- (Sort of) Open Source (Half) Marathon
- Apache Guru Greg Stein Mugged
- Interesting Graph from Port25
- Defining OSS Community Roles - Why the Fuss?
- Supply and Demand Among DBAs
- WGA Server Outage Says Little About SaaS
- Microsoft Project Replacement?
- Does the FSF have teeth vs. Microsoft?
- Fake Larry Ellison Blog
- SUN = JAVA?
August 31, 2007 | Comments: (0)
(Sort of) Open Source (Half) Marathon
Ok, this is definitely off topic, but...
There's a podcast I listen to regularly called Phedipidations. If that name rings a bell, maybe it's because you're a runner. If not, maybe you want to skip the rest of this posting.
At any rate, Steve Runner, a Network Analyst who produces Phedipidations weekly, along with a few of his 10 listeners ;-) are organizing the second annual Phedipidations Half Marathon Challenge. It's a race that takes place more-or-less around October 13-14 in whatever location you like. The cost? Zero. Nada. Zip. Just sign up. Run the race. And then post your results. If you want to raise funds for a charity you can do that, but there's no obligation.
If you're looking for an excuse to train for a half marathon, or even a 5k, this is a nice way to get motivated and meet friends online. There are over 500 people signed up from more than 30 countries worldwide. There are also training plans available on line, forums and plenty of friendly runners to encourage you.
October 14 is also the time of several other half and full marathons around the world, so if you want to run along with a group at an organized road race, you can do that too. I plan on running the San Jose Rock 'n' Roll Marathon and I hope to talk a few MySQLers into running with me. Whether in San Jose or at their own home location.
Strictly speaking, Phedipidations and the WorldWide Half Marathon aren't really Open Source according to the OSI definition, but I think there's some parallels here: It's a distributed community-led grassroots project that's free of charge. And it's pretty cool. What more could you ask for? If you're not ready to run a 5k or Half Marathon but are still interesting in running, check out the Phedip podcast. You can get it on itunes, podshow, or direct at www.steverunner.com.
Posted by Zack Urlocker on August 31, 2007 09:23 AM
August 30, 2007 | Comments: (0)
I picked this story up from Kevin Burton's feedblog. It turns out that last week, Greg Stein, director of the Apache Foundation was mugged outside his home in Mountain View. Greg was already on crutches at the time so this is a double whammy.
Kevin organized a paypal account to for donations raising more than $2500. That money will go towards getting Greg a little R&R in Tahoe or Big Sur.
Nice work, Kevin. Greg, get well soon! We'll send over a MySQL care package or some meals or some tech support. Whatever helps you get back on your feet.
Posted by Zack Urlocker on August 30, 2007 09:33 PM
August 30, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Bryan Kirschner over at Port25 has a very interesting graph:
What does the graph show? According to Bryan:
"It’s showing Microsoft’s reported fiscal year revenue, which grew to $51.122B USD in 2007 from $6.075B in 1995....
During most of this time, we didn’t have Codeplex.
We didn’t have licenses submitted to the OSI.
We didn’t have Port 25.
We didn’t have Bill Hilf, or Sam Ramji, or the rest of the OSS lab.
And we didn’t have http://microsoft.com/opensource.And Microsoft and open source did grow..."
Dude, couldn't you create a fancy 3rd chart in PowerPoint or something?!? :-)
All kidding aside, great point Bryan!! (And one I’ve been making about the impact of OSS to the application server market that is near and dear to my heart/pay cheque)
Just imagine the possibilities as Microsoft continues to get "more OSS religion". I'm not saying Gates is going to don a Penguin suit. But if you think Microsoft isn't going to use OSS to drive their business forward (in some way), then you're underestimating one of the largest and most successful businesses of all time.
Don’t let history cloud the possibilities at Microsoft’s disposal.
Microsoft may not always play as fairly with OSS as some would like, but rest assured that Microsoft isn’t going to walk off the pitch.
PS: I should state: "The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions."
Posted by Savio Rodrigues on August 30, 2007 11:21 AM
August 30, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Defining OSS Community Roles - Why the Fuss?
Sun's Simon Phipps posted about the different roles/stakeholders in an OSS community. Phipps states:
"I'll be using this model in the coming months within Sun to advise our engineering, marketing and management teams on their community engagements..."
These are the 4 groups Phipps starts with:
- Originators (originating co-developers)
- Extenders (extending co-developers)
- Deployer-developers
- Users
Initially, I contributed minor points to the discussion. This morning I wondered if the discussion is completely necessary. Back when we were doing the Gluecode acquisition, we had to put together a "few" charts educating our execs and the broader team on the stakeholders in the OSS market. That was over 2 years ago. Are there really folks at Sun who don't "get OSS" today? And if there are, shouldn't these folks have been "educated" prior to Sun open sourcing their software portfolio? Maybe Simon is pointing out that things have changed in the OSS market since and he'd like everyone at Sun (and in the market) to work from the same definitions.
In any case, take a look at Simon's definitions and add/subtract to them as you see fit.
PS: I should state: "The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions."
Posted by Savio Rodrigues on August 30, 2007 09:38 AM
August 30, 2007 | Comments: (0)
One of the frequent requests we've heard from MySQL customers in the last year is the need for more certified DBAs. That's one of the reasons we kicked off some seminars earlier this month to help train Oracle DBAs in MySQL. According to the IOUG more than one third of the Oracle users are also running MySQL. But as with any new technology, they don't always have the in-house skills they need. So we did a test run of a couple of "DBA Bootcamp" seminars in New York and San Francisco to train Oracle DBAs in how to use MySQL. It wasn't an "in your face" type of campaign or stunt. We weren't asking anyone to switch from one system to another, rather just explaining how things work. Putting MySQL in Oracle terms, if you will.
The response was overwhelmingly positive. There's a good posting over at the Pythian blog by Paul Vallee on "Why Oracle or SQL Server DBAs probably want to learn MySQL." Paul makes the succinct observation that MySQL is their fastest growing practice. Further he states:
The point I want you to take away from that is simply this: there are about five to ten times more high-value environments running MySQL in the world today than there were three years ago... Together, this means that the population of database administrators that IT managers want to manage their high-value MySQL databases is limited to those DBAs that were already running MySQL three or five years ago. Which is too few to satisfy market demand by a factor of five to ten times.
In other words, it's a pretty marketable skill. I suspect the same is true for most open source infrastructure. If you know MySQL, Apache, PHP, JBoss, Struts, Spring, Hibernate, etc, you will find yourself in heavy demand. But you've got to have real world experience with production systems. Getting certified is a good way to prove your chops.
We will be making available online versions of the DBA Bootcamp seminar in the coming weeks. And based on the interest, we've also lined up some new seminars in September for software ISVs and OEMs in the DC and Boston areas. The morning session focuses on the business reasons behind using open source to reduce product risk; the afternoon session is more focused on technical aspects of performance tuning.
Posted by Zack Urlocker on August 30, 2007 04:46 AM
August 29, 2007 | Comments: (0)
WGA Server Outage Says Little About SaaS
We've all read about the Windows Genuine Advantage server outage. Dvorak used the event to raise concerns about SaaS.
"All this proves is that these Web-based applications cannot be trusted."
I am by far the biggest supporter of SaaS, but I do see it as a market inevitability.
The WGA outage proves that when you don't design a system for five or six 9's uptime, you won't magically get that level of availability. As web apps move from "good enough" to "business critical", these types of outages will be outliers.
