posted Apr 1, 2010 7:23 AM by Target Source
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updated Apr 1, 2010 7:25 AM
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BEIJING – April 1, 2010 – TargetSource, the Collaborative Company, today announced it has new subsidiary -- AgileSource, a collaborative delivery company , who focus on help organizations that require high quality, on-time and within budget open source based application deployments.
"Open source, in other words, is not an end in itself. It is a means to an end, and that end .is collaborative innovation." Matt Asay said in this blog. With years of deep experience Open Source Community involovement and development, AgileSource has the strong experience and expertise in Java, open source, and agile methodology to ensure customer's application will meet their requirements. By working together, we believe that customer's innovation will driven more success. Before AgileSource operation, the former team achieved good results in 2009, growing revenues and nearly doubling new customers and organizations such as Koolearn, ZTE, ChinaMobile, France Telecom etc. "Open source is no longer considered the wild underdog, but it will need more new companies making money off the trend" said Marten Mickos, the former CEO of MySQL stressed at the EclipseCon 2010 conference. With the new wave of Open Source movement, AgileSource is already build it's business model based on Open Source , it had been at the forefront of that movement. |
posted Apr 1, 2010 3:17 AM by Target Source
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updated Apr 1, 2010 3:27 AM
]
At this morning’s Bunker Session, the central question of the relationship between cloud computing and open-source software was answered early and often. The one thing everybody agreed upon is that most clouds of any appreciable scale are built on open-source software and, in fact, might not even exist without it. As to whether there’s any money to be made with open source, however, there was enough contention to go around. The rub, as posited by Citrix’s Simon Crosby, is that everybody making money with open source actually has a proprietary angle. Open source is a great tool for advancing products, branding a company and expanding its reach, but vendors make their money with proprietary solutions. This holds true for companies ranging from Citrix with XenServer to Amazon with EC2. The numbers actually back up this proposition: Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation, pointed out that the leading open-source investors aren’t VCs, but large IT companies like IBM, Intel and Google. Investment in open-source projects helps these companies crowdsource R&D — which saves time and money — before rolling out a commercial offering based on the results. This isn’t an indictment of vendors’ use of open source, by the way, it’s just reality –- not to mention smart business. However, as Om pointed out from the crowd, there is a big difference between helping vendors make money and actually making money yourself. Save for Red Hat, most truly open-source companies don’t last too long before they’re snatched up by proprietary vendors that want to leverage the associated momentum and product capabilities in their own businesses. But the definition of success isn’t universal. SugarCRM CEO Larry Augustin countered this argument with the position that open-source companies like JBoss and SpringSource, which did great things and built huge communities, are no less successful because they exited via acquisition rather than IPO. Despite debate over what constitutes a viable open-source business model, the area from where we can expect to see one emerge is cloud computing. As I discussed recently in a GigaOM Pro column (sub. req’d), open-source products are building momentum in private-cloud settings especially, and the reason might be that they help users achieve the same efficiencies as large IT companies that invest in open-source projects. Another possible avenue for open source success in the cloud is interoperability. When Yahoo’s Tom Hughes Croucher asked the Bunker crowd what the most likely solution to lack of interoperability among public clouds is, open source won by a landslide over vendor-developed standards. Opscodes’s Jesse Robbins buttressed this opinion by pointing out that many concerns over cloud interoperability and application portability can be addressed in the planning stages and by utilizing automation capabilities from companies likeRightScale. Another possibility is to use an open-source interface like libcloud, which simplifies movement between clouds. Where the money comes into play is when CIOs demand these types of capabilities before moving to cloud delivery models. As Accenture’s Joe Tobolski noted, they want to leverage the cloud, but they want to know there’s a workable Plan B and Plan C in case the primary cloud provider goes down. Cloud platforms don’t necessarily need to be open source if they’re open enough to work with third-party managements solutions. If an open-source company can build a cross-cloud automation product that lets businesses tweak it to suit their specific needs, that company might find itself in a position like Red Hat did when users were searching for a viable alternative to Windows. |
posted Mar 30, 2010 7:01 AM by Target Source
Every time open source is in play, the risk of fragmentation is visible. If the code is out there and every hacker in the world has access to it, what prevents a fork? What prevents the original code to have 50 variations?
