Posts tagged Microsoft

We’re melting, we’re melting…

Oct 11th

I’m not much of an economist. I understand income and expenses, I understand more or less how the stock market works from time to time, but I’m no economist. I’ve been in the hi-tech industry since early 1997, which means, that I’ve seen this world being elevated to the level of godly hood, buried alive with the explosion of the dot.boom era, only to re-invent itself as a highly competitive telecom’s industry and the “Network is the Computer” manner of thinking.

About 2 weeks ago, a man I truely admire had written a post entitled: Economic Meltdown – Friend or Foe of Open Source? (written by Danny Windham, CEO of Digium). Danny talks about the various aspects of companies cutting down on their IT budgets and reversion to Open Source technologies, as a means to hedge needed cash. As I witnessed the Dot.Boom explosion of 2001, I can honestly say that 2001, at least as far as I can say, was the year that Open Source technologies had truly assimilated to the normal business practice of companies. Even beyond that, companies which were not based on Open Source and Linux/Unix based technologies were clearly not a valid option for investors.

One of the urban legends talks about Hotmail wishing to acquire an Israeli company called Commtouch, back then, a webmail company. Commtouch was purely based on Windows NT technologies back then, and while the business track of the negotiations were going fine, the deal collapsed as the technical sides, of a back then BSD based Hotmail, basically negated the deal. Now, I have no idea if the story is true or not, again, this is an urban myth, however, I believe myths are usually based on some portion of the truth - at least to an extent (even a small one).

While the adaptation of Open Source technologies is a must for companies, in order to survive the troubled waters of these time, it is highly dependant on the solution providers, consultants and IT outsourcing companies. In Israel, for example, it is very much a customary to hire outsourced IT assistance, on a part time basis, allowing you to cut your IT costs. When bringing in IT assistance, you’re not only bringing in IT assistance, you also bring in IT governance and IT policies – as an outsourced IT person will usually operate under the terms he had learned in his company. If his company is a M$ oriented company, no matter how Open Source will be crucial to the business, M$ will still rule the domain in that area. I believe that the first thing that needs to happen is for the consulting and IT outsourcing companies to realize that they need to change, first for their customers, then for themselves. If the small start-up companies and established companies will start falling, the consultants will simply dry out of work.

It is our responsibility as IT/Telecom/Development/Architecture/Design consultants to explain the aspects of using Open Source, assimilating it, integrating it, both the pros and the cons and then, assist our customers in doing so successfully – this is the only way to go.

For example, let us take examine the following scenario – a telephony service provider. Our telephony service provider is based on Asterisk as the switching environment, a purely M$ base for all the billing, web front-ends, databases, development and so on. Their entire IT infrastructure is fully owned by them, all running with ESX servers and other proprietary technologies. This company will be required to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars every year, for support purposes (and the year is coming close to an end), their expansion is highly dependant on 3rd parties and while they are self sufficient on the IT side, they are purely dependant on the technology side. Now, imagine that this company would have had their entire back-end based on Open Source technologies, let’s imagine PostgreSQL and Ruby on Rails as the web frame work, how much money will that save per year? now, let’s remove ESX out of the equation… let’s also remove non-Open storage solutions and replace those with CoRAID or something similar, we’ve saved hundreds of thousands of dollars on an annual basis. Radical? – YES! But drastic times call for drastic measures, and when drastic measures are required, Radical solutions are a must.

Asterisk, danny windham, digium, economy, ESX, meltdown, Microsoft, NASDAQ, Proprietary, VMWARE

Open Source business sustainability

Jun 1st

Posted by admin in Asterisk

No comments

While Open Source projects around the world gather up the troops and become recognized for what they are: highly polished, highly effective, extremely economical products – the situation in Israel is fairly different. We’ve all heard about companies like Zimbra (recently acquired by Yahoo), MySQL (recently acquired by SUN) and others, which had struck BIG TIME. However, the situation in Israel differs immensely.

I’ve been invited to participate in a panel at the Garage Geeks, to discuss the various aspects of Open Source sustainability. I’ve made it my business to build a business completely surrounded by Open Source, devoted to the promotion and adaptation of Open Source – and when possible, the promotion of Open Source licensing models and the understanding of what they mean.

In one of my previous posts, I’ve indicated that Open Source projects are highly exploited in an illegal manner in Israel, thus, making Open Source business in Israel a high target for Open Crooks. The question immediately arises, how can an Open Source project become successful? In addition to that, what are the factors that make a good Open Source project a grand Open Source project.

Step 1: Features

For an Open Source project to become popular and frequently used, it should have an extensive range of features, which is constantly being upgraded and enhanced. Taking from my own personal favorite, let’s take a look at Asterisk – the Open Source PBX. Over the course of the past 5 years, Asterisk had evolved to include hundreds of features. Each new feature in an Open Source product expose it to a new market. With Asterisk, the introduction of an Answering machine detection tool had introduced it to the automatic dialer and contact center market. The introduction of LumenVox speech recognition had introduced it to the ASR market, and so on.

While features are important, it is also very important to make sure the features included are features that the community and users require. While it is really cool to have a mod_kitchensink for the Apache web server, no one really uses it.

Step 2: Community

In order for an Open Source product to become successful, it MUST have a vibrant and active community – better yet, more than one. While an active developer community is important for the advancement of the project, a set of auxiliary communities is required. A users community is a must, rendering support and usage ideas to its members. No less important is a business oriented community, one that speaks to the manager level people, those making the decisions in organizations. Tap into that level, and the Open Source project is now gaining followers from other side of the border.

Managers tend to be highly traditional in thinking, not inclined to utilize Open Source at first try. A vibrant business community of the Open Source project can do wonders to the project, especially with its promotion and adaptation into existing and new business structures.

Step 3: Funding and Sustainability

Funding an Open Source project doesn’t entirely mean – MONEY! Well, eventually it does mean money, but not in the normal way we think or work with money. Open Source developers don’t work primarily for the money, the driving force behind Open Source developers is different. Question be: “If Open Source developers aren’t motivated by money, why would you need funding?” – the reason is simple, the surroundings of an Open Source project require funding.

The surroundings of an Open Source project mainly include the following: public events, developer meetings, servers, hosting, travel fares, participating in trade shows and others. All of the above are generally associated with Marketing, however, marketing an Open Source project is sometimes as important as the project itself. If we are to examine the growth of the Linux community and user base in the world, we are mainly thankful to RedHat in its early days (1996-2001), closely followed by Debian with its recent off spring Ubuntu (2006-2008). Imagine, you can now go into an IBM dealer and ask to buy your notebook with Linux, how cool is that? how did that happen? did the world suddenly realise Linux is better than Windows? – the answer is NO! The marketing efforts of these companies had proven worth while, as the concept of using Linux as a desktop became common in recent years.

Step 4: Training and Certification

If your Open Source project is UberGeek targeted only, than you have a very slim chance of making it big. Lowering the bar on the requirements for the adaptation of an Open Source project is highly important and can be mostly achieved by training and certification. The training makes it possible for people to learn more about an Open Source project, while the certification makes the project seem more desirable and exclusive.

Why do people seek M$ and Ci$co certifications? simple, because they know these certifications mean something to manager level people and decision makers. The certification is a written (actually printed) proof that you know what you are talking about and that you are truly a professional working in the field of that Open Source project.

Conclusion:

If all of the above are met, you are surely on your way to create the next big Open Source project – and you are on your way to world fame and rock-star feeling.