Comments on: The Flight of the Wannabees http://blogs.gartner.com/andreas_bitterer/2009/02/18/wannabees/ A member of the Gartner Blog Network Sat, 21 Mar 2009 16:22:21 -0400 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 hourly 1 By: Pradesh http://blogs.gartner.com/andreas_bitterer/2009/02/18/wannabees/comment-page-1/#comment-65 Pradesh Sun, 08 Mar 2009 16:52:09 +0000 http://blogs.gartner.com/andreas_bitterer/?p=63#comment-65 I'd like to know what criteria you are using to flag Vanilla as "irrelevant"- market penetration, features, company size, turnover, or the fact that they are not marketing ("don’t even have a real website ")? BTW, I hold no brief for Talend of Vanilla (I've only heard of the latter through this web page). Pradesh I’d like to know what criteria you are using to flag Vanilla as “irrelevant”- market penetration, features, company size, turnover, or the fact that they are not marketing (”don’t even have a real website “)?

BTW, I hold no brief for Talend of Vanilla (I’ve only heard of the latter through this web page).

Pradesh

]]> By: Nick Halsey http://blogs.gartner.com/andreas_bitterer/2009/02/18/wannabees/comment-page-1/#comment-60 Nick Halsey Wed, 18 Feb 2009 17:47:55 +0000 http://blogs.gartner.com/andreas_bitterer/?p=63#comment-60 Hi Andy, thanks for dealing with this sort of "chatter" objectively. Personally I find this sort inflamatory blogging humorous, much like right-wing talk radio shows in the US. However my larger concern is that it can undermine the serious work being done by a number of organizations to advance the state of the art in open source business intelligence, and it can add to the perception that open source is not ready for prime time. Thanks for helping to correct that perception with your own research and (objective) comments. Nick Hi Andy,

thanks for dealing with this sort of “chatter” objectively. Personally I find this sort inflamatory blogging humorous, much like right-wing talk radio shows in the US. However my larger concern is that it can undermine the serious work being done by a number of organizations to advance the state of the art in open source business intelligence, and it can add to the perception that open source is not ready for prime time. Thanks for helping to correct that perception with your own research and (objective) comments.

Nick

]]> By: Gareth Horton http://blogs.gartner.com/andreas_bitterer/2009/02/18/wannabees/comment-page-1/#comment-59 Gareth Horton Wed, 18 Feb 2009 16:33:18 +0000 http://blogs.gartner.com/andreas_bitterer/?p=63#comment-59 @Matt - Very good comment. I think Open Source advocates need to be more pragmatic and measured in their approach, as too often, the message ends up being lost due to it's messengers losing their credibility through excessive zealotry. See Roy Schestowitz and his ilk for examples. As Andy points out, one of the key areas is maturity. It may be that Open Source solutions are being used in huge quantities, but more in the vein of skunkwork projects, incubators and pilots, with customers choosing sweet spot projects to perform their own internal evaluations for fitness of purpose for more heavy duty deployment in the future. Once the pilot phases are complete and successful, then the next stage of evaluation is likely to be scalability, support and more aspects relating to enterprise-level feasibility. This can take a VERY long time, depending on the organization culture and size. You also end up with politics and CV-driven (resume-driven) decisions, where IT and other related people within the project only want to be associated with big projects from the big vendors, so they can move easily to another job, with the usual pay increase that (used to!) come with it. As a small vendor, we are sometimes also slaves to this type of process and it can take a number of years to become a Tier 1 application with these large companies, which is likely to be what Gartner is really looking at, rather than the tyre-kicking and tactical implementations that I imagine, make up the lions share of Open Source implementations at the moment. Another problem is shifting the incumbents, where so much time and effort has been invested in certain technologies, that the opportunity cost of losing all that makes the inertia just too much, even if you give the software away for free! To give you one example, one of our customers has over 3300 'models', each one maybe one to five hours work. Replacing that amount of work, then the auditing after the work is a serious disincentive to move. Whether Open Source or not, newer entrants to the market have their work cut out! Gareth @Matt – Very good comment. I think Open Source advocates need to be more pragmatic and measured in their approach, as too often, the message ends up being lost due to it’s messengers losing their credibility through excessive zealotry. See Roy Schestowitz and his ilk for examples.

