Archive for the 'Open Source' Category
For an Amazon Web Services Clone
In my Inferences for ‘07, I suggested that open-source, plug-compatible alternatives to Amazon’s EC2, S3, SQS will be released sometime this year. Here are a set of reasons why this would make sense, and why everybody would benefit from such a thing, including Amazon itself. [Continue…]
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Open Source Relationships
When it comes to enterprise software, most partnerships established between vendors tend to be asymmetrical: a large vendor would embed some piece of technology developed by a much smaller one, or a small System Integrator (SI) or Value Added Reseller (VAR) would distribute the products of a larger, well established vendor. Commercial Open Source business models are slowly but surely changing the parameters of the equation, and giving birth to more equalitarian and fruitful relationships. Here is why. [Continue…]
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On Intalio and Open Source
Some call it Commercial Open Source. Others Professional Open Source. Whichever way you call it, it’s all about leveraging an Open Source software development process for the benefits of a for-profit business and the customers it serves. But because Open Source shares roots with the Free Software movement, defining commonly-acceptable terms for Commercial Open Source has proven to be a challenge. Philosophical pursuits get in the way of business, and lack of proper due diligence can lead even the most respectable players in the field to fall into the trap of disinformation. The question of what makes an acceptable use of the term Open Source for a capitalistic venture is not new, but it has become a fairly complex one over time, as best illustrated in this well-researched article from David Berlind. Following Intalio’s recent announcements related to Open Source, some questions have been raised regarding the legitimacy of our claims. Here is an attempt at giving an answer and moving the discussion forward. [Continue…]
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Inferences for ‘07
Last year’s inferences lead to an unexpectedly high 83% success rate. This will be hard to beat, especially because my new batch of nine inferences will be stated in more measurable ways, leaving little room for history rewriting. Let’s give it a shot anyway, and meet again on December 31st, 2007 for our yearly performance review. In the meantime, happy new year to all! [Continue…]
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Scorecard
364 days ago, I published my inferences for ‘06. A year has passed, and time has come to take a look back and see how good (or bad) I did back then. Tomorrow, I will publish a new batch, and review them a year from now. [Continue…]
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The New SAP
Can you name one of the top-3 software companies in the world that is developing some of the most advanced technology, offers one of the sexiest AJAX-powered user interfaces, develops successful partnerships within a fast-growing ecosystem of independent software vendors, is one of the most active contributors to the most widely used Open Source projects, and has one of the most loyal developer groups around? If you cannot, let me help you. Its logo is blue but it’s not the big one, and its developers meet at a conference called TechEd but it’s not headquartered in Redmond, WA. You got it! Please let me introduce you to the new SAP. [Continue…]
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Questions and Answers
Following last week’s post regarding Intalio’s inverted sales process, industry analyst James McGovern came up with a set of thought provoking questions. I won’t copy his entire post — therefore I encourage you to read it first, but I’ll try to answer all his questions. [Continue…]
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First D3 Project
Back in February, Intalio unveiled its Demand Driven Development (D3) program, as a way to essentially outsource major parts of our product management process. Since then, we have scoped over 60 projects, but we found it quite difficult to actually secure sponsors for them, irrespectively of the financial incentives we could offer. Today, I am pleased to announce that we signed our first customer for it. Here is what we learned along the way. [Continue…]
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Inverted Sales Process
Last month, I presented how Intalio’s adoption of an Open Source business model essentially leads to an inversion of the traditional enterprise software sales process. Today, I’m glad to share this sales process with you. [Continue…]
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Services kill Software
Nicholas Carr recently published a thought-provoking article that describes how software kills hardware. As much as I agree with Nick’s points, I believe that the virtualization trend he describes goes a step further, and while software replaces hardware, services replace software in the end. [Continue…]
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Sales Process Inversion
Last year, my friend Bruce Silver wrote a very nice article on this blog discussing about Intalio’s new business model, and wondering why would anyone buy a BPMS when you could get one for free. Seven months later, here are some more details about our business model. [Continue…]
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Rationale for an Open Source Process Engine
This is the seventeenth edition of our weekly BPM 2.0 post. Today, I will try to explain why we need an open source process engine. Beside the fact that an Open Source license provides the best insurance policy a customer of enterprise software can get, the Open Source development process brings many benefits that are particularly relevant to a process engine. [Continue…]
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Lucky Monday
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. [Continue…]
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Why SAP Should Open Source NetWeaver
SAPPHIRE 2006, Day Two — One problem with Open Source is that perfectly valid business motivations for adopting an Open Source development and licensing model often get occulted by counter-productive religious positions that bring no value to the debate whatsoever. When it comes to Open Source, I consider myself a true atheist. And if I ever come across as sounding too evangelical, it’s not because I adhere to any particular dogma, but rather because I find the business case for Open Source just too compeling for it to be dismissed, in very many instances. Today, I got a chance to spend some time with Frank Witte, Head of the Global Open Source Office at SAP. What came out of this meeting is further validation for an idea that was lingering in the back of my mind as of late: SAP should open source NetWeaver. [Continue…]
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SAPPHIRE
I have been invited by SAP — or more precisely my friend Jeff Nolan — to join the bloggers corner at SAPPHIRE in Orlando on May 16-18. All expenses, including flight, hotel and registration are paid by SAP AG. [Continue…]
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The World is Flat Breakfast
The first IT|Redux breakfast took place today and was a great success. The goal of the meeting was to identify the 11th flattener, following Thomas Friedman’s list of 10 flatteners in The World is Flat. [Continue…]
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First IT|Redux Breakfast
Weblogs are great networking tools, but nothing can beat the old-fashioned face-to-face meeting, especially when it comes with good food and drinks. With that in mind, I have decided to organize regular events during which readers of this blog will be able to meet and discuss about recently-covered topics. The first event of this type will be a breakfast to take place at the Sofitel in Redwood City, CA on Tuesday, April 18, 2006, from 8:00 AM to 10 AM. [Continue…]
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The World is Flat
I just finished reading The World is Flat by Thomas L. Friedman, New York Times columnist and author of The Lexus and the Olive Tree. In his last book, Friedman identifies ten events and trends that are flattening the world we live in today. I agreed with most of the thesis, and tried to relate to it my own experience working at Intalio.
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Donation to Apache
Today, Intalio offered to donate the PXE BPEL 2.0 engine to the Apache Software Foundation, for it to become part of the Ode project. Intalio will dedicate significant resources to the project and use the engine as a core component for upcoming versions of Intalio|Server. This proposed donation is the latest contribution from Intalio to […]
Demand Driven Development
Until now, if the customer of an enterprise software product needed a new feature to be developed, three main options would have been available: wait for the vendor to add the feature into a future release of the product, pay for the development of a custom feature and hope that it would make its way back into the product, or hire a third-party to develop a propriatery extension that would have to be maintained separately. The first option might lead to nothing, the second is expensive initially, and the third is expensive both upfront and down the line. Open Source development solved part of the issue by allowing customers to develop the feature themselves and contribute it back to the open source project, hoping that the community would pick it up at some point. It’s better than the first three options, but could still be improved upon. Here comes Intalio’s Demand Driven Development, which will be unveiled next month and to which I am glad to give you a preview today.