Here's another Dvorak conclusion:
"What is often lost in individual analyses of how to proceed with your data-processing needs is the concept of "being at the mercy of a single company." "
If you work for a medium to large enterprise, it's very likely that ADP, one of the oldest SaaS providers in the world, handles your payroll. Your company is very likely at the "mercy of a single company, ADP, when it comes to processing your bi-weekly salary and paying you on time". And yet businesses choose to use ADP.
Staying with the ADP example: I find it somewhat amusing that "fear of data loss or risk of your data being mistakenly viewed by a competitor in a multi-tenant SaaS environment" are inhibitors to broader SaaS adoption. Isn't your employee's salary & privacy concerns just as important as your customer lists or sales records? Sadly, maybe the answer is no.....
In any case, SaaS isn't going anywhere. It's been here for decades. A few SaaS-related outages simply make the case for more mainframes! ;-)
PS: I should state: "The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions."
Posted by Savio Rodrigues on August 29, 2007 08:54 PM
August 29, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Microsoft Project Replacement?
Many years ago, I wrote a very simple project management system that did PERT and Gantt charts on Windows 3.1. It was mostly an exercise for me to learn object-oriented programming on Windows, so I just did the basics, nothing fancy.
I've noticed that most project management software is either way too complicated or so superficial as to be nearly useless. (Ok, my efforts were definitely in the latter category.) So a lot of folks I know use Microsoft Project, but few of them seem to be in love with it.
So I was interested to learn about an open source alternative called OpenProj from Projity. They offer the software as a desktop version and also as a hosted on-demand version.
The software is still beta, and Java source is available on sourceforge. It's published under the CPAL open source license and runs on Windows, Linux and Mac and is supposed to open existing Microsoft Project files. I haven't tested it yet, but if others have feedback, please post comments here.
Posted by Zack Urlocker on August 29, 2007 04:47 PM
August 28, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Does the FSF have teeth vs. Microsoft?
Reading Matt's blog today, I found this press release (via Groklaw) from the FSF.
The title says it all: "Microsoft cannot declare itself exempt from the requirements of GPLv3"
We discussed this a little bit on a previous post. I was corrected that the FSF wouldn't lead the legal battle, but that the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) would. If you recall, I'd looked into the finances of both organizations. SFLC had $509k in assets as of 2005, and the FSF had about $892k in assets as of 2006. (Note: the year for the FSF data wasn't completely clear).
In the comments to Roy & others, I'd pointed out that Microsoft is essentially saying GPLv3 does not apply to the deal with Novell and now it's up to the FSF/SFLC to respond.
Today’s press release appears to the part of the reply. Matt suggests that:
"Microsoft is in no position to determine which open-source licenses it respects. If it distributes software under the GPLv3, it is bound to abide by its terms. Period. End of story.I suspect that if Microsoft pushes this issue, it will find a long list of people happy to fund the FSF's lawsuits against Microsoft."
Without any insider knowledge on this topic, I'll predict that there will be few large vendors (with deep pockets) rushing to generously support the FSF/SFLC in this battle versus Microsoft. There may be individuals who donate to such a cause. Current vendor patrons may even donate for the sake of optics. But I find it difficult to believe that large IT vendors will see this as a good investment of their donations.
Do we really believe that Microsoft is going to sue customers using versions of Linux other than SUSE? I don't. Whatever you think about Microsoft, they're not the RIAA. At best, the FSF/SFLC would be able to ensure that Microsoft "truly" / "legally" (whichever you prefer) extends patent protection to any Linux user or customer. If you discount the FUD, aren't we there already since Microsoft isn’t about to sue individuals or customers? At worst, the Microsoft legal team could work to invalidate the GPLv3. I don't want to create FUD here, since the FSF states that the GPL has been tested in a court of law. But don't think that the clever lawyers at Microsoft will lie down and get run over. Whether the Microsoft legal team is successful in their defense or not is a different question.
Yes, I know, it sucks to think of the situation in this way. We'd like to see Microsoft "pay for their treatment of OSS". But when you look at the cost / benefit ratio, I believe it is not in the interest of IT vendors to back the FSF/SFLC in this battle vs. Microsoft.
But I'm not a lawyer, so what do I know?
UPDATE:
Notes from Ed Burnette's post today re. GPLv3 & Microsoft:
GPLv3 states:
".....unless you entered into that arrangement, or that patent license was granted, prior to 28 March 2007."
Ed states:
"So clearly, GPLv3 will have no effect on the MS/Novell agreement, which was completed in 2006."
And:
"My guess is, it’ll never come to that, because both sides would be afraid of losing and setting a precedent."
Score 2 for the non lawyers :-)
PS: I should state: "The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions."
Posted by Savio Rodrigues on August 28, 2007 12:08 PM
August 24, 2007 | Comments: (0)
A few months back, the Fake Steve Jobs (FSJ) blog was making its around the internet. It's a reasonably funny satire that shines a light on technology CEOs and Silicon Valley in general. It's funnier than it sounds as you read Steve ranting about Linux, the iPhone, IBM and more. As it turns out, the FSJ blog was written by Dan Lyons of Forbes magazine, and he is publishing a book called "Options: The Secret Life of Steve Jobs (A Parody)".
Fake Steve Jobs had Fake Larry Ellison manage his blog for a couple of weeks when FSJ was on vacation during the summer and now there's a full blown Fake Larry Ellison blog. I don't know who is writing this one, but I think it's even funnier than the FSJ blog. He rants about MySQL, Apple and Paris Hilton.
Here's a typical comment about MySQL from Fake Larry Ellison:
"The first thing we tell new hires is that they shouldn't install or use MySQL under any circumstances. But accidents happen. And we understand that. Sometimes people are duped into doing stupid things like installing malicious and useless applications that are harmful to themselves and others... We're granting employees amnesty today and today only. Give us your computers, people. We'll purge the evil and put you back on the straight and narrow. Because after today, Safra gets to deal with you. And believe me, you really don't want to see her when she's got a whip in her hands."
I think this is quite funny. I also have a lot of respect for anyone who can write satire on an ongoing basis. It's not as easy as it looks. As has been said, "Dying is easy. Comedy is hard." Whoever is writing this one, keep it up!
Posted by Zack Urlocker on August 24, 2007 01:43 AM
August 23, 2007 | Comments: (0)
I'm sure someone with better insight than I (evil Geir?) thought this was a great idea.
Schwartz states:
"Most know Java, few know Sun - we can bring the two one step closer."
I don't understand why Sun would want to market the fact that while they "own" Java, IBM, Oracle, BEA and even JBoss have all built & grown middleware businesses of varying size with Java. Sun on the other hand was never able to gain any traction in the middleware market. Imagine if Sun had to play from a level field....
To be fair, Sun may drive substantial revenue from licensing Java to devices etc. I've never seen that revenue figure, but that shouldn't mean it's not substantial (or that it is).
I wonder what will happen when the next "killer language" comes out. At one time, COBOL and C/C++ held the same marketplace position that Java does today. In the technology market, nothing ever dies completely, but nothing ever remains on top forever.
This seems oddly similar to companies that added an "e-" or ".com" to their company name in the early 2000s.
Well, good luck with that,
Sincerely,
e-Savio.com Inc.
PS: I should state: "The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions."
Posted by Savio Rodrigues on August 23, 2007 05:29 PM
August 21, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Free open source legal training webinar
Jason Haislmaier from Holme, Roberts & Owens LLP is doing a free legal session about open source and "copyleft" on August 29.
Here are the details:
What: 1-hour session covering open-source legal issues (e.g., What counts as software distribution? Implications of GPLv3? etc.)
