Here’s a quick roundup of recent posts on the spate of open source projects acquired by commercial software companies.
Maybe you should pay attention to the man behind that curtain — the curtain with all those “Gs” and “Os” on it.
If you think obscure techie blogs might be the canary in the coal mine for spotting the biggest, neatest and next-est idea to reshape the world, you might want to keep an eye on “Open Source at Google.”
Launched with typical Google low-key non-fanfare a week or so ago, recent posts include:
While I don’t expect a Google blogger to inadvertently reveal Google’s secret search sauce, this blog bears watching, if only because they keep trying new things over at the Googleplex. Why? Because they can.
InformationWeek today reported Sun bought German open source firm Innotek, developers of the VirtualBox desktop virtualization tool used by developers. According to the IW report:
Sun said VirtualBox has been downloaded more than 4 million times since being made available in January 2007, and Sun moved quickly to become the acquirer as it maps out a future suite to virtualize customer environments. It plans to use VirtualBox to extend the Sun xVM virtualization software, its hypervisor based on open source Xen.
The story does not mention the price Sun paid, but it’s a sure bet it’s not close — by several factors of ten — to the $1B US the recent convert to commercializing open source paid for MySQL.
What confounds me is … why? VirtualBox is a nice addition to a developer’s toolkit, and would make sense if Sun were pursuing a more developer-centric path into the market. But while NetBeans is a mature open source IDE for Java, supported by Sun, it does not have the following of the Eclipse-based Java products. So maybe that’s the answer — Sun IS trying to woo developers out of the long shadow IBM casts over Java development with Eclipse. Can someone shed some light on this issue? Post your comments below.
A couple of headlines to start off the week.
Not about open source, exactly. The issue is ad-supported web productivity applications that will compete with Office, though the story does mention Yahoo’s Zimbra in a comparison to Microsoft Exchange.
The Alfresco “content community” is surveyed, and the results are in. Ubuntu & Red Hat Enterprise Linux are moving up. Tomcat and JBoss hold the lion’s share of the app server market. More details and graphics in the post.
Jonathan Schwartz, Sun’s newly buzz-making CEO thanks to the company’s $1B US acquisition of MySQL last month, gave the keynote at this week’s SugarCRM conference. In his keynote, as reported by InfoWorld, Schwartz identified a key reason why his company scooped up the widely-used open source database firm: distribution.
“What was attractive was how profound their distribution was,” Schwartz said. MySQL offers access to about 11 million deployments around the world, and Sun began to see MySQL delivering real value, innovation, and choice, he said. MySQL sells services and support for its database.
If you’ve been wondering about all those other open source acquisitions, wonder no more. The value is in the distros.
Paying less than $100 US for each deployment — make that ‘prospective paying customer who is already using the product’ — Sun has access to millions of potential customers for Sun services, other software products and hardware. That’s not a bad price for a solid customer lead in a business where the long-term value of any enterprise customer is measured in six or seven figures, and it ignores the very real value of MySQL’s current annual service and support revenue (estimated at $100M US) and harder-to-quantify value of its intellectual property.
So maybe we’ve got an algorithm for an open source project valuation. For example, Yahoo’s acquisition of Zimbra last September cost big Y $350M US. According to a Wall Street Journal story on Zimbra in November 2006, they had some four million users. Allowing for some shrinkage, that’s quite close to the $100 per deployment for MySQL.
But for all you FOSS project leaders out there who are running to check your download and registration numbers, keep in mind MySQL and Zimbra had “commercial” versions and paying customers prior to the big buyout. So don’t count on pocketing a Franklin for every download just yet. Still, a community can dream, can’t it?
Got some other ideas for valuing an open source project? Post your ideas and comments below.
The OpenID Foundation today announced Google, IBM, Microsoft, VeriSign and Yahoo! had signed on as the open source identity project’s first corporate board members. If you were concerned about the all those mammoth tech firms weighing in on the spec, the foundation’s announcement says:
“Today’s announcement marks a milestone in the maturity and impact that the OpenID community has had. While the OpenID Foundation serves a stewardship role around the community’s intellectual property, the Foundation’s board itself does not make any decisions about the specifications the community is collaboratively building.
The release goes on to say:
At the beginning of 2006, there were fewer than 20-million OpenID enabled URLs and less than 500 websites where they could be used. Today there are over a quarter of a billion OpenIDs and well over 10,000 websites to accept them. OpenID has grown to be implemented by major open source projects such as Drupal, cornerstone Web 2.0 services such as those by 37signals and Six Apart, as well as a mix of large companies including as Apple, Google, and Yahoo!.”
