IT Troubleshooter | Harper Mann » November 2006

November 20, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Open Source and Appliance Software Delivery Open Up New Worlds for Small and Medium Enterprise IT

TAGS: Open Source

I just read that 95% of IT folks are happy with their jobs.

But when you start to scratch the surface, a lot (87% in fact) of IT people are still working nights and weekends.

Luckily, I bet the percentage of happy people in Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) IT will be increasing, and the percentage of people working overtime will be decreasing.

Why?

Because enterprise-grade IT management software is finally making its way down to the mid-market.

Basically, I see two major driving factors.

Open Source
First, we see a lot of open source products that are carving out territory that used to be dominated by the big expensive IT management firms like HP, CA, IBM and BMC (sometimes called "The Big 4"). Previously, smaller companies would either have to shell out the big bucks to purchase a solution by one of these firms designed for a larger enterprise (and deal with the accompanying feature bloat and inflexibility) or try to have the IT staff monitor their network manually, an arduous process. Open source allows companies to use less expensive, but still robust, products to do things like network monitoring that used to require a lot of time, money, and energy on the part of the IT staff. GroundWork is good example of this in the IT monitoring space.

Appliance-based Software Delivery
For SME's that do decide they want to go the proprietary route, there is also a growing trend for proprietary software to be delivered via an appliance. Forget Software as a Service (especially for IT Management). Many IT folks in mid-market companies are beginning to realize they now can get some pretty heavy duty IT management software that's installed on an appliance inside their firewall. The advantage of appliance-based delivery is that it's easy to use, and because support is cheaper, the cost is cheaper than traditional software. KACE and Levanta are two companies that come to mind that are tackling this space.

Whether through open source, appliance-based delivery or other distribution methods, I look forward to seeing my IT friends a lot more at weekend BBQ's.

Posted by Harper Mann on November 20, 2006 01:26 PM

November 14, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Working With Open Source Developers and Communities

TAGS: Open Source

Over the past few years, the amount of VC money pouring into the open source world has exploded. And I have had, at times, lingering concerns about how this money would be spent by the start-up vendors. I was hoping this wouldn't lead to the excessive spending and burn-rates of the late 90's.

But I have to say, it's been a very pleasant surprise to see open source vendors using their VC capital in creative ways to help developers and projects. As a result, developers have more incentive...and more input! Projects are getting better information from their users. And integration between various projects is getting easier as different project leads are given the chance to work with each other.

This was certainly true last week during the Monitoring SIG, organized by GroundWork Open Source in conjunction with BayLISA, the Bay Area's Large Installation Systems Administrators chapter. As I've mentioned before, network monitoring is complicated - so many of the IT operations directors appreciated this forum where they could work together to brainstorm, storyboard and plot the future path of development.

Another example of a creative open source community program is the OpenLogic Expert Community program. You might recognize OpenLogic as the open source management vendor that also provides support and indemnification on 160+ open source projects. In May, OpenLogic made some headlines because it said it would pay open source developers for 3rd tier support - and pay them with Xboxes upon request (this request was apparently not OpenLogic's idea - the idea came from the lead developers themselves).

Yet another example is from Funambol, the largest wireless open source project, which recently announced an innovative program called the Phone Sniper community program. This program provides incentives and recognition to community members for testing cell phones' ability to receive wireless data. Because of this program, already 150 phone models have been tested - which makes carrier open source adoption much more of a reality down the road.

So kudos to the organizations who are using their VC funding creatively and working closely with open source developers and communities - in the end, it's helping open source software take on some of the biggest IT challenges we face today.

Posted by Harper Mann on November 14, 2006 10:18 AM

November 03, 2006 | Comments: (0)

New Special Interest Group Focuses on Open Source Monitoring

TAGS: IT Community

Events like LinuxWorld highlight the capabilities of hot open source projects, but what of the times in-between these big gatherings? Smaller, more consistent special interest groups allow for focused, idea-driven interactions and offer a deeper look into relevant issues. Frankly, they are more effective at contributing to and preserving particular segments of the open source culture for which intricacies crucial to advancement might be overlooked in larger settings. Open source monitoring now has its own special interest group, Monitoring SIG, organized by GroundWork Open Source in conjunction with BayLISA, the Bay Area's Large Installation Systems Administrators chapter.

Monitoring the network is difficult -- the potential for capturing too much or too little information is high, and without the right tools, it's easy to flood the system or to miss crucial elements. Word of the flexibility, ease, clarity, and lower cost of open source monitoring projects has spread fast, so open source tools are establishing themselves as desirable alternatives to traditional proprietary solutions. RRDTool and MRTG allow for easier collection of the right amount of data from a higher number of network devices. Ganglia monitors different aspects of the network with little strain to the network. Cacti offers clear and sophisticated graphing and charting capabilities. The list of quality open source monitoring projects goes on and on.

A monitoring-oriented group provides a forum for thought leaders to brainstorm, storyboard and plot the future path of development,

The well-attended inaugural Monitoring SIG event in San Francisco last month included IT staff from Cisco and the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center among others.

"What's exciting is that interested people can meet and explore issues in the field itself as well as the possibilities of their own technology and the technology of others," said Peter Mui, community manager of GroundWork Open Source. "This next meeting is focused around mapping out the monitoring space. It will be a kind of 'show-and-tell' of monitoring tools that will give attendees a chance to champion or rant about monitoring projects that have had experience with."

The next Monitoring Sig event takes place in San Francisco on November 8. The invitation to attend is open to all and most importantly, food will be provided. For more information, visit BayLISA's website.

Posted by Harper Mann on November 3, 2006 11:23 AM