When: August 29, 2007. 11:00 AM Eastern Time (8:00 PDT / 16:00 GMT)
How: Please register at https://www.gotomeeting.com/register/827387528.
Cost: Free, as in open source. :-)
This is a great chance to talk with one of the leading minds on open source law. No cost and no obligation. Just a useful knowledge share. You don't have to be an attorney - this is for those of novice to intermediate-level understanding of open-source legal issues.
Posted by Dave Rosenberg on August 21, 2007 02:18 PM
August 21, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Add-On Services to Open Source
Stephen O'Grady, analyst over at RedMonk, has a good posting on how open source companies are coming up with new revenue streams based on automated services. As Stephen points out, we've gone from "How can you make money from open source?" to "How do you make more money?" With companies like Red Hat, MySQL and others, the first question has largely been answered. But there are many ways to skin a cat, so it's worth considering what additional ways open source companies can make money.
Stephen gives examples of value-added services including Red Hat Network, Red Hat Exchange, MySQL Monitoring service, Ubuntu Landscape. These go beyond the traditional support model to provide additional insights through automated rules and/or collective knowledge. I think this is an area of opportunity for many open source companies. Can you tap into the collective experience of users to provide best practices? Can you provide management facilities that make open source more accessible and easier? Can you automate the tuning and maintenance of complex systems to minimize the labor costs associated with using your software? In my view, these are all good areas to investigate.
Disclosure: I bought Stephen a beer at Oscon... ;-)
Posted by Zack Urlocker on August 21, 2007 04:25 AM
August 20, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Building Customer Trust with OSS
I was reading this BusinessWeek article about the recent financial market mess:
"If you don't trust the value of an asset, you won't be willing to buy it no matter how cheap your borrowing costs are....What brings this to an end, ultimately, is better information and transparency."
Apply this idea to the software market, and more specifically, to the software acquisition process.
OSS provides transparency as the code is available in the open. OSS can also be more transparent than Traditional software depending on whether future product discussions happen in the open.
OSS can also provide better information by allowing potential customers to use the product before purchasing support, (or running without support).
Better information and transparency build trust. It goes without saying that building trust was, and remains, a key hurdle for startups. The fact that OSS can help build customer trust explains why so many enterprise software startups choose to incorporate OSS into their business model. Historically, a brand has been the embodiment of the level of trust that a customer places in a vendor's products. For startups, their brand has yet to be associated with a level of customer expectations. Hence, building trust through better information and transparency is vital to success.
Enterprise software startups can gain customer trust without going down the OSS route. Free (but not open source) software and trials are two alternatives. One could argue that shareware has been around for decades, and yet hasn't helped the average enterprise software vendor build customer trust in the way that OSS does. There is clearly a transparency benefit (via the source) that helps build customer trust faster than free (but closed) software or trialware does.
A question I've been thinking about but haven't fully developed an answer: Can a vendor drive more revenue by:
- Distributing 10 million copies of an OSS product and then trying to convert 0.001%-0.01% of the user base into paying support customers
- Marketing & selling a commercial (non-OSS) product which is able to attract 10,000 paying customers (maybe using a SaaS model?)
Thoughts?
PS: I should state: "The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions."
Posted by Savio Rodrigues on August 20, 2007 11:37 AM
August 20, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Input for Microsoft on Mix 2008
A buddy of mine from Borland days, Ben Riga, is helping to drive the content for Microsoft's Mix '08 conference. He's looking for input on what would make Mix attractive to startups and venture capitalists.
To be honest, I haven't seen a lot of startups using the Microsoft stack in recent years. I'm sure there are plenty, but it seems at least at first glance, there's far more innovation happening over on the LAMP stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) and with other emerging languages like Ruby on Rails, Scala, etc. Still there's no reason that Windows as a platform couldn't be part of this.
Microsoft has developed partnerships with some of the open source vendors including Zend, MySQL, SugarCRM to make sure that these systems work well on Windows. So my advice to Microsoft is to really continue to be an open platform for at least the AMP part of LAMP and show that developers can use whatever mix of open and closed source that they want. Otherwise, the default assumption is that developers interested in Open Source should ignore the Windows platform completely, and I think that would be a mistake. We certainly see lots of developers downloading MySQL for Windows and taking advantage of the integration with Visual Studio. Windows is our #2 platform for MySQL. But the message from Microsoft continues to be somewhat mixed.
Maybe the Mix conference should be clear on whether Windows is an open platform that supports open source technology or whether in Microsoft's view it's meant to be an "all Microsoft" closed platform.
Let me know your thoughts on this. Better yet, let Ben know...
Posted by Zack Urlocker on August 20, 2007 08:43 AM
August 17, 2007 | Comments: (0)
SourceFire, which has built a good business commercializing the open source SNORT intrusion detection system has now acquired ClamAV, the leading open source anti-virus software. This is a good move for SourceFire and helps them expand their footprint into an adjacent area.
They acquired all of ClamAV's intellectual property including the brand name, trademarks, copyrights and also ensured they have the top developers on board. Seems like a good strategic fit and should provide customers with "one stop shopping."
Posted by Zack Urlocker on August 17, 2007 03:35 PM
August 17, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Is Sun Exiting the Server Business?
Dana's post on the Sun & IBM deal has two very interesting statements:
"This is part of Sun’s exit strategy from the server business."
And:
"In many ways, Sun is becoming Red Hat."
On the conference call, Schwartz & Zeitler spoke about early work to get Solaris running on IBM mainframes. This work is very early and nothing may come of it, but it was apparently kicked off because of customer requests. Keep in mind that RHEL & SLES both run on IBM mainframes already. Maybe Dana's right; Sun is becoming Red Hat.
Dana's prediction on Sun's server exit centers on:
Why stay in the hardware business with X percent profit margins when the software business has nearly 3X the profit margins? (Based on IBM results - See pg. 27/124 )
With KKR's investment in Sun, this is a question I'm sure has been asked. However, such decisions are never so cut and dry. The majority of Sun's revenue comes from their hardware business. I wasn't able to find a HW/SW/Services split of Sun's revenue. If you take their FY06 revenue of $13.068B and use IDC's estimate of 2006 Sun software revenue you end up with a little less than 15% of total revenue is driven by Software. What's more, the majority of Sun software revenue is attached to Sun hardware. While deals like this one with IBM will help to reduce the SW+HW linkage, I suspect Sun software revenues will remain largely (85%+ ?) driven from Sun hardware. Remember that Schwartz claims that Sun isn't a hardware company, they are a System's company. If Sun's goal is to be a System’s company, then there is no way they can "exit the server business".
I think that this deal is simply Sun's realization that Solaris is a valuable asset that has been tied to Sun hardware for the most part. This would be fine if the market only used Sun hardware. According to Gartner estimates, in 1Q07, Sun's server share was 10.3% of the total market spending. Remember when Apple came out with iTunes & the iPod for Apple systems only and then expanded to support Windows to address a larger market. Same story here; it just took a little longer for Sun to consider expanding the market reach of Solaris.
So, maybe Sun is becoming Apple? Nah ;-)
PS: I should state: "The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions."
Posted by Savio Rodrigues on August 17, 2007 08:43 AM
August 16, 2007 | Comments: (0)
IBM to OEM Solaris on x86 Servers
I really try not to write about IBM news but this one is more about Sun than IBM.....
IBM & Sun announced:
"IBM will distribute the Solaris Operating System and Solaris Subscriptions for select x86-based IBM System x servers and BladeCenter servers to clients through IBM's routes to market."
This definitely sounds like Sun isn't competing with Red Hat ;-) Note that I believe that there is nothing wrong with Sun (or anyone) competing with Red Hat. Competition is good for customers and good for vendors.
The deal is essentially an OEM relationship in which IBM sells the hardware and, based on customer requirements, could sell Linux, Windows or Solaris. If customers choose Solaris, the support subscription is delivered by Sun. IBM is compensated by Sun for their part in driving the sale of the Solaris support subscription. Note that the deal is different than what IBM or HP are currently doing with Solaris on x86. Yesterday, neither IBM, nor, HP were able to OEM or sell support subscriptions to Solaris on x86 servers. Today (well in 90 days apparently?), IBM becomes the only OEM vendor for Solaris on x86.
I was pleasantly surprised to hear Schwartz and Zeitler (IBM) that this deal is about customer choice. A few questions on the conference call asked:
"Won't this deal increase the likelihood of an IBM HW customer who chooses Solaris to later move to Sun hardware? Or a Solaris customer who chooses IBM HW to later choose AIX or Linux?"
The answer from Sun & IBM was:
"You're better off to meet customers with solutions that they are seeking versus trying to restrict the customer to one stack or another".
Choice is a wonderful thing.
PS: I should state: "The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions."
Posted by Savio Rodrigues on August 16, 2007 11:52 AM
August 15, 2007 | Comments: (0)
What the XenSource acquisition says about Citrix
I was quite busy at work today so I'm only catching up on blog reading now. My arch nemesis has been busy :-) BTW, when do you do your day job? Can I get a job at Alfresco???? :-)
Kidding aside....Matt says:
"$500 million is a hefty premium given XenSource's revenues, which were still pretty modest (less than $10 million in 2007 and almost $0 in 2006). Citrix, in other words, paid a massive premium (50-500X (!!!)) for the brand and position that XenSource presumably has with the Xen hypervisor."
Couldn't agree with him more. Citrix overpaid. It happens. But this is 100% because XenSource is a virtualization vendor. If, we were talking about the CRM marketplace, I'll wager a dinner that the multiple would have been an order of magnitude less. With VMware worth over $21B, I'm sure I could sell my in-law’s dog for several thousands by renaming him Virtualization Beagle.
By the way, how many of you have heard or thought about Citrix in the past 5 years? Did anyone know they have revenues over one billion dollars? Exactly. This acquisition is as much a reason for Citrix to get back in the public/customer/investor eye as it is about a technology acquisition. Don't be surprised if Citrix gets acquired by a larger vendor down the road. Using this deal to assigning a high multiple to OSS is, if you ask me, wishful thinking.
In another post Matt quotes a friend of his who said the following about what the Citrix deal means:
"It is about having new technology in the arsenal to go after older competitors that have not revamped their technology. The lack of investment in technology by both start-ups and the established players in the early part of the decade is now catching up with them by making them exposed to new, open source entrants that were able to survive in the shadows of the dinosaurs."
This comment just didn't fell right. Is it really true that open source entrants have new whiz bang technology that larger software vendors couldn't replicate because the larger vendors hadn't spend enough on R&D in 2000-2003?. Here's what the financial numbers show:
Yes, R&D spending was lower in 2000 & 2001, but investments picked up quite quickly thereafter, so I doubt this has a material impact on competitive positions in 2007 vs. OSS.
Correct me if I'm wrong but wouldn't it take a lot less than $500M to develop competing technology to Xen. Alternatively, it's open source, so Citrix could have forked Xen and had the technology for next to free. However, building a competitive offering or forking Xen would not deliver the user base of Xen, the linkage with RHEL/SUSE or the Linux kernel in the future. Tell me that this deal had to do with acquiring a brand and a user base / widely distributed technology. Don't tell me this is about innovation that can't be matched by larger Traditional vendors.
To be fair, in a previous post Matt did suggest that the deal was driven by brand & 'ownership position' of Xen. I'm not sure why he leapt to the conclusion the deal had anything to do with technology innovation.
PS: I should state: "The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions."
[UPDATE] PPS: Raven Zachary from 451 Group agrees re. reading too much into the multiple.
Posted by Savio Rodrigues on August 15, 2007 08:46 PM
August 15, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Citrix Acquires XenSource for $500m
Following fast on the heals of VMWare's successful IPO earlier in the week, Citrix has announced the acquisition of XenSource for a cool $500 million. Considering that XenSource is less than three years old and has around $1 million in revenues, this is a staggering amount. But it shows that open source is a significant disruptor. My guess is that not only will XenSource generate enough payback for Citrix in the next few years but it enables Citrix to drive a new revenue stream that could take on Red Hat or even Microsoft.
I hope that Citrix lets XenSource run as an independent division, much like EMC ran VMWare, so that thaty can guide their own destiny while leveraging the sales operations and channels that Citrix has developed. Pretty exciting for both companies.
Posted by Zack Urlocker on August 15, 2007 08:00 PM
August 14, 2007 | Comments: (0)
I’m having a lot of difficulty understanding the debate surrounding MySQL’s decision to make their enterprise binaries and source less available than before. I was hoping that a few days into it I would get a better sense of the debate and why I was seeing the positions that are popping up.
I realized, though, that the context of the discussion is deeply entrenched within the traditional software business model. Furthermore, it is complicated by MySQL’s IPO plans.
I’ve seen people argue that MySQL is not as open, that MySQL is technically adhering to the GPL, that this is all about paying customers and on and on and on. I even got an email from someone today that claimed that MySQL is doing this because of revenue problems, which is probably the most nonsensical argument I’ve heard thus far.
Almost all of this comes from a mindset that MySQL is in the traditional database software business, requiring traditional proprietary software secrets and closed-source products in order to survive. I’ve long argued that open-source companies are not in the software business, they are in the support business. The problem is that no one knows how to value a support company; their experiences are all within the traditional, closed-source software businesses.
Hence, potential MySQL investors may ask how the IP is protected, and therefore, how their investments are protected, if it’s all open and just anyone can get it. Then we see MySQL make a change that allows them to adhere to the GPL and satisfy potentially nervous investors.
I believe the source-code has no value to the database consumer. The value is in MySQL’s ability to efficiently deliver a reliable product to its customer base and to service and support that customer base.
Perhaps we’re in a transitory state where we need to satisfy an investment population that is slow to move forward to new business models. Perhaps we’re unable to articulate, or maybe even understand, the new business models that we’re creating. Perhaps we’re just stuck in the group-think about how software companies are supposed to work.
At the end of the day I don’t see anything wrong with MySQL making it less efficient to get their binaries and source, then again I don’t understand why they would want to do that either. I don’t think that anyone can support MySQL, the product, as efficiently as MySQL, the company, and that’s the value they provide to their market and their investors. That’s the value all open-source companies should be providing for their products.
Posted by Dave Dargo on August 14, 2007 03:40 PM
August 14, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Does Adobe Want to be an Office Productivity Apps vendor?
It is funny how Matt and I can read the same article and come up with different conclusions.
I read this article and thought that Adobe's entry into the Office applications market has little to do with OSS or Open Standards, so no need to blog about it here.
Matt says:
"The only thing better would be if Adobe, Apple, and OpenOffice could get together....In fact, don't you think that it makes a lot of sense for Apple to acquire Adobe, given the similar corporate mentalities/competencies? Me, too.)"
Apple, likely the most closed vendor on the planet is supposed to be the "last great hope against Microsoft's Office franchise"? Maybe Matt is down to half a glass of OSS Kool-aid daily and doesn't care if he's supporting a Traditional or OSS vendor in the "good fight against Microsoft's hegemony".
All kidding aside, I can't wait to see what Adobe has in this market. I am a MS Office user. I tried OpenOffice and even Google Docs, but neither seemed to fit my needs vs. the tradeoffs to switch. I wonder if the problem is that OpenOffice and Google Docs feel like they were designed by developers. On the other hand, Adobe products feel like they were designed by designers. Watching an Adobe AIR demo or app created with AIR most of us think "ooh, ahh" (Note: I hate reading text on most Flash websites - I just needed to say that).
As Cote says in the Wired article:
"It's not a technical question, it's a cultural question,...All the geeks and everyone like myself would love to play around with an Office competitor from Adobe to see what that would be like. But when I talk to normal office workers who use Microsoft Office, they don't get all warm and tingly like I do with the prospect of different office software....People who use Microsoft Office are into using Microsoft Office."
How true.
It'll be interesting to see what Adobe does here. Putting on my strategy hat: Entering the Office Apps market is only a step towards their broader goal to drive extensive adoption of Flex and AIR. So, look for an open API that allows designers/developers/ISVs/customers to extend the Adobe Office suite. By expanding the reach of Flex & AIR, Adobe can sell tools (not just IDEs) to designers & developers that want to create AIR apps. In essence, AIR (and Flash before it) is a runtime environment just like the Java JDK and MS CLR. It just so happens that AIR is for client-side apps (vs. predominately server-side for JDK) that look sweet and deliver ease of use vs. traditional client-side apps (i.e. predominately MS CLR). As this occurs, I suspect that customers and vendors will start looking for a standards body around the AIR runtime technologies. So, maybe there is a Standards tie to this story after all :-)
Posted by Savio Rodrigues on August 14, 2007 01:36 PM
August 14, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Preamble: I am not a lawyer, though I often wish that I had gone to law school and not business school so that I could possibly explain open source licensing and how we've somehow made freely available software as complicated as telecom. The fact of the matter is that I don't enjoy the licensing discussions but they are a necessary evil.
Here is my self Q&A:
Q: Why make the switch from your custom MPL to CPAL?
There is no negative effect on our existing users, new users or customers. CPAL is nearly the same as our MSPL so we feel fine about the switch and are happy to be OSD compliant. Subscribers get a license that absolves them from all this open source stuff anyway.
Q: Why didn't you switch to GPLv3?
There are several reasons. First of all, we're not convinced that there is enough clarity about the way our software works (typical deployments have Mule touching 2 or more other applications via many different methods like JMS, web services etc.) to be able to accurately explain how derivative works are created. There are also a host of other wacky Java/integration aspects that are not totally clear. Under no circumstance do we want to stifle adoption of the product or upset the user community.
Second, we have components that are CPL and other random licenses that we bundle, which are questionably GPL compatible.
Third, our legal team hasn't had enough time to fully evaluate it--the patent part alone needs much more review.
Q: What do you think of GPLv3?
There are several good things—the fact that you can now mix Apache and MPL licenses is hugely helpful (though I am not convinced you can't do it with v2) the fact that the license is not file based is all good. I don't know that the patent stuff is great and I would say that the DRM stuff is entirely useless to me. Again, we're at this weird stage of commerce and freedom. It's hard to balance both.
Q: Does what the OSI says matter?
Good question. I am not totally sure. I do think there is value in an independent organization that reviews OSS license options but the struggle is that open source is at this crux of commerce and freedom and sad as it may be we probably need legal experts more than software developers to help define licenses.
The other part is that the OSI appears to be a shadow organization (even though it isn't) which makes it difficult to know how to deal with them. For example, when they declared war on MPL+ there weren't any suggestions as to what the companies using these derivatives should do or a suggested migration path. That said, we got help from Mark Radcliffe, Matt Asay and ultimately from Michael Tiemann.
Whether you like the CPAL or not you have to give credit to Ross Mayfield from Social Text for going through the enormous pain of getting the license approved. Of course now that Ross has suffered and paved the way we'll probably see a lot more licenses come down the pipe that pass by much quicker. Sadly, I expect we'll see more licenses not less.
Anything else?
Sure, thanks for asking.
1. Open source is thriving in big companies and governments. I can't even believe the uptake that is going on. My guess is that we will see big companies attempting to acquire heavily starting in Q1 2008. I think by that time the proprietary vendors will start to see their revenue slip and will want to act. Stay tuned.
2. Rarely if ever do licensing questions come up. As such the majority of this post is just wasted sleeping time.
3. We are still hiring like mad. LMK if you want a sales or marketing job.
Q: Why don't you blog much anymore?
Let's start with physical ailments: it started with carpal tunnel, then the blessed baby Jebus came along and she takes up all my non-work time. Add to that 2 incidents of throwing my back out and I don't much want to sit and type all day. I also think that cheap commentary is now readily available and am not sure I offer much else. That's why I support what Matt is doing at Cnet—it's much more editorial than a lot of blog crap but it also takes much more time which I simply don't have. I also don't feel like I have anything to prove (meaning the blog doesn't feed my ego like it used to and still does for other bloggers.) People forget that I wrote more than full-time for three years when I was in school, consulting, blogging and contributing to a variety of pubs all at the same time. The other day I had to google myself to figure out if I had written for Businessweek (turns out I did about a year ago...go figure.)
Let's not forget that I also run this company which is growing at an alarming rate.
Link: MuleSource Announces Adoption of CPAL
Posted by Dave Rosenberg on August 14, 2007 08:48 AM
August 14, 2007 | Comments: (0)
"I have to say the funniest things about your posts are: "The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions."I guess its indicative of you not working for an OSS company, like the other editors on here. ;-)"
I'm not sure if that is a compliment but I'll take whatever I can get :-)
I was going to reply in the comments, but thought how many of you read the comments?
I'm "required" to have such a disclaimer as per IBM's blogging guidelines. Most IBMers have that text on the "About" page or somewhere on the homepage as I do on my personal blog. At InfoWorld, I've started to add the text to my posts because I doubt anyone reads the About page.
But the main reason is that a well respected IT journalist suggested that I make my IBM connection clear on every post. I don't mind doing it because I don't want anyone to think I am an IBM marketing vehicle. Yes, my views are formed by the experiences I've had at and through IBM. But I try to speak my mind (i.e. my views on MySQL which may not be shared by every IBMer).
So, the disclaimer is partly attributed to IBM requirements, and partly because I am somewhat of an Alien (in the US immigration sense of the word) in the OSS vendor community. But mostly because nobody trusts Canadians. :-)
Posted by Savio Rodrigues on August 14, 2007 06:39 AM
August 13, 2007 | Comments: (0)
VMware IPO's tomorrow and is estimated to be oversubscribed by as much as 25x the number of shares available according to MorningNotes (via TheStreet.com).
The 33M share IPO at $29 will bring in $957M, and that's only for an 11% stake in VMware. EMC, who purchased VMware for $635M in 2004, will retain the majority of the remainder. I don't know if the Intel & Cisco investments in VMware are from the 11% or the 89%. In any case, at $29/share, the market is valuing VMware at $8.7B. (Just fyi, this would represent a 100%+ annual rate of return for EMC over the past 3.5 years). Considering the anticipation behind this IPO, it wouldn't be a surprise to see the value increase well into the $10B range before this week is up.
Now here's the fun facts:
- Founded in 1998
- Revenue increased 92% YTY in two most recent quarters
- On track to break $1B in revenue for the fiscal year (a little less than 9 years from founding)
To keep things in perspective, Red Hat was founded in 1994 and is expected to break $1B somewhere between 2010 and 2015 (based on High & Low revenue estimates from Financial Analysts). These two dates represent 16 & 21 years from the founding of Red Hat to hitting $1B in revenue. Yes, I understand that OSS drives revenues on a different timeline than Traditional software. But I doubt this matters much to an investor or a VC who is solely evaluating returns in the shortest period of time. Also, Red Hat's valuation/market cap is $4.21B today and was a maximum of $6.1B in the past.
The VMware valuation of $8.7B+ seems out of this world to me, but I hadn't realized that they were on track to hit $1B in revenues. It'll be interesting to see how VMware reacts to OSS virtualization alternatives. Investors don't seem too worried. But what do they know? :-)
In any case, the excitement around VMware's IPO indicates that the Traditional software market is alive, healthy and not going away anytime soon.
PS: I should state: "The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions."
Posted by Savio Rodrigues on August 13, 2007 07:46 PM
August 13, 2007 | Comments: (0)
One of the challenges open source companies have is that you serve two distinct markets: your customers as well as non-paying community users. Paradoxically, the non-paying users can be the most vocal and demanding. Matt Asay blogs about this as the "Open Source Community's Double Standard on MySQL." I had not thought about it quite the way Matt has framed the discussion, but his observations ring true to me.
Part of the issue is that often discussions about the business of open source is seen as a "zero sum game" between community users and paying customers, meaning that in order for one group to benefit, the other group must lose. To me this polarizes the discussion in an unhealthy way.
Our fundamental objective at MySQL is to grow both groups; that's what makes MySQL a disruptive (and to me exciting) company. Our business depends on having more and more paying customers. And our momentum in the overall software industry depends on having a bigger community of users, even if they do not pay us. We know that many people start off by using MySQL for free and then at some point their needs become serious enough that they become paying customers.
Our goal is to provide compelling reasons so that people will have a reason to buy something from us, while not alienating the users who have created the momentum and made MySQL popular.
I remain optimistic that there is a way to continue to add value to our paying customers without hurting community adoption or growth. I believe that there are issues around scale-out for large users where they are willing to "pay more to get more" if we can save them time and effort around managing, monitoring, tuning and administering large numbers of servers. That's been the idea behind the MySQL Enterprise offering and especially the Monitoring and Advisory service. It's getting a good reaction from customers without taking anything away from non-paying users. As Savio points out, as we are successful in our commercial business, it enables us to continue to invest in the open source community.
At this stage, I think we're all exploring different approaches to building open source businesses and communities. But the good news is, if we make mistakes along the way, folks will tell us.
Posted by Zack Urlocker on August 13, 2007 02:44 AM
August 10, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Another Reason Why MySQL Gets It
There has been some discussion about MySQL's recent moves to clarify the targeting between MySQL Community Server & MySQL Enterprise Server. Essentially, MySQL wants to make it clear(er) that Community Server is free and for those of us who are willing to "spend time to save money". Community Server is the version that will be made available to Linux distros and passed on to customers that use MySQL inside of their Linux distro without support. Enterprise server is for paying customers; those of you willing to "spend money to save time". The source for Enterprise Server will no longer be publicly available unless you are a paying customer. This is 100% in keeping with the GPL (as you have to provide source to the customers you provide the binaries to). There is nothing that prevents a paying MySQL Enterprise customer from posting the source for the broader community to see/use.
There was also a change in the way new features are applied to future source trees versus the current stable release. This is a good step forward although some users want the ability to apply patches to the current stable release to get new features faster. I guess these users still can, but the official MySQL Community Server will act more "Traditional software like" in its release cycles.
In further explaining the move to clearly differentiate between Community/Enterprise, Kaj Arno states:
"..a successful commercial company behind MySQL fuels the virtuous circle from which the community benefits in the form of new GPL features developed by MySQL AB."
Marten re-iterates this in comments to Mike Kruckenberg who disagreed with the move:
"I know I am biased, but I also happen to think that it is good for the community when MySQL AB has a well-functioning business model. With the money we make we can produce more GPL software."
I really like how Marten simplifies these types of decisions. He's simply saying: "if you want to get a great, free db, then you have to let us, MySQL AB, make money to pay for development, marketing, etc." If you, as a free user, think this is a bad decision, or that MySQL isn't acting OSSey enough, then consider the alternative. Imagine if MySQL AB can't grow or shrinks and you get a lower quality or less function rich free product down the road. Ah! but the community could take over and do a better job than MySQL AB, right? Anything is possible, but we should exclude edge cases and consider what is truly possible/probable. Can the community really do a better job (more cost effectively) than MySQL AB is doing with all of their resources?
Free is great, but for an OSS vendor, somebody needs to be paying or else the OSS vendor's employees can't pay their bills! There is no magic here.
PS: I should state: "The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions."
Posted by Savio Rodrigues on August 10, 2007 05:51 AM
August 09, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Insight on Sun's Open Source Strategy
Even as an IBMer, I must say that I admire Sun's Jonathan Schwartz. He helped Sun turn its back on Sun’s "kill the Penguin" stance that seemed so deep rooted a few years ago. (Remember that Linux hurt Unix more than Windows). He's a CEO of a multi-billion dollar company that blogs and has long hair. What's not to like?
Jonathan gives a good interview about Sun's open source strategy. He states:
"In a year where Sun arguably moved more aggressively to give away more free software than any other company, we grew our software business by 13 percent. It was the fastest-growing business at Sun (and doesn't even include Solaris, which we don't yet break out). "
"We distributed nine million licenses of Solaris in the last two years. ... How do we monetize these? When that technology is run in a Fortune 100 company in a mission-critical app, the CIO will hunt me down to pay me money. The cost of downtime for them is huge compared to the cost."
Sun appears to believe that building a base of free users will lead to future revenue as these users turn into paying customers. OSS vendors can tell us all about the difficulty of converting free users into paid customers. JBoss has over 10M downloads and about $30M in revenue. Maybe the Solaris conversion rates will be higher?
Matt writes (based on Jonathan's comments I assume):
"As he stressed, the open-source battle is not between Red Hat and Sun. They are allies. Red Hat and Sun both want open source to succeed, and both want this phenomenon that started at the edge of the network to define the entire computing landscape."
This is true on some fronts, like openoffice. But you can't tell me that RHEL doesn't compete with Solaris, or GlassFish with JBoss or Netbeans with Red Hat's development tools. One could argue this is a "grow the OSS pie" statement like Dave R. eloquently made previously. Considering that Solaris, the heart of Sun's software business, was nearly on life support due to Linux, I find it difficult to believe that openSolaris is about growing the OSS pie. I don't think there is anything wrong with openSolaris competing with Linux. Just don't tell me you're not competing.
It will be interesting to see Sun's progress over the next year or two.
PS: I should state: "The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions."
Posted by Savio Rodrigues on August 9, 2007 02:45 PM
August 09, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Matt Asay interviews Jonathan Schwartz (A must read Q&A)
When Matt told me he was interviewing JS I was infuriated that he hadn't invited me along. However since we share but one brain, I feel like I was there too.
It's a fantastic interview and makes me realize that companies that seem as screwy as Sun still have a lot of life left in them.
Best quote:
What's the business model? I don't know. But if you don't have adoption, it won't matter what business model you use. Companies that sell open source are prioritizing community and adoption over instant monetization. We will win.
