Open Sources | Rodrigues & Urlocker » OpenLogic: Not your father's stack provider

February 27, 2007 | Comments: (0)

OpenLogic: Not your father's stack provider

TAGS: Open Source

I spent some time talking with Steven Grandchamp, CEO of OpenLogic, today, and am very glad I did. I've been operating under a two-years old understanding of OpenLogic's business, and it's time for an upgrade.

OpenLogic is not a "stack provider." Rather, it provides a gateway to a high-quality library of open source projects, certified to work together, with the ability to apply and enforce policies around adoption and deployment of those projects.

Interestingly, OpenLogic's technology isn't solely applicable to open source. It actually allows enterprises to extend the OpenLogic library with open source or proprietary modules (applications/databases/whatever) that they prefer. Enterprises, for example, may be an Oracle shop, and don't want to allow their engineers to deploy MySQL, PostgreSQL, Ingres, or whatever. They could pull out the open source databases and hook in the Oracle database, such that internal users will only be able to apply the corporate policy around Oracle adoption.

I asked Steven how enterprises determine that they need OpenLogic at all. Typically, enterprises don't come to OpenLogic with a particular project in mind. Rather, open source has already found its way into the organization, and it's trying to find a way to effectively manage the open source IT that's already there.

(I've told many the story before about a trip down to Austin to speak to the IT workers of the State of Texas. The general counsel spoke before me, and cautioned everyone to avoid open source until they had a policy in place. When she left, I asked for a raise of hands of people already actively using open source within the State. ~85% of the hands went up.)

So, the enterprise has a choice when confronted with unchanneled open source adoption: they can rip it out (because they don't have SLAs for the open source software, or may have policies that mitigate against its adoption), or they can legitimize and manage it. Most choose the latter. And an increasing number are choosing to do so with OpenLogic. (I'm frankly very impressed by its customer base.)

Once enterprises open the door to sanctioned use of open source through OpenLogic, OpenLogic finds that adoption spreads like wildfire (as "secret" projects come out of the woodwork to be "blessed" by using a managed, trusted source for open source). I really like the fact that OpenLogic serves as an enabler to widespread open source adoption. It's not a gatekeeper so much as a key to the gate that years of FUD have put in the way of open source.

So, who buys from OpenLogic? AT&T, General Motors, Wacker, IBM, Lockheed Martin, and others. And why? Because they're looking for one of the following four things:

1. Trusted source for open source (see above);
   
2. Policy - An enterprise might want an overarching policy for auditing and managing its open source use;
   
3. Support - Enterprises are used to having SLAs on the products they buy, and so may have a hard time
   
4. Upgrades - Enterprises may be struggling to manage the upgrade process for so many moving parts.

Today, OpenLogic's primary competition is RYO (roll your own). But RYO may work for sophisticated enterprises with massive IT budgets, but I'm guessing that it will be less applicable to the early and late majorities of open source adopters.

I'm upgrading my outlook on OpenLogic to "Buy" from "Neutral." I really like what they're doing. This is a company worth watching.

Posted by Matt Asay on February 27, 2007 12:49 PM

RATE THIS ARTICLE: