Nobody likes Mondays, or at least I cannot fathom why anybody would. On such a day, a full week of work lies ahead of you, and it always seem like an extra day is needed to recover from the adventures of the weekend, whatever they might have been. Yesterday was a little different though, for it brought such as collection of good news that I found myself wishing that today would be Monday again, and the same would be true for the rest of the week.

It all started with the signing of Intalio’s fiftieth customer. If your company has a hundred, a thousand, or ten thousands of them, it might not mean much to you. But if like us you started the year with only 12 of them, you must know why we think it’s a pretty cool milestone. A full list is available there, courtesy of the excellent Dabble DB, and you can even subscribe to the RSS feed for it if you want to get notified everytime we sign a new one.

Then, I received a nice email from a journalist working for FORTUNE Magazine and asking for an interview in order to better understand how BPM could complement Web 2.0 services such as Basecamp or JotSpot as a way to support collaborative business processes. In and by itself, this was a pretty cool opportunity to help get the message across, but what really made my day was to learn that the introduction had been made by Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce.com. If this is not a good example of viral marketing, I do not know what is. The interview went well, and I expect some coverage in a future issue of the print magazine. Many thanks to Marc for this plug!

Finally, the day ended with the second edition of the Open Source wine dinners organized by Andrew Aitken from Olliance and Mark Radcliffe from DLA Piper Rudnick Gray Cary. This one took place at Lavanda in Palo Alto, and gave me the opportunity to meet with the CEOs of other Open Source companies.

Of particular interest was a discussion with John Roberts, CEO of SugarCRM. What I learned is that SugarCRM is not planning to spend much of the $18.77M it raised from NEA last year, which is a great validation of the business model that the company has put together. Much like every SaaS company has a vested interest in Salesforce.com’s success, every Open Source company has a vested interest in SugarCRM’s success. In making our transition back to Open Source, we learned a lot from SugarCRM book, and I wish the company all the success it can get. Note to Marc: don’t you worry! I am sticking to my guns and remain a loyal Salesforce.com customer.

Another interesting topic was a question raised by Sharam Sasson, CEO of Jitterbit, and tackled by Larry Augustin, Chairman of VA Software and board member for many Open Source companies. The question was the following: is the Open Source model for enterprise software only applicable to mature market segments, or could it support the creation of brand new ones?

Larry’s take on it was that new market segments require significant marketing budgets to be spent upfront for them to be created, and this is something that Open Source companies usually cannot afford. Even though the very few examples of successful Open Source companies that are available today — RedHat, JBoss to name a few — seem to validate this assumption, I tend to believe that Open Source is only part of the equation, and a new model for starting enterprise software companies has emerged, which will require much less working capital than has been deemed necessary in the past.

By using new marketing tools such as blogs and webinars, and by lowering the barrier to adoption for customers through the adoption of multiple packaging options such as Open Source software, network appliances, and Software as a Service models, sales and marketing costs can be reduced significantly. Growth will be slower than in the past, but developing a successful and lasting software company has always taken time — just ask Bill Gates or Larry Ellison if in doubt.

Andrew’s and Mark’s dinners always foster fascinating discussions like this one, and I very much look forward to the next one. On to the rest of the week now…