Posted by Dave Rosenberg on August 9, 2007 02:37 PM
August 09, 2007 | Comments: (0)
I met with some of the folks from Hyperic up at LinuxWorld San Francisco yesterday. They have just released the latest version of HQ 3.1, and won an award for best systems management software at the show. HQ is used at a growing number of companies including the likes of eHarmony, Ogilvey advertising and we also license their SIGAR technology at MySQL. What's unique about HQ is that the SIGAR technology is fully extensible so its easy to add new types of resources that can be monitored.
The latest version adds the ability to manage ColdFusion, Jetty, TomCat6 along side the rest of the stack. And although HQ is best known for monitoring opoen source LAMP stack applications, it's equally at home monitoring things like IIS, Windows, Oracle, etc. Since many companies run a mix of open source and closed source this seems like a good strategy. They've also spruced up the user interface and added new capabilities to deal with alerts.
Hyperic is an impressive team and they continue to set a high bar in systems management.
Posted by Zack Urlocker on August 9, 2007 08:07 AM
August 08, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Having spent the better part of my career working with products that are based on JEE, I sometimes have to remind myself that .NET is still quite prevalent. You'll find that there are customers who are "JEE shops" or ".NET shops". But a fairly large portion of customers have both JEE & .NET in their IT environments. I saw a Gartner estimate of JEE only/.NET only/ JEE & .NET/Other architectures representing 25%/25%/35%/15% of all customers. Take that "data" with a grain of salt as it's old and based on my fuzzy memory. The larger point is that a significant portion of enterprises have both .NET & JEE.
We could argue about the pros/cons of each architecture, but customers seem to have voted with their wallets and use each as appropriate to address business needs. This statement could equally be applied to the OSS & Traditional software discussion.
I had the opportunity to speak with Jenna Dobkin from Mainsoft last week. (Mainsoft is an IBM business partner). Mainsoft provides .NET to JEE interoperability by allowing .NET apps to be cross compiled to run natively on a JEE runtime. I was intrigued by the technical feat behind Mainsoft's offering. It allows customers with .NET skills and assets to continue benefiting from their previous investments while being able to deploy to JEE platforms. Why JEE? Well, it could be because customers want the performance, reliability, availability, etc. benefits of JEE. Maybe they want to shift towards open standards-based applications. Maybe their end customers are "JEE only" shops. Maybe dropping the "2" from J2EE did the trick!
Jenna put me in contact with two Mainsoft customers to understand why they didn't *just* deploy to .NET or *just* write in JEE. Note the emphasis on my implied simplicity of the word "just".
I spoke with Bart Sijnave, the CIO at UZ Gent, a university hospital in Belgium. I also spoke with Atul Mistry, VP of Technology at Urix, an ISV in the healthcare industry.
Both Bart & Atul indicated that their organizations had .NET skills and re-training their developers (teams of less than 20 in both cases) for JEE was not a viable business option. Bart suggested:
"If I had a larger team, I would add JEE-specific development skills. But I could not meet my customer's time-sensitive demands if portions of my team were out getting re-trained".
UZ Gent uses RHEL and other OSS products and looks for opportunities to expand OSS use as appropriate.
Atul said:
"Business is the key decision criteria for us. If you have to reinvent the wheel because of a religious technical belief then you are not doing the right thing for your business."
Urix has customers whose IT environments are largely Unix based. Faced with not addressing these customers or adding new staff to port the application and continue development on Unix, Urix made the business decision to use Mainsoft. Urix also uses OSS technology such as log4net and other OSS technologies aimed at Microsoft developers.
Both organizations are believers and users of open source products. But, for these two companies, business results trump beliefs. I suspect this is the case for the majority of customers. This is why I believe that OSS will never truly "take over" the software world, nor will OSS fade away. Pragmatic customers wouldn't allow either to occur.
Customers have to be pragmatic because their business depends on it.
PS: I should state: "The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions."
Posted by Savio Rodrigues on August 8, 2007 01:29 PM
August 07, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Server and Data Center Energy Efficiency
Slashdot reported that the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) delivered a study on Server and Data Center Energy Efficiency. Here is the 13 page summary and the full (133 pg) report. Here are a few highlights from the summary:
"The energy used by the nation’s servers and data centers is significant. It is estimated that this sector consumed about 61 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) in 2006 (1.5 percent of total U.S. electricity consumption) for a total electricity cost of about $4.5 billion. This estimated level of electricity consumption is more than the electricity consumed by the nation’s color televisions and similar to the amount of electricity consumed by approximately 5.8 million average U.S. households (or about five percent of the total U.S. housing stock).""Under current efficiency trends, national energy consumption by servers and data centers could nearly double again in another five years (i.e., by 2011) to more than 100 billion kWh (Figure ES-1), representing a $7.4 billion annual electricity cost."
The EPA presents scenarios for energy use by servers & data centers in the US from 2007-2011. Based on increasing degrees of server consolidation, adoption of energy efficient servers and power management, the EPA predicts that the *annual* cost savings in 2005 dollars (i.e. excluding inflation) would be between $1.6 to $5.1 billion in the US. Yes, I know that $1.6B to $5.1B is a small figure when compared to the total US IT market spending on energy. I need to think about this more. I know that the "you're saving the planet" justification isn't going to fly with everyone (although it would with my sister-in-law :-). I believe that the benefits of cleaner IT will come down to cost savings even with higher rates of IT usage. I just don't have the data to back this statement yet.
Some of you may have caught the news last week that IBM consolidated over 3,900 servers onto about 30 mainframes running Linux. The move is expected to reduce server footprint by 85% and cut costs by $250M over 5 years. Very cool that Linux & mainframes are being used to save $$$ and reduce the environmental impact of IT.
This is another step in IBM's Project Big Green:
"The project, involving high-density computing systems that use server and storage virtualization, and energy-efficient power and cooling systems, is part of IBM's goal to double its data-center capacity by 2010 without increasing energy usage or carbon emissions."
It will be interesting to see how the server consolidation and virtualization trend impacts Linux adoption. On one hand, Linux on higher-end servers should be attractive to customers running Unix applications and seeking energy and cost savings. On the other hand, Linux has enjoyed its largest success on commodity servers that run at very low rates of utilization. Consolidating commodity servers onto a higher density, larger, more efficient server with higher utilization shouldn’t impact the number of Linux licenses. So maybe the net impact would be minimal on Linux adoption?
Thoughts?
PS: I should state: "The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions."
Posted by Savio Rodrigues on August 7, 2007 09:01 PM
August 07, 2007 | Comments: (0)
The New York Times published an article recently called "Please Don't Steal This Web Content." It's another random story about how low-life scumbags are ruining the Internet in order to generate ad revenues. That is, until it happened to me.
In addition to this blog here at InfoWorld, I also have an earlier blog I created called www.theopenforce.com (now somewhat neglected) as well as a blog on music and guitars called www.guitarvibe.com, and a satirical web site called www.valleyofthegeeks.com (no longer active). I also occasional write articles about disruptive technology published on my brother's site www.ondisruption.com. Over the years, I have written hundreds of blog entries and another hundred technical articles for various print publications ranging from Byte to Microsoft Systems Journal. While I've never made much money off my writing, I still have an author's pride. So I was somewhat shocked when I accidentally stumbled across a site that had hijacked articles I'd written at www.guitarvibe.com.
It was an eery accidental discovery. I was doing a follow-up article on a rather obscure guitar, and noticed that one of my blog entries was near the top of the Google search results page. The odd thing was, it wasn't on my site, but on another site I'd never heard of. I recognized the fragment of text as my own writing and then clicked through to see where I was being quoted. The problem was, I wasn't being quoted. The entire article, along with two dozen others I had written, had been scraped directly from my site and published along with the works of several other bloggers. All of this was done without anyone's consent and in direct violation of copyright law. Note, this wasn't accidental or an excerpt being used in accordance with the doctrine of "fair use."
