For reasons that still stupefy me, Apple seems to be one of the scant few companies in our industry that understands the power of simplicity. This goes way, way beyond user interfaces and gesture recognition. Their skill is both in matching functionality to purpose and being able to identify purposes which are meaningful. That is the true essence of simplicity.
I have been somewhat amused at the extent to which the digital intelligentsia are trying to assess the iPad by deconstructing it’s feature set. The logic is clear – the more things the iPad (or any product for that matter) does the more people it will appeal to. Therefore, for every missing feature one must subtract a segment of its potential audience in order to determine its total market appeal. This thinking is most humorously conveyed by the deep disappointment Adolf Hitler felt on learning what wasn’t included in the iPad.
This logic, however, is flawed. I am convinced that Apple went the other direction. They found a target audience and determined what features were necessary to meet their minimum expectations. Who is this audience? It’s the vast sea of humanity that sees the computer as merely an appliance. And appliance computing nowadays boils down to four categories; 1) creating simple documents, 2) storing and accessing digital content, 3) exploring the internet and, 4) interacting with friends and family. As an appliance, the iPad is a near perfect fit. It does what the Mac family shouldn’t and the iPod family can’t.
There’s a lot of different people that fall into this category. It could be the student that does a little word processing for homework, a bunch of research on the internet and a whole lot gaming. Maybe it’s the retired guy who keeps up with former colleagues and stores his grandkids school photos. Maybe its the stay-at-home mom who coordinates her children’s activities, does some online shopping and stays on top of family health issues. But what so many of these people share is a fatigue with computing devices that force them to navigate a sea of superfluous functionality to achieve their modest objectives. Computing devices designed by the digital intelligentsia for the digital intelligentsia.
In this regard I don’t see the iPad as a tablet – whatever the heck that is. I consider it a technically-sophisticated anti-technologist statement. It is designed to debunk the conventional wisdom that the only way to find a common intersection between the diverse needs of different human beings is to build products with as many doohickies and thingamabobs as possible.
If the iPad turns out to be the success that Gartner, and others, are predicting then this will largely be a testament to the power of design thinking and Apple’s commitment to it. Design thinking doesn’t concern itself with the reaction of the deconstructionists. In fact, I think the iPad brand will only get stronger the more the technologists reject it for lack of this feature or that.
The most compelling aspect of the iPad, in my mind, is its restraint.
And that’s a concept that I sincerely hope many more participants in the IT industry will grok onto sometime soon.
There is little use in pouring fuel on an raging fire. So I don’t want to add any more conjecture on what may or may not happen at today’s big Apple announcement. But in mulling over the potential of an actual breakthrough device I found myself reconsidering an old position of mine.
What I was wondering back then was whether Apple was about to repeat its mistakes of the late 1980s, early 1990s. Namely that it’s high-priced, albeit elegant operating system platform failed in creating an enticing enough market opportunity for the developer community. With Android, Google has begun flooding the market with a free, open source operating system that is an incredible draw for the handset manufactures. Should the market ultimately switch from being one of function-specific devices (i.e. music or phones) that support mobile applications to devices valued mostly for their access to a broad range of mobile applications than this manufacturer-focused strategy of Google could push Apple back into a niche categorization.
To a large extent I saw Google using Microsoft’s strategy of twenty years ago by providing a low-cost, manufacturer-agnostic operating system. But this time the battle lines were being drawn around open source.
In retrospect I think I had some critical flaws in my logic. The key problem was not taking into account the enormous differences between the nature of computing and the computing market now and twenty years ago.
Let’s start with the price issue. Twenty years ago, the computer most of us had was probably at work, bought and maintained by our employer. Then, as is now, a $1000 price difference adds up when you are buying thousands of machines across the organization. Microsoft’s low-cost strategy played to that reality. The same economics hold true for the handset manufacturers. Saving a couple of bucks per device by using Android over Windows Mobile (or an operating system you have to build and maintain yourself) adds up to a lot of money. Google is playing to that reality.