Nothing prevents it. It happens. But it happens less often than you might think.
First of all, most of the forks die. If there is a company behind a project, they die faster. Not because the fork is bad. It is just that the volume of development is so significant, the original developers stay with the main branch and the brand is attached to the original code (open source commercial projects protect the brand through trademark, so there is very little a fork can do to claim they are the original).
Forks ultimately die because they do not get enough traction, the developers get depressed, the fork gets stale. It is a vicious negative spiral.
If a few fork survive, the result - in most cases - is innovation. "Fragmentation is innovation", as Sean Moss-Pultzonce said. I know many people out there believe the opposite, but think about it: if a fork includes smart ideas, and the open source license requires the code to be visible to the public, would you not expect the original project to embed them over time? Yes, me too.
Sometimes, the original project gets stale, there is no innovation, developers get bored, and they fork. Therefore, innovating. The developers of the original project wake up, improve their code, absorb some of the changes in the forks, and regain control. The result: a better product. More innovation. Nothing bad, something actually very good.
Now, let's look at Android. Any real forks out there? Yes, one from China Mobile. It might get actually successful, and I am sure the Google people are pissed at it. But it could generate a lot of good ideas, that they can embed in their project (assuming the not-invented-here mentality does not pervade the Google campus ;-) Overall, I do not believe it will be a major problem for Google.
It is China Mobile that has a problem: they need to keep the new OS compatible to the Android main branch. If they don't, all apps that are developed for Android will not work on their phone. The final result in my opinion? They won't make it. It is too difficult. They will create a China-only operating system, used by Chinese people, with apps developed by Chinese developers for the domestic market only. A missed opportunity for developers (although that market is big...). A sign of China refusing globalization and fighting Google and the US as a whole. A losing proposition, but nothing that would kill Android in the rest of the world, actually only hurting Chinese developers trying to export their good stuff.
So, is there a real problem with Android? Yes, but it is internal. The real fragmentation, so far, has been created by Google itself. They have released way too many operating system version, too fast. 1.x is not compatible with 2.x, in most cases. So much that our community client was built on 1.x, but for our commercial product we chose only 2.x. The effort of supporting two different clients was too much (hint: if you have an Android 2.x, check the Android Market for Funambol. It is an amazing client).
Was Google wrong at releasing so fast so often? I believe not. I believe they have been right. At the beginning of the cycle, you need to move fast, catching up with the competition. When the product is mature (they are almost there), you can start to slow down. In a year, nobody will remember Android 1.x or the G1 (a.k.a. the garage door opener).
Now it is time for Android to slow down. The next two Android releases, Froyo and Gingerbread (yep, what were you expecting after Cupcakes, Donuts, and Eclairs?), are going to be way more backward compatible than the initial ones. I am very sure about it. Most likely, they will change very little of the core or SDK, moving their apps on the Market (Maps, Gmail, Talk, Voice, Goggles, Gesture Search and so on) and making sure they work across all versions.
Google can afford external fragmentation (which is innovation), but not internal fragmentation (which is suicide). They know it. |
posted Mar 29, 2010 1:22 AM by Target Source
North Bridge and 24 Open Source Leaders Announce 2010 ‘Future of Open Source’ Annual Survey Results at Computerworld’s OSBC Market growth reaches tipping point, driven by adoption in government, rapid innovation, and the impact of SaaS and cloud computing strategies Open Source Business Conference, SAN FRANCISCO, CA – March 17, 2010 –– Today at Computerworld’s Open Source Business Conference (OSBC), a panel of top experts in the commercial open source industry, including executives from Acquia, Black Duck, North Bridge Venture Partners, Red Hat, and SugarCRM, announced the results of the North Bridge Venture Partners' annual ‘Future of Open Source’ survey. The survey results, collected from over 550 respondents including both vendors and non-vendors, highlight a range of significant issues continuing to impact the open source software landscape. Economic conditions, key market drivers and forecast for the coming year are among the topics taking center stage. The session will also gather real-time feedback from attendees via live text votes throughout the panel. “This year we opened up our survey to an even broader range of industry collaborators and a record number of participants including both vendors and non-vendors, and it’s clear that open source innovation is driving opportunities across all levels of the ecosystem,” said Michael Skok, General Partner at North Bridge Venture Partners. “Vendors are taking advantage of it and end-users are reaping the benefits. It’s a win-win and both industry players and open source communities are thriving as a result.” Following are some of the key findings from the survey: The survey found that economic and competitive factors continue to drive open source adoption. - Approximately 95% of respondents said a turbulent economy is “good” for OSS
- As in prior years, respondents indicated that lower total cost of ownership and freedom from vendor lock-in are key drivers. In addition, this year the rapid pace of innovation is highlighted among the top three reasons OSS is attractive to businesses.
