Enterprise Open Source

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The Linux Foundation is just publishing a guide to contribute to the Linux kernel the right way. If your enterprise is using Linux a lot and some of your people have some code to contribute, this is a must read.
In any case, if you rely on Linux somewhere in your IS, the chapter “How the Development Process Works” is very interesting piece of information.

Zdnet reports today that Solaris is rumored to be open source. Linux has been hurting Solaris for years. I remember the time where Sun was tryting to sell SOlaris on Intel, I remember the time where they had this golden pepite named OpenStep, now Mac OS. Going open source just mean two things in this case: first, Sun’s time is over, they’ve lost the battle. Microsoft and Linux are the winners. Second, it’s commoditization time for the OS. Just another useless bet. I bet that the next move will be IBM and SAP going open source for their application server. Because the next victim of commoditization will be application servers.

Today, the Apache Fondation announced that Apache OFBiz is now officially a top level project. OFBiz is more than just another open source ERP like Compiere ou ERP5. This is a set of components that enable the build of applications by assembling them. Some OFBiz components are already used to integrate Workflow or caching in applications.

With this in mind, this announce is probably the real beginning of open source in the ERP arena, even for large corporation. Why?

- The Apache Foundation has a great momentum, and a great reputation for software quality. Many integrators will use more and more OFBiz components. The more they will be used, the more genericity and robustness they will have. The more they will be adopted. etc..

- This announce will put OFBiz under the spotlights. People will realized that after databases, applications servers, DMS, Business intelligence, ERP is a new front in the closed/open source war

- Many people will just give a try to OFBiz and realized how it is a well designed software

- SOA adoption is increasing. I strongly believed that SOA foster component based development adoption. OFBiz comes with the right timing.

- Last but not least, OFBiz is java based. J2EE is the platform of choices of large corporation. It will not end SAP supremacy on that area, but it will accelerate the adoption of the “Assemble or Buy” paradigm

More and more open source software are maturing, proposing now competitive solutions to traditional closed source vendors. More and more closed source vendors… feel the heat :-).

The following table give an overview of Closed source leader for each market segment and their open source counterparts. The color gives the temperature :-), the arrow gives the trend.

Market Segment	Closed-Source Leader	Open Source Leaders	Heat Level
Application Servers	BEA Weblogic, IBM Websphere, Oracle Application Server	JBoss Application Server, Apache Geronimo, ObjectWeb JoNAS, Apache Tomcat
Server Operating System	Windows 2000 Serveur, Windows 2003, IBM AIX, HP UX, SCO Unix	Red Hat Enterprise Server, Suse, Debian, Mandriva
VOIP	Cisco, Alcatel	Asterisk
Portal	Websphere Portal, Plumtree, Oracle Portal, Microsoft Sharepoint	Jetspeed 2, JBOSS Portal, Liferay, Exo platform, Plone, Drupal, Joomla!
Office Productivity	Microsoft Office	Open Office 2.0
Reporting Tools	CrystalReports	JasperReports, Eclipse BIRT 2.x, openBI, iReport
ERP	SAP R3, Oracle Financials, Peoplesoft, Agresso, Navision	Compiere, ofBiz
CMS	Interwoven, Stellent, Vignette, Sharepoint 2006	Typo 3, Zope/Plone, SPIP, AGORA, eZ Publish, Drupal, Joomla!
Messaging	Microsoft Exchange, Lotus Notes	Open Xchange, Open Groupware, Zimbra, Postfix, Sendmail
Group Productivity	Documentum e-room, Windows Sharepoint Services, IBM Workspace	activeCollab, dotProject, eGroupware, phpGroupware
Business Intelligence	Business Objects, Cognos, Datastage	Pentaho, Bizgres
Virtualization Platform	VMware	Xen 3.x
ESB Suite & Application Integration	Sonic Software, IBM Websphere Integration, BEA Weblogic Integration	ServiceMix, Mule
DMS	Documentum, Filenet	Alfresco
Desktop Operating System	Windows XP, Windows 2000, Windows Vista	Suse 10, Mandriva, Linspire, Ubuntu
Personnal Productivity	MindManager	FreeMind
CRM	Siebel, GoldMine, MS CRM, Selligent	Sugar
e-Commerce Suite	Sterling Commerce	OSCommerce, Interchange
Directory Services	Microsoft Active Directory	OpenLDAP
Web Analytics	Webtrends, Google Analytics	AWstats, phpMyvisites, BBClone

