As a further proof of the maturity of the open source market, the OSA (Open Solutions Alliance) has recently celebrated its first anniversary. As a reminder, the OSA is a consortium of open source software vendors dedicated to making enterprise-class open software solutions work together. It helps customers put open solutions to work by enabling application integration, certifying quality solutions, and promoting cooperation among open solutions developers. Officially created one year, the OSA has just held a new board election and has also announced earlier this year its European chapter. This European chapter has itself chosen a temporary board of directors, whose first mission will be to select where the organization will be incorporated. I am proud to say that Talend’s General Manager for EMEA, François, will be sitting on this board.

Six directions have been decided for the European OSA for this year:

• Promoting and defending interoperability
• Developing an ecosystem through the recruitment of vendors, SIs and ISVs
• Marketing and business development for and around the EOSA members
• Developing relationships with the open source community
• International exchanges and relationships with the other OSA chapters
• Promoting and defending open source in Europe

As explained by Dominic Sartorio, the OSA President, the first year of such a consortium usually carries high risks that can put in question its existence. The OSA has brilliantly worked around all obstacles and starts its second year, leveraging a growing members number (22 to date). Dominic’s article that presents this first year from the insider’s perspective calls for even more collaboration between organizations.

I have no doubt that even more of us will celebrate the OSA’s second anniversary next year.

Bertrand

As mentioned in a previous post, I attended last week the Open Source Business Conference, organized by InfoWorld in San Francisco.

This conference, dedicated to the commercial aspects of open source rather than to a technical angle (this year’s theme was “Putting Open Source to Work”, has produced real food for thought.

• Thought #1: the conference audience is evolving. It used to be mostly attended by investors and lawyers. This year 40% of attendees came from IT departments in large enterprises, including many CEOs and CIOs. This change proves that open source is becoming more and more entrenched in enterprises. After being a niche phenomenon for specialists, open source is democratized and offers to enterprises a preferred alternative with well suited enterprise offerings, affordable and reliable. As a side note this also explains the high interest from traditional players such as Sun Microsystems, Oracle, Microsoft or Citrix who are reinforcing their positions on this market, through acquisitions or partnerships.
• Thought #2: Is open source merely a way to increase revenue for traditional players?
  Sun’s taking over MySQL, Citrix acquiring XenSource, Novell dealing with Microsoft… next to well established players with proprietary business models and some degree of openness (more in some cases than in others…) is there room for 100% open source players? In the past, quoting Rob Bearden, a serial entrepreneur (JBoss, OpenSpan), Anthony Ha said on VentureBeat, that Open Source companies used to play in established markets and were basing their differentiation on cost reduction and innovation. However a new generation of open source players is emerging. Rather than attacking mature markets, they identify new issues and get first mover advantage. According to Rob Bearden: “Among other things, moving into a fresh market means you can start making money earlier, because you’re adding value sooner. Then your ability to monetize is not only earlier, but longer.”
  This is an interesting angle. Which however does not concern Talend, which even though it is part of the so-called “first generation” is growing at full steam! Being part of the first or second generation is not so important, the most important part being to innovate and offer to the market new functions.
  To answer this thought #2: of course, 100% open source players play, and will continue to play, an important role. As proven by the success of Talend and many of its partners, such as JasperSoft, SugarCRM, SpagoBI, etc.
• Thought #3: The adventure is only starting. Since the “open source” term was crafted in 1984, a lot happened. And, to quote Matt Asay: “We are still in commercial open source’s infancy”. Like him, I am certain that the majority of business models or deployment modes will keep evolving with time, not under the pressure from vendors but from users!

Nothing is ever etched in stone. Who would have believed one year ago that Sun would invest $1 billion in an open source database? Keeping abreast of the market (for example at OSBC) is very useful. But it’s even more important to listen carefully to clients and to determine how to help them best.

Bertrand