“We believe these factors are important to organizations who seek a competitive advantage. Communities are uniquely able to adapt the source openly and rapidly to meet changing needs,” said Skok. "The open source development model provides an accelerator of innovation and distribution, disrupting the old proprietary business models,” said Dries Buytaert, creator of Drupal and CTO and co-founder of Acquia. The survey also revealed that government/public sector validation is the leading “tipping point” driving adoption of open source software this year. “For Drupal, the platform’s use for Whitehouse.gov has raised the level of awareness not only within government agencies around the world, but among private organizations as well,” continued Buytaert. “With the support of open source companies, we’re sure to see OSS continue its march into both the enterprise and public sectors." The survey also revealed barriers to open source adoption. - Respondents listed unfamiliarity with open source solutions, lack of internal technical skills, and lack of formal commercial vendor support as the top three barriers to the selection of open source software.
- As a result the survey also revealed that the business strategies predicted to create the most value for open source vendors include subscription based technical support and professional services and consulting.
"Much of the uncertainty that limited wide-scale open source adoption has evaporated as IT shops, constrained by tight budgets, are using more OSS to improve the efficiency and flexibility of the development process and realizing tremendous cost and time savings, said Tim Yeaton, President and CEO, Black Duck Software. Lingering concerns about OSS use in many Enterprise IT shops remain, but that's natural and is diminishing rapidly as familiarity and the tools for managing OSS improve." Overall the survey underscored the continued momentum of open source. - 55% of respondents believe that more than half of their purchases will be open source in the next 5 years.
- "Open source has moved into mainstream as people’s understanding and skills around it have matured. The question is no longer about proprietary vs. open source; it is how can open source be used across all tiers of the software stack.” Larry Augustin, CEO, SugarCRM
The reduction of venture funding in open source in 2009 in publicly disclosed funding deals down 37% to $375, as cited by The 451 Group, also highlighted the impact new platforms have on open source vendors. The result is a reevaluation of business models, with vendors seeking new market strategies. - Over 75% of respondents indicated that either software-as-a-service and/or cloud computing will have the greatest impact on open source vendors
“As validated by survey respondents, cloud computing is one of the most significant advancements in IT today,” said Jim Whitehurst, president and CEO, Red Hat. “We believe that open source is a natural foundation for the cloud and is a great enabler of the expanded flexibility, scalability and cost savings IT organizations are expecting by moving to the cloud.” - The survey also highlighted WCM/CMS/social software as the sectors expected to be most susceptible to disruption by open source software in the next five years, moving ahead of traditional areas such as operating systems and databases.
Overall the survey found that from the community to customers to vendors, market growth is expected at all levels. “In our view it’s a winning situation all around,” said Skok. “Customers want vendors to provide better visibility into new open source projects along with commercial support and services. That in turn is beneficial to the development communities behind those projects as they see greater adoption.” Skok continued, “While we are as discerning as ever of our investments, those vendors that evolve to take advantage of shifts like cloud computing and look to provide leverage in their business model with things like electronic services can expect to attract funding from us. As proof of that we have already reinvested in Acquia’s continued rapid growth and closed three new deals in open source in 2009, including Akiban Technologies, Northscale and REvolution Computing.” The 2010 Future of Open Source survey was developed collaboratively by North Bridge with input from 24 collaborators including Akiban Technologies, Olliance Group, Jaspersoft, Microsoft, Red Hat, Sand Hill.com, and the 451 Group, many of whom have contributed their views and vision to the Future of Open Source Forum. To see the full survey results visit: tinyurl.com/FOOSSurvey2010 and to view the Forum visit http://futureofopensource.drupalgardens.com/welcome-future-open-source-forum.