Looking at the VMware Technology Networks following a colleague advice, I discovered that since this summer hundreds of ready-to-download vmware appliances are available. I’m amazed of how VMware is good at marketing. Whatever, that’s not the point. The point is that on 169 community build appliances, 169 are running on top of open source operating systems (Linux, NetBSD, FreeBSD,…). Yes. 169/169. The reason is of course that there is no licencing scheme, enabling full download of a ready to use system. Just imagine thousands of professionals downloading VMware appliances to test these appliances ( and that is happening every minute, believe me). They will just be more and more used to see Linux & all. as the preferred operating system. They will have proof that Linux is ready for..well.. quite everything…. This is really, really bad news for Microsoft and their Windows push to the server market in the enterprise.

An interesting quote from Larry Augustin, reported by ZDNet:

“I still don’t see many people from India and China contributing to open source. It’s when the people in those countries get into the process that you’ll see things. It’s not going to happen until you see the contribution level increase.”

He’s right. But there is another point that many do not see: like vTiger did with SugarCRM, Indian or Chinese entrepreneurs will soon use open source software to build competitive software solutions to US software vendors. Today’s competition is still fair and occident-centric: swedish based MySQL AB competes against Oracle, Red Hat against IBM & Sun, etc… But see Red Flag in China. Other will come. These countries will have thousands of talented people: programmers, architects and.. entrepreneurs… Look at the software market today: dominated by SAP, Oracle, Microsoft & IBM. One of the most obvious answer to this domination is building from open source software. They’ll do it. Wait for more indian and chinese ventures on the subject.

RedHat today announced the acquisition of JBoss, the company behind Jboss Application Server, a leading open source Java Application Server.

Is it a good deal for RedHat?

• Jboss has federated some projects that are paving their way into corporate information systems. This is espcially the case for Hibernate, which is more and more used in Custom Software developped on the Java platform

.

• Drools, a rule engine you can compare to a “low end” Ilog Rules, is another of these promising open source technologies.

Is it a good deal for customers?

Sure:

• It will accelerate the commoditization of the bundle Operating System+ Application Server for the J2EE platforms. It means that the TCO for applications needing these stacks will decrease

Is it a good deal for open source?

Is it a good deal for IBM, Oracle or BEA?

Well, no. Especially for BEA.

A consortium lead by Capgemini has won what seems to be the largest open source contract ever: 15 to 40 millions euros for the next 3 years (17 to 47 MUSD). Capgemini commits to provide support for the 150 open source products used within the information system of the French Ministry of Finances. Capgemini is the overall leader of the project and will provide the project management. Linagora, a 50 people integrator with strong expertise in OpenLDAP and OpenXChange and BULL, a large european IT shop specialized in security (openPKI,…). The French Ministry of Finances has also sign with another integrator (Atos Origin) to provide support for its JBoss systems.

With this contract and additional offers like SpikeSource, lack of support for open source software will no longer be an issue in a few quarters. To me it is one of the most important news for the development of the open source in corporate information system. That’s the first time in my life that I wish to thanks a ministry of finances

The press releases can be found here (english) and here (french).

Xen 3.0 is out. Xen is to open source what VMware GSX is to the closed licence world. VMware is today’s undisputed leader of virtualization. But now Xen has many selling points:

• A commercial company and a dual licencing mode to support its adoption
• A ultra-sexy value proposal: reduce your infrastructure costs thanks to dynamic allocation of resources: your application has a peak of usage and need more CPU power for a few hours? Xen is taking it from the CPUs it is managing !
• Xen is actively promoted by Red Hat, the leading provider of server side Linux operating servers

War time is coming in the virtualization space.