As Andy points out, one of the key areas is maturity. It may be that Open Source solutions are being used in huge quantities, but more in the vein of skunkwork projects, incubators and pilots, with customers choosing sweet spot projects to perform their own internal evaluations for fitness of purpose for more heavy duty deployment in the future.

Once the pilot phases are complete and successful, then the next stage of evaluation is likely to be scalability, support and more aspects relating to enterprise-level feasibility.

This can take a VERY long time, depending on the organization culture and size. You also end up with politics and CV-driven (resume-driven) decisions, where IT and other related people within the project only want to be associated with big projects from the big vendors, so they can move easily to another job, with the usual pay increase that (used to!) come with it.

As a small vendor, we are sometimes also slaves to this type of process and it can take a number of years to become a Tier 1 application with these large companies, which is likely to be what Gartner is really looking at, rather than the tyre-kicking and tactical implementations that I imagine, make up the lions share of Open Source implementations at the moment.

Another problem is shifting the incumbents, where so much time and effort has been invested in certain technologies, that the opportunity cost of losing all that makes the inertia just too much, even if you give the software away for free!

To give you one example, one of our customers has over 3300 ‘models’, each one maybe one to five hours work. Replacing that amount of work, then the auditing after the work is a serious disincentive to move.

Whether Open Source or not, newer entrants to the market have their work cut out!

Gareth

]]> By: Andy Bitterer http://blogs.gartner.com/andreas_bitterer/2009/02/18/wannabees/comment-page-1/#comment-55 Andy Bitterer Wed, 18 Feb 2009 16:02:30 +0000 http://blogs.gartner.com/andreas_bitterer/?p=63#comment-55 @wondering: Thank you for your insightful contribution. That's the kind of "open dialogue" that I've been talking about. @wondering:
Thank you for your insightful contribution. That’s the kind of “open dialogue” that I’ve been talking about.

]]> By: Yves de Montcheuil http://blogs.gartner.com/andreas_bitterer/2009/02/18/wannabees/comment-page-1/#comment-54 Yves de Montcheuil Wed, 18 Feb 2009 15:23:59 +0000 http://blogs.gartner.com/andreas_bitterer/?p=63#comment-54 Andy, yes I am reading, and thanks :-) Andy, yes I am reading, and thanks :-)

]]> By: wondering http://blogs.gartner.com/andreas_bitterer/2009/02/18/wannabees/comment-page-1/#comment-53 wondering Wed, 18 Feb 2009 15:01:22 +0000 http://blogs.gartner.com/andreas_bitterer/?p=63#comment-53 "[...] public claims about things that they have clearly no clue about." Isn't that what Gartner is all about? “[...] public claims about things that they have clearly no clue about.”

Isn’t that what Gartner is all about?

]]> By: Matt Casters http://blogs.gartner.com/andreas_bitterer/2009/02/18/wannabees/comment-page-1/#comment-50 Matt Casters Wed, 18 Feb 2009 12:08:53 +0000 http://blogs.gartner.com/andreas_bitterer/?p=63#comment-50 For what it's worth: I couldn't agree more. As I mentioned before ( http://www.ibridge.be/?p=155 ) it's rather silly to claim you're using a disruptive business model (Commercial Open Source) and at the same time complain that the classical ways of measuring your corporate performance don't work. I know where the frustration comes from but in the end I'm sure Pentaho (in our case) will meet the requirements and end up in the MQ. That's fine and that's the way it should be IMHO. If the disruption of the market is strong enough it will come naturally. On top of that : if a position in the MQ would be something you can claim, it would become without value pretty quickly. Other than that I think the right response is to not feed the trolls. For what it’s worth: I couldn’t agree more. As I mentioned before ( http://www.ibridge.be/?p=155 ) it’s rather silly to claim you’re using a disruptive business model (Commercial Open Source) and at the same time complain that the classical ways of measuring your corporate performance don’t work. I know where the frustration comes from but in the end I’m sure Pentaho (in our case) will meet the requirements and end up in the MQ. That’s fine and that’s the way it should be IMHO. If the disruption of the market is strong enough it will come naturally. On top of that : if a position in the MQ would be something you can claim, it would become without value pretty quickly.

Other than that I think the right response is to not feed the trolls.

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