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posted Mar 23, 2010 9:12 AM by Target Source
22 March 2010 By Stephen Walli
Matt Aslett gave a great talk about the evolution of open source business strategies last week at the Open Source Business Conference in San Francisco. In it, he presented a model to allow one to visualize businesses that use open source in their solutions, and what it means in terms of relationships with customers and the community. 
The community relationships are driven by the lower triangle: 
The customer relationships are driven by the upper triangle: 
Matt goes on to apply the model across a collection of companies and business models, visually demonstrating how different companies have made different choices and evolved those choices, as well as playing out a number of scenarios. It's an excellent model. Matt and I have debated in the past as to whether or not there is such a thing as an open source business model. I've argued there's no such business model, but discuss it as a set of tools that are applied to the business. Regardless of one's opinions however, Matt has provided an excellent visual model for the discussion and presentation of the ideas. It works in much the same way as the Business Model Design template in visually capturing the information to ensure a completeness of discussion and an understanding of how the parts relate. I'm looking forward to the continuing evolution of the model over the coming year as he prepares the next major open source business report from the 451 Group, and would encourage you to give the entire presentation a read. |
posted Feb 24, 2010 6:40 PM by Target Source
Barcelona, Spain – February 23rd, 2010 Abiquo announced today that abiCloud 1.0.0 has been formally released under the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) Version 3. AbiCloud is a unique open-source Cloud computing platform that manages all aspects of Cloud IT infrastructure. AbiCloud users can manage and create public and private Clouds, provision IT resources, and automatically scale applications on-demand – all through a simple and easy to use graphical user interface. AbiCloud is vendor neutral, providing concurrent support of all major hypervisors, as well industry standards such as the Open Virtualization Format (OVF). First pre-released in April 2009, abiCloud has undergone extensive testing by the open-source community with over 15,000 downloads and eight pre-release iterations prior to its official release today. In addition, the product has been extensively tested by many commercial organizations, including a number of Global 500 enterprises. “We are delighted to have reached this important milestone in Abiquo’s history”, said Pete Malcolm, Abiquo CEO, “the formal release of the abiCloud product is the culmination of many man-years of effort by our own team, the open-source community, and by commercial organizations who see the need and potential for a truly comprehensive Cloud Management solution”. While pre-release versions were issued under a combination of the Mozilla Public License (MPL) and Common Public Attribution License (CAPL), abiCloud 1.0.0 is released under the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) Version 3. “The shift to LGPL gives the community increased flexibility”, said Diego Mariño co-founder and VP Community Solutions at Abiquo, “the LGPL license keeps the Cloud open and keeps the organizations that promote it in the black. Proprietary software can use abiCloud as a component without losing the proprietary nature of that software. Organizations can also customize abiCloud to suit their internal needs without having to share those changes publicly.” A biCloud 1.0.0 is available for immediate download via our Web site at www.abicloud.org.
About Abiquo
Abiquo is a leading developer of Cloud Management solutions based in Barcelona, Spain. Founded in 2006, Abiquo envisions a future where private and public Clouds are fully interoperable and vendor neutral. The company embraces an open-source model where both community users and commercial organizations can fully benefit from the Cloud revolution. For more information, visit the company’s website at www.abiquo.com.