Even non-tech sites like CNN/Money were picking up the news today. Having Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! all the same story that’s NOT about the Micro-Hoo buyout is probably a good thing.
But while there may be a lot of OpenIDs out there, I’m not sure I’m holding one, nor am I sure any of the sites I visit make use of OpenID. Do you — or sites you frequent — use OpenID? And are any enterprise companies using OpenID as a way to authenticate their users behind the firewall? I’d like to hear about it. Please post your comments below.
EOS Directory sponsor Optaros recently completed a high-profile project for Paris-based Wonderbox (www.wonderbox.fr), an innovative online gift site. Inside the “Wonderbox” are vouchers for over 6000 activities and services based on a theme, such as “Adrenaline” for exciting activities like skydiving, or “Wellness” for a more relaxing experience like a massage.
Following the 2006 holiday season, Wonderbox knew they needed to upgrade their e-commerce and CRM capabilities to handle rapid business growth. Their response was to engage Optaros who, using the Optaros Assembly Methodology (OptAM), delivered a targeted solution using mature open source software like SugarCRM, Mule, OSCommerce and Jasper Reports, built on a LAMP platform.
Speaking about Optaros, Wonderbox CEO Bertile Burel said: “Seeing the full solution in prototype so early on in the process is highly valuable and [Optaros] open source expertise saved us money on re-platforming.” The project “enables us to scale our business, increase sales and improve partner and customer relationships,” she added.
The results? Within a six-month development timetable the Wonderbox site was redone to provide more than ten times the reach for the 2007 holidays as compared to the prior year’s holiday period. In this case, open means “open for business” too.
Read the case study. (PDF)
Perhaps a bit overshadowed by all the Yah-Soft (or is that Micro-Hoo?) wheeling and dealing is today’s release of Zimbra Collaboration Suite 5.0, one of the most visible items in Yahoo’s enterprise open source pantry. While it’s probably not the main reason the boys in Redmond decided to plunk down $44B US to acquire the purple search giant, Yahoo! thought enough of the popular open source web-based e-mail suite to acquire it back in September for $350M US.
The new version adds Outlook 2007 compatibility, additional support for devices including “BlackBerry Enterprise Server, J2ME-enabled handsets such as the Motorola RAZR, and a new version of ZCS for mobile web browsers.” Plus Zimlets for Yahoo! services. To quote from the release announcement:
“New Zimlets in ZCS 5.0 leverage Yahoo! properties, including Flickr, Yahoo! Local, Yahoo! Finance, and Yahoo! Search. Later this year, Zimbra’s innovative technologies will be incorporated into properties including Yahoo! Mail and Calendar.”
Other enhancements include built-in IM, a shareable Zimbra Briefcase for email attachments and Zimbra Desktop, an AJAX-powered mode for online or offline access of IMAP and POP3 email servers. For a more in-depth look at ZCS 5.0 and some nifty screen shots, check out this item on Mashable.com.
Mergers and acquisitions made the news again this week which, given the Microsoft-Yahoo bid, is like saying the Biblical flood was an interesting weather event. Best MSFT-YHOO one-liner, again from Kara Swisher of Wall Street Journal’s BoomTown: “And while it’s never over until it’s over, let me just say, for Yahoo, it’s over.”
The deal has open source implications too, such as: what becomes of Zimbra? Some opinions:
We’ll blog more on the current open source M&A boom next week. But what’s your take? Do you think consolidation among open source projects helps or hinders adoption by enterprise open source users? Post your comments below.
Alex Fletcher’s post “Meeting the needs of the unpaid on the road to gaining customers” raises a very interesting point for enterprise users of open source applications: What is the right level of support for the OSS needed in my organization?
Fletcher mentions this article on choosing commercial support to make the point that too often, support for open source is seen as an either/or option: free, as in do-it-yourself; or commercial, as in subscribe to our program and pay moderate to serious fees.
But he thinks there’s lots of room in the middle for support organizations to help the “unpaid” — or low-paying — enterprise user. This is both a customer-development strategy and a new business opportunity. Citing “building internal competencies” as a key reason many organizations choose an enterprise open source solution in the first place, Fletcher suggests:
Oddly enough, the intersection between employing open source and building self-sufficient competency is where support providers should examine how they can evolve into a more relevant entity. Perhaps instead of attempting to become the sole source for upgrades, vulnerability assessment and/or migration, support providers should seek to offer a wider array of flexible support (and licensing) options for those who choose to go it alone?
How about it? Would a pay-as-you-go approach to open source support appeal to your organization? Has your firm already purchased a support contract? Or does paying for open source support run against the whole rationale for using open source? Post your responses and comments below.
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