Why steal blog content? Well, if you want to put up a Google ad farm quickly without all the bother of writing, you can easily find tools that keep your site up-to-date with the latest content that some other poor slob has written.
So what do you do when this happens? First of all, you should protect your own content with explicit copyright notices. Secondly, contact the owner of the site, letting them know of the violation and demanding that it be corrected within 5 days. Finally, if that doesn't work, I recommend contacting the ISP and/or Google to let them know the user is in violation of copyright law. Typically such copright theft is not tolerated by ISPs or Google and they'll remove the offender immediately. There's a great article by Lorelle on Wordpress called "What to do when someone steals your content" that is also cited in the NY Times article.
In my case, the offender (whom I won't dignify with a link) removed the content within a few hours. But now I know to keep a watchful eye on things. If you're blogging, maybe you should too.
Posted by Zack Urlocker on August 7, 2007 09:48 AM
August 06, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Truthy Statements about Access to Source Code
It was a long weekend here in the Toronto and I met up with two friends from university. They told me of a "guaranteed" system for winning at Blackjack that they had discovered. I won't get into the details of the "strategy". When I used a coin and then a spreadsheet to "prove" that their system didn't work, they kept joking that my proofs didn't seem "truthy enough".
I feel the same way about the notion that: "access to the source code prevents vendor lock-in and is immeasurably important in keeping the OSS vendor focused on the customer".
I don't propose that the above statement is a blatant lie. I only question whether it is an absolute fact. We in the OSS community really provide a superficial discussion on such questions. We accept the answers as obvious truths. I did this also. But my experiences over the past 2 years have compelled me to reconsider. I don't know if my conclusions are correct. But questioning these "truths" seems to paint me as "someone who is oblivious to the world passing by". I should state again for the record that I am a proponent of OSS & Traditional software existing together. I do not believe that OSS will completely take over the software world. Nor do I believe that OSS is a market force to fight. Actually, I wonder if I should paint myself as Dilbert in the comic that Zack wrote about here :-)
I agree that access to source code aids in creating community. I understand that source code access helps customers who may never touch the code because (a developer at) customer ABX has the ability to contribute, thereby benefiting the whole user community. But does this really prevent vendor lock-in or ensure that the vendor is focused on customer needs?
(Note: the following does not apply to projects/products that are implementations of open standards).
If the answer is yes, then I'd propose that the answer is only "truthy enough" when the OSS project is a multi-vendor backed project. Linux, Apache Web Server, Eclipse or Apache Tomcat are great examples of such a projects/communities. I do not feel that yes is a "truthy enough" answer if we are discussing an OSS project backed by a single vendor (which most seem to be these days). I mentioned this to Matt in the comments here. I don't want this statement to be about any particular OSS vendor, so I'll generalize.
I propose that, in most cases, a 3rd party cannot provide the maintenance and future development leadership for OSS software to the same level as the founding vendor of the (single vendor backed) OSS project.
If the project was an implementation of an open standard, then my previous statement would be false. Open standards help reduce vendor lock-in. Open source may help reduce vendor lock-in, but not nearly to the degree that we’ve led customers to believe.
Meeting customer needs must be a core competency of any software vendor, OSS or not. The notion that OSS vendors are more focused on customers than Traditional vendors is a view that irks me. If this were true, a majority of new software purchases would be OSS based. I’ve listened to the argument that because the source is out there, OSS vendors must deliver first-rate support and additional offerings or risk losing customers. Sounds great on paper, but in reality, do customers head for the door if they don’t receive the customer experience that they expected? Where would they go? In a single vendor backed OSS project, there is no real alternative choice. There is only an allusion of choice (in single vendor backed projects). One option is that the customer can decide not to renew support from a vendor and handle the support in house. However, if the customer has paid for support, they’ve signaled their intent of being "willing to spend money to save time". Self support does not align with this intent. There may even be a degree of buying support as insurance/CYA, and little that the OSS vendor does would change this purchase decision.
Please disagree and explain why you feel I am incorrect in my conclusions. I'm happy to reconsider my views.
PS: I should state: "The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions."
Posted by Savio Rodrigues on August 6, 2007 09:18 PM
August 06, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Or at least Dilbert's boss is trying to get him to use open source software because "it's free." Click on the image below to view last Friday's cartoon at the official site.
Dilbert creator Scott Adams has long been involved in tech and has spoken at a number of open source and developer conferences including EclipseCon earlier this year. Still, it's a significant milestone to see open source in the comics. I guess it means open source is safe enough even for pointy haired bosses.
Posted by Zack Urlocker on August 6, 2007 02:02 AM
August 05, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Crying about not being rich enough (NY Times)
I've had no interest in blogging lately. Too much work and crazed baby to deal with. But it's good to know that there is lots of complete rubbish for people to read while I abstain from writing.
Take today's NY Times masterpiece "In Silicon Valley, Millionaires Who Don't Feel Rich" about several SV execs who still have to work. I don't want to go super-negative here but I know two of the profiled and while I never considered them to be crybabies, this article makes them look like Oliver Twist characters upset with their paltry "$2.2 million" in the bank.
It's perfectly OK to want to work hard and try and hit it big(ger).
"I know people looking in from the outside will ask why someone like me keeps working so hard," Mr. Steger says. "But a few million doesn't go as far as it used to. Maybe in the '70s, a few million bucks meant 'Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous,' or Richie Rich living in a big house with a butler. But not anymore."
Hal works for Funambol, I company I truly enjoy, but I can't see how this kind of comment would make the development team or community members want to help him.
On to Tony B, former marketing guy at Groundwork and a guy who I consider a friend. My issue here is that it doesn't explain that Tony founded a company and sold it, only that he somehow amassed riches that are dissipating.
Today, he has roughly $1.2 million left in savings and another several hundred thousand dollars' worth of home equity, Mr. Barbagallo said, with one child in college and a second on her way.So he works as hard as ever, logging more than 70 hours a week at a San Francisco start-up.
"Poor Tony, he'll never be able to retire," Catherine Barbagallo said.
Of the three people profiled two are from open source companies--companies that rely on developers out in the universe who often get paid nothing for their work, and in 99% of the cases have no equity in the companies that they contribute code to. This is some message to send to the developers toiling away all over the world.
End result, this article sucks and I am pretty surprised that Gary Rivlin took it in this direction. Employees--especially developers take this stuff really personal, and no one in this article was done a favor. Sometimes not all press is good press.
Posted by Dave Rosenberg on August 5, 2007 10:42 AM
August 02, 2007 | Comments: (0)
In the past week I heard about two fairly large companies who are in a bit of a jam. Back in the days of the Internet Boom, they purchased an "E-commerce server" from one of two separate niche software vendors (i.e. ISVs). These two ISVs were amongst the leading providers of e-commerce middleware in 2000. Many companies chose to deploy their initial online commerce sites using software from these two niche ISVs. Then came the Internet Bust. Then came larger software vendors, who entered the e-commerce server market late, but caught & surpassed the product function/features/benefits offered by these niche ISVs.
Customers saw this development and began to deploy their new or expanded online commerce sites using offerings from the larger software vendors. The increased completion led to depressed revenues, depressed stock values and layoffs for these niche ISVs. They're still around, but not truly considered viable in the eyes of current or potential customers.
Because of code escrow agreements, today, more than a handful of customers have access to the sourc