Abiquo is the trading name of Soluciones Grid S.L. registered in Barcelona, Spain. |
posted Dec 20, 2009 8:25 AM by Target Source
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updated Dec 20, 2009 8:27 AM
]
15, Dec 2009 Beijing,
OpenSourceCamp, the largest unconference open source in China just
finished 2 weeks ago,there were more than 100 people join the 2 days
events, including Apache Asia Road Show program, people who join the
event discuss lots of interested ideas , including: Intalio|Works: the engine for Enterprise Open Source IBM Open Principles and Practices Dr Tian Zhong | IBM Building a Winning Strategy for an Open Source Company Mikko Puhakka | MYSQL Investor Liberate vector processing capability to runtime software system Li Xiao Feng | Intel What's Open SourceCamp? Open
Source Camp is ad-hoc and unconference event that brings together open
source developer, Geek , entrepreneurs, academics, venture capitalists,
and technology influencer, tech media for an intense user-created
conference about open source, emerging technology topics. It's
organized by the community, for the community. The event
combines,sharing,learning,networking, and fun. Participants, who are
experts and innovators in their fields, are also the presenters. The
goal is to boost open source community and innovation around the world. This
year is special because we bring together Apache Barcamp and Eclipse
DemoCamp at the same time and same place, it's real communites
collaboration and meetup. About Apache Barcamp:
Barcamp Apache is a free dynamics get-together open to the public. Like
other unconferences, the schedule will be determined by the
participants. About Eclipse DemoCamp :
The format of a DemoCamp is pretty informal. The idea is for a group of
Eclipse enthusiasts to meet up and demo what they are doing with
Eclipse. The demos can be of research projects, Eclipse open source
projects, applications based on Eclipse, commercial products using
Eclipse or whatever you think might be of interest to the attendees.
The only stipulation is that it must be Eclipse related. Fore more live vedio: http://v.ku6.com/playlist/index_3718915.html Slide: http://www.slideshare.net/opensourcecamp We are looking forward to see you next year in Beijing, Shanghai, GuangZhou |
posted Dec 20, 2009 8:25 AM by Target Source
25,
Sep, 2009, Finland MindTrek is the leading Nordic digital media and
business conference, focusing on social media & Web 2.0. At
MindTrek you will see the newest trends, innovations, revolutionary
business phenomena and hear insights from the most high-spirited
visionaries.
Last year the conference gathered together over 800 people from 32 countries, with around 150 international visitors.
The
conference brings together entrepreneurs, researchers and practitioners
from diverse disciplines that are involved in the development of media
in various fields, ranging from sociology and economy, to technology.
In
recent years there have been speakers such as Marc Davis (Yahoo!),
Chris DiBona (Google), Anssi Vanjoki (Nokia), Bob Sutor (IBM), Ashwin
Navin (BitTorrent), Paula le Dieu (BBC, Creative Archive), Florence
Nibart-Devouard (Wikimedia Foundation), Teemu Kurppa (Jaiku), Jim
Zemlin (Linux Foundation), Monty Widenius (MySQL), Rick Falkvinge (The
Pirate Party), etc.
TargetSource's Founder , Mr Peter Cheng will
join MindTrek 2009 which will be held in Tampere, Finland from Sep
30th – Oct 2nd. He will talking about new ideas about "connecting
communites , from China to World " and " Communtiy Driven Business" at
the conferece.
More information about MindTrek, pls visit www.mindtrek.org , we are looking forward to see you in Tampere, Finland. |
posted Dec 20, 2009 8:23 AM by Target Source
Paula Rooney From ZDNET, 12, Aug, 2009
Add
SpringSource to the expanding list of independent open source companies
that have been gobbled up by proprietary software giants. Let’s
consider the growing list: IBM’s purchase of Gluecode, Novell’s
purchase of SUSE, Citrix’s XenSource deal, Nokia’s Trolltech buy, Sun’s
purchase of MySQL, Oracle’s purchase of Sun (and hence MySQL and
OpenOffice) and now VMware’s planned $420 million acquisition of
SpringSource. Is this what the founding open source developers envisioned? Doubt
it, but fewer open source backers are opposed to such mergers as the
use of open source software expands in the corporate sector and mixed
hybrid software stacks are growing up in the data center. Open
source is not toppling the ranks of proprietary software giants (yet)
but the quiet revolution is taking place: the model of free and open
software development has reduced vendor lock-in and is delivering
enormous benefits to developers and customers, observers maintain. The
acquisiton trend simply reflects this notion: industry titans can’t
beat it so they’re joining open source, observers also maintain. “I
expect VMware will continue to invest and grow the platform and that
bodes well for open source. I hope they realize that part of the value
is the large number of people building on the platform for free,” said
Larry Augustin, president and CEO of SugarCRM, a large open source CRM
vendor. “VMware doesn’t have a long history in open source but this is
a big bold step for them and I’m keeping my fingers crossed.” “They
did some contributions to the kernel and and made a free version of the