But employers are exerting increasingly less influence over mobile devices. So then, to what extent do consumers actually care about the price differences between mobile computing devices? I’m not saying price doesn’t matter. I’m suggesting that when you look at this over a single device purchase it probably doesn’t matter nearly as much. Elegance, envelope-pushing design tied to a powerful brand seems to be the real factors in a consumer-driven mobile device market.
Therefore, the cost advantages that come from an open source mobile operating system are muted at the point of consumption. Furthermore, there is a broader question on whether open source lends itself well to envelope-pushing design or whether its better suited for reproducing existing computing concepts. If it’s the latter – and I’m inclined to believe it is – than things like Android will perpetually be in fast follower mode (that is unless someone can enforce a model of benign dictatorship in the ongoing development of the project – but that’s a separate discussion). That challenge is then spread across multiple handset manufacturers compounding the branding problems to each one.
The next big difference between now and the 80’s (besides the shoulder pads and Halston z-14) is platform extension. The Apple vs. Microsoft battle of twenty years ago was limited to the desktop. But the Apple vs. Google battle is not limited to the phone. You have to extend Apple’s addressable market opportunity for developers to include the iPod Touch. And, at some point, we’ll probably extend Google’s position to include Chrome OS devices..
This is where today’s announcement becomes interesting. If Apple is able to define a new device category – something with minimal to no overlap either with the Mac or the iPod/iPhone – they will be extending the scope of their proprietary platform. So again, the question about open source is whether it is suited to delivering category-crafting consumer solutions. I don’t think the evidence is there to support this conclusion.
But there is one other factor that I think could have even greater impact. Rather than focus strictly on the addressable market for developers what about the addressable market of developers.
OK, so I promised not to conjecture on what Apple could do with it’s big announcement. But harkening back to the 80s again what if Apple, either today or some point in the future, is able to resurface HyperCard. Not 1980’s HyperCard. But a new millennium iteration of it. Something that creates the same simple application construction and rich web metaphors but adds a gamut of social web capabilities. Something that leverages the simple AppleScript – a technology which has its heritage in HyperCard. Doing so would massively increase the number of people that can create mobile applications and, by extension, create a new market for the more traditional developers to create widgets and components for this new class of developer – all available at the iTunes Store.
If Apple can pull something like this off than there is the potential for them to bind an enormous new army of next-generation consumer-developers to their proprietary platform. And that would be an outcome advocates of open source should ponder over long and hard.
You know, at this point in time I really don’t care if Google is evil or not. I’d be happy if they were just consistent.
Coming off Jonathan Rosenberg’s recent manifesto on the Meaning of Open I find myself, again, trying to reconcile what Google says and what Google does. Just over a month after Rosenberg explained that a core belief at Google was;
“… that open systems win. They lead to more innovation, value, and freedom of choice for consumers, and a vibrant, profitable, and competitive ecosystem for businesses,”
Now, don’t get me wrong. I really don’t care that Google seeks patents. But patents don’t perpetuate the open systems that Rosenberg speaks about. And the question here is how this particular patent will impact a raft of different providers and, importantly, the open source Hadoop project?
That answer, according to some, boils down to Google’s historic treatment of their intellectual property and the relevance this patent has on their core business of search-based advertising. The thinking goes that this is a defensive move for Google. This patent will be used to ward off any potential litigation from those unseemly mob of patent trolls.
Well, I hate to bring this up, but that’s exactly the story we got from Microsoft when they were building up their patent portfolio. And how has that turned out? What we need to understand is that at some point in time a burgeoning patent portfolio is seen as an asset in its own right. And when that happens organizations tend to look for ways to milk it for as much as its worth. I see that process as going through four stages:
Stage 1 — Patent Victim: This is the point at which an organization is large enough, and wealthy enough, to become a regular target of patent infringement actions.
Stage 2 — Defensive Patentee: In this stage, organizations establish formal intellectual property (IP) management strategies to build a patent portfolio that can be used to fend off infringement actions.
Stage 3 — License Experimenter: Once patent portfolios reach a certain mass, organizations start exploring how to leverage these patents to proactively protect commercial interests.
Stage 4 — Offensive Patentee: As organizations become comfortable with both the process of portfolio exploitation and the quality of portfolios, they vigorously start pursuing cross-licensing and license revenue opportunities.
So, does that mean that its only a matter of time before Google’s legal team starts sending out letters seeking license fees? I don’t know. And that’s the point. No one else does either.
I would suggest to you all that the greatest threat to any open system is, in fact, uncertainty. And what Google has done here is to dump a whole lot of uncertainty onto the market.
This could be remedied should Google choose to assign their rights to a patent commons. But in response to many valid concerns about this uncertainty Google’s Deputy General Counsel stated:
“Like other responsible, innovative companies, Google files patent applications on a variety of technologies it develops. While we do not comment about the use of this or any part of our portfolio, we feel that our behavior to date has been inline with our corporate values and priorities.”
In other words, “trust us – after all we’re not evil.”
Like I said, I’m only looking for consistency. Google can put patents like these in the public domain and bask in the glow of their open credentials. Or, they can continue to obtain patents but tell staff to stop blogging on how open they are.
My colleague Ray Valdes has just written an excellent blog debunking some of the myths around the apparent cyber attacks originating in China. There’s a lot of stuff that we’re still to learn about this whole case. And while it appears that there’s not enough evidence available (at least publicly) to start implicating the Chinese government, the fact that there was a large-scale and concerted attempt to spy on Chinese dissidents and to abscond with intellectual property seems to be without dispute.
Why then does everyone seem so obsessed with a forensic examination of Google’s motivation for acting the way they have? Need I remind everyone that there are at least 19 other companies involved. Where is all the discussion on what these organizations are doing in response to this situation?
Or, perhaps more aptly…what these organizations are not doing in response to this situation.
Let’s put this in perspective. Let’s suppose it was you whose email account was being hacked and the evidence pointed to it being done by a foreign government or a foreign agent with significant support from its government. Let’s suppose it was your organization that was having its IP compromised. What would you expect from a company identified as a conduit for those attacks on you? I’m guessing we’d all agree that a proactive and transparent response would be in order. I’m also guessing we’d be less than convinced about the efficacy of any secret back room conversations between company representatives and relevant government officials – particularly when those company representatives would likely be as concerned, if not more so, with the impact on their bottom line as they are with the impact on your privacy or property.
As Ray noted in his blog post there are people suggesting that Google’s threat to exit the Chinese market has more to do with the fact that they’re losing to Baidu. The implication being that this has simply been a cycnical revenue-based decision. But lost in this contorted logic is the simple fact that a failure to act for fear of losing revenue is a far greater sin. According to a report by Bloomberg that seems to be exactly what has been happening by those besides Google.
Let’s not lose sight of the fact that we are talking about global companies operating in a global economy. As such, serious problems like industrial or political espionage can’t simply be managed within the country of origin. It must be managed in an open manner and in a way that provides comfort and confidence to the company’s stakeholders around the world. In this regard Google has acted responsibly. So, let’s stop focusing on them. As this story develops the scrutiny needs to placed on companies such as Microsoft, Adobe, Yahoo and Juniper Networks.
Should we start discovering that these organizations’ responses have been compromised by their commercial interests in China, perhaps it would be worthwhile to point to Dante Alighieri’s observation that the hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, when faced with a moral crisis, remained neutral.
December 27th, 2009 by Brian Prentice · 8 Comments
Like all good things, holidays must also come to an end. And as I proudly survey my complete lack of accomplishment over the last couple of weeks I can’t help but notice the harbingers of an important new season.
Gift wrapping, once tightly wound around its cardboard tube has long since been shredded, crunched up and shoved in the recycle bin