chapter. Stay tuned for more information.
Bertrand
Greetings from SolutionsLinux in Paris, France. It is now 2:30am in my local timezone - Such are the joys of "Going Global"!
The OSA has had a great first year, attracting significant membership and driving several important interoperability projects. With many of our early members being USA-based, many of our activities have been in the USA. As we continue to grow, we have recognized the need for driving more activity around the world, and we have given careful thought to how to do this in a scalable way. How can we think globally, while ensuring greater activity on a local basis? How can we better serve member companies, no matter where in the world they happen to be based?
Time differences just scratch the surface of the challenges of global coordination. Open solutions are truly a global phenomenon, with adoption increasing in most regions of the world. However those adoption patterns differ. The European public sector, for example, has been driving adoption to a greater degree than in the USA, which has been mostly private sector led. Differences in culture and business practices also affect where and how commercial open source products are adopted. This all adds up to a need for local spins on our message and methods, and a need for local people to drive activities and their relative priorities.
Early feedback from many European companies has been positive, with several prospective members indicating they would join a local chapter that would serve as a regional focal point for collective action.
We have heard the same from similar companies in Japan and other parts of the world. Indeed, by this time next year, we expect a large and vibrant European chapter, as well as new chapters in Japan and possibly other parts of Asia, and Latin America.
2008 will be a turning point year for open source solutions, with clear separation between winners and losers, as we have recently written. Many companies will figure out that "go-it-alone open source" won't be their path to success. Our goal is for the OSA to be there for them, no matter where in the world they happen to be. Vibrant chapters in key markets will be the way we make that happen.
By the way, if you're at SolutionsLinux, please stop by our session track on Tuesday afternoon!
We announced today a technical partnership with Microsoft. The goal of this partnership is very simple - and very transparent: ensure interoperability of Microsoft systems with the rest of the information system. Nobody can ignore the fact that IT systems are made of a combination of open source and closed source technologies, of databases and packaged applications, of legacy and SaaS systems, of… you name it, it’s probably in there!
Interoperability is the core of our business, and it’s a subject that is close to my heart (this is why Talend is a founding member of the OSA, for example). So when Sam Ramji from Microsoft invited us to their Open Source Lab in Redmond, and offered to help us work better with their systems, we decided to use these resources for the greatest benefit of our users. And we also liked the fact that only very few vendors are admitted in the lab: MySQL, Firefox, XenSource and now Talend are among the chosen ones. A clear tribute to Talend’s success.
Specifically, our work with Microsoft was three-pronged: improving our performance on Windows (including Windows 2008), supporting SQL Server 2008, and providing connectors for the Microsoft Dynamics applications.
Of course, this does not lower our commitment to the support of open source technologies: Linux operating systems, open source databases and packaged applications, etc. Open source is also freedom of choice, and interoperability between all systems is the path to this freedom of choice.
Bertrand
A funny thing happened on the way to the office
I hopped on a plane in New York this morning and planned on writing a blog about new year's resolutions. Resolution one is to "Stop Procrastinating" which might explain why that particular blog is three weeks behind schedule. When I landed in SFO, my blackberry almost melted under the strain of all the email traffic around the MySQL and BEA acquisitions.
Full Story
Sun's purchase of MySQLfor a cool $1 billion is all the buzz today and rightfully so. I think this news goes to show the power, visibility and growth in adoption of open source. And in this particular case MySQL.
As enterprises continually seek competitive advantages they find their way to open source solutions. Sun has certainly recognized this with Jonathan Schwartz at the helm, but today's news takes another step towards ensuring they are going to be a major player in offering such solutions. It will be interesting to see how this purchase affects Sun as the inherent value proposition of MySQL is that it is an open, potentially low cost alternative to Oracle. The other potential hitch is that companies want best-of-breed solutions for their needs and Sun just might be becoming a monolithic vendor offering one set of solutions.
I am thrilled to see the increased adoption of open source and the excitement of my friends over at MySQL, but also see this news as an opportunity for system integrators (SI's). With IT spending and acquisitions on the rise, it furthers the need for technology agnostic SI's (Unisys, Cap Gemini, Accenture and others) in this space to play significant roles in customer IT implementations. Companies are looking for the best independent solution for their needs, not for one monolithic vendor to lock them into an IT environment of their choosing. The OSA’s common-customer view reference architecture, as one example, demonstrates interoperability across multiple vendor products to achieve best-of-breed functionality.
Another piece of big news today (other than the continued economic impact in the Financial Services sector as a result of the sub-prime lending fallout) is Oracle’s purported acquisition of BEA. Obviously this would further position Oracle against IBM in the middleware space and further Oracle's goal to dominate that market. But this also creates another “integrated stack” that possibly precludes clients from choosing best of breed product, hence furthering the need for large Systems Integrators to help fulfill that gap.
Yes, that's "billion", with a 'B'! I'm sure the valuation negotiations considered the media impact and attention of a nice round number. They succeeded. Already the punditocracy is a-twitter, with lots of ink being spilt and keyboards being worn out about how this should prove (once and for all) that open source business models are viable or even superior to other ways of running a software company.
This industry observer begs to differ. MySQL didn't succeed just because it was an open source business. They succeeded because they mastered how to deliver customer value, and brilliantly executed a strategy that is tried-and-true in the software business: brand, platform, and meeting customer needs. Open source was a means to an end, not an end unto itself.
Let's look more closely at their keys to success:
Continue reading "MySQL bought for $1,000,000,000 - Open Source Validation?"
Today’s IT news space is abuzz with two major takeover announcements, and I thought I would share my thoughts on them…
First of all, I want to offer my congratulations to Marten Mickos – I really admire his accomplishments and what he made of MySQL.
1. Sun buys MySQL
This is good news, both for open source users and for open source vendors. For users, it means that MySQL will get the funding it needs to accelerate its growth, and take the product to the next step. MySQL is already a very strong product, with access to the vast resources of Sun it will become the killer database. Beware, proprietary database vendors!
For vendors (like Talend), it is one more proof point that open source is legitimate. For a major player like Sun to acquire MySQL, they must believe in the model. They did not spend $1b to play catch up or to fill a gap. They are clearly embarking in open source and are investing into it.
For competitors: MySQL was already a strong technical contender to Oracle and the other database guys, now it is also a serious business competitor. CIOs will no longer be worried about the solidity of the company when they make their choice. And it will be a lot more difficult for Oracle’s sales people to play out the FUD strategy.
As far as we are concerned, Talend will continue to go after the clients of proprietary vendors, starting with Informatica, leveraging the power of the open source model, our partnerships with other open source vendors and proprietary vendors, our key role in the Open Solutions Alliance, etc.
2. Oracle buys BEA
When Larry wants something, he gets it (with the notable exception of JBoss). He just ends up paying a premium – but he has deep pockets. See Siebel, PeopleSoft, now BEA.
Of course, that’s bad news for the users – it means less choice for them, and more dependency on super large vendors. One more thing they’ll have to buy from their Oracle rep.
2007 was a record year in the M&A field. In the data integration/BI space alone, DataMirror and Cognos became part of IBM, Hyperion was acquired by Oracle, Business Objects merged with SAP, persistent rumors about Informatica keep floating around… Let’s see what 2008 has in store for us.
Bertrand
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