hypervisor available but not in open source. This is their first big
open source step and shows the value of these open source companies and
platforms. ” Some open source players question Oracle’s acquisiton of Sun but think the VMware-SpringSource marriage is a healthy one. Open
source is “a great production and distribution model, the latter being
more important, that creates some truly enterprise-class products that
customers need. For software developers this is especially true,
since they want unfettered access to products to try them and
understand how they work without needing to engage in a lot of
commercial activity, which they find to be a distasteful time sink,”
said Jeff Hartley, VP of Products and Marketing (correction) of
Terracotta, which develops open source clustering software for Java and
partners with both VMware and SpringSource. “With
our software, you can look at the code if you really want to know how
it works, and you can suggest improvements or become a committer and
help make future products. This point about distribution is perhaps
just one reason why VMware and SpringSource make sense together, with
Spring as an open source provider,” Hartley said. “As VMware builds its
portfolio of products to make enterprise software easier to build and
manage, it needs to connect up the stack with developers. SpringSource
has certainly done a good job of that and is a big help in high regard
in the developer community and have fantastic adoption.” Once
upon a time, corporate behemoths like Microsoft, Sun and VMware were
considered the greedy proprietary vendors that open source startups
would one day replace. Yes? But
that’s not panning out. Open source has gained credibility but the
industry has yet to spawn another billion-dollar baby. So what shifted? A
realization that the open source business model may not be working as
well as the open source development model? Or another aspect of open
source’s bottom up success? OpenBravo’s
CTO recently said such deals are inevitable as proprietary giants
infuse needed revenue into aspiring open source companies whose
download count vastly exceeds their revenue. Some
think such marriages are ideal because they generate vendors with a
healthy mix of proprietary and open source software. This prevents
lockin while ensuring commercial provders enjoy a profit. But will all successful open source companies end up in the clutches of proprietary software titans? Have
IBM, Novell, Sun, Citrix, Oracle and VMware thrown in the towel and see
open source as the inevitable future? Or are they simply gobbling up
the competition to protect their revenue streams for as long as
possible, or making strategic buys to counter their rivals’ open source
acquisitions? I
question this each time one of these deals are announced. Call me a
cynic. But one has to wonder about the viability of the open source
business model if all of the top open source dogs are acquired by
traditional software vendors. Paula Rooney is a Boston-based writer who has followed the tech industry for almost two decades. See her full profile and disclosureof her industry affiliations. |
posted Dec 20, 2009 8:22 AM by Target Source
FRAMINGHAM, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--A
recent IDC study reveals that worldwide revenue from open source
software (OSS) will grow at a 22.4% compound annual growth rate (CAGR)
to reach $8.1 billion by 2013. This forecast is considerably higher
than 2008 for three reasons: (1) the bottom-up list used to calculate
the revenue has expanded through an exhaustive effort to include more
projects in this forecast; (2) open source software has had a much
higher level of acceptance over the past 12 months than previously
expected, and; (3) the economy accelerated the uptake and use of open
source software in the closing months of 2008. "The
open source software market has seen a strong boost from the current
economic crisis," said Michael Fauscette, group vice president,
Software Business Solutions. "OSS is increasingly a part of the
enterprise software strategy of leading businesses and is seeing
mainstream adoption at a strong pace. As the overall software industry
continues to consolidate, it will be key for OSS vendors to reach scale
if they plan to continue as a standalone business." Additional key findings include: - Large
software vendors like IBM, Sun, Dell, HP, and Oracle are making
significant amounts of indirect revenue from their activities with and
support of OSS. This has greatly aided mainstream adoption and
acceptance of OSS.
- Hybrid
business models seem to be increasing. It is likely that this will end
up as the most prevalent business model, with on-premise vendors adding
SaaS, SaaS vendors offering on premise, OSS vendors selling variants,
and closed source vendors offering more OSS.
- The
opportunity to leverage OSS in ways that increase competitive
advantage, such as a part of BPO offerings or as a part of a software
appliance, is on the rise and should help increase adoption and growth
for OSS vendors.
This IDC study, Worldwide Open Source Software 2009–2013 Forecast (IDC
#219260) provides a new forecast for the open source software market as
a bottom-up sizing of the OSS market in 2008 and a 2009–2013 forecast.
Historical and forecast revenue data is shown for the total worldwide
marke |
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