Open Sources | Rodrigues & Urlocker » Yet another alliance (OSA)

February 14, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Yet another alliance (OSA)

TAGS: Open Source

Yet another industry alliance has formed (Open Solutions Alliance), in the tradition of OSDL. This one, however, promises not to fail where OSDL did (i.e., it will not focus on just one technology) because it will provide

"...business level advocacy. We need to talk to sets of customers about open source applications, make them aware of what's out there."

Thus spake Barry Klawans to Dana.

It's not a bad goal. My problem with the premise is that I haven't met any enterprises that need help buying into open source. Quite the opposite. The problem we're having is managing growth, not sparking it. If the solution to be solved is customers buying into open source applications, then there is no problem at all. And I do mean at all.

CIO Insight reports that

• 81% of companies have deployed or are considering deploying open source applications;
  
• 72% plan to expand its use
  
• 65% say open source has sparked innovation within their IT

Other reports put open source adoption numbers even higher.

Is there a problem here?

SugarCRM is doubling its revenues this year (selling open source applications) and is increasingly selling to Fortune 500 companies. Alfresco is quadrupling its revenues (selling open source applications). Zimbra is now at 6 million paid users (of open source applications). MySQL (not really an apps company, but...) is knocking the cover off the ball. Same with Red Hat (more than doubled JBoss revenues last year...around open source applications). And MuleSource (will probably have the best first year of any open source company ever). Apparently, the OSA is trying to solve other problems besides open source application adoption, because that is going strong. I can't imagine it going any better.

Don't believe me/vendors or the analysts? Ask the customers. How about E*Trade? Or H&R Block? Or Starbucks?

Customers are buying open source applications en masse. There is no problem here.

If there were a problem, and if that problem were interoperability, then surely the manner described to Matthew Aslett is wrong-headed:

According to Harvey, one of the advantages of any company joining the OSA will be that they get to partner instantly with several open source application vendors, rather than having to pick them off one by one.

"It encourages a broader vision and broader effort. By doing it formally it brings a structure and formality to the exercise," he said, noting that for the open source vendors there is also potentially strength in numbers.

With all due respect, the strength a vendor has is in its numbers of customers, not number of partners (and paper partners, at that - you don't immediately become interoperable with anyone by signing a piece of paper). The sort of thinking that the quotation above belies is troubling: why partner with those companies that are actually useful to your business when you can sign one document and immediately have loads of friends?

In my world, there are one or two of the involved companies that are helpful to my customers' interests. We already have partnerships with them, and will continue to feed those partnerships. Anything else would be unnecessary noise. An open source company must run lean, and leanness requires a near-maniacal focus on customers.

So, let me repeat: There is only one constituency that matters in all this:

Customers.

Open source application vendors that focus on customers, not committees, will continue to do well. To the extent that this industry group does the same, I hope it thrives. But I've rarely seen customers well-served by committees. That's why we decided not to join.

All that said, I really do hope this does well. I certainly don't think it will do any harm, as long as it can stop repeating the mantra that the goal is to help drive customer adoption of open source applications. I can't imagine adoption going any stronger.

Don't believe me? Come to the Open Source Business Conference to hear how Wal-Mart, Sony, Bank of America, H&R Block, Hi5, Credit Suisse, Davis Polk Wardwell LLP, The Christian Science Monitor, AIG, etc. etc. are using open source (many of them using open source applications like SugarCRM, Alfresco, Zimbra, Jive, MuleSource, etc.).

Posted by Matt Asay on February 14, 2007 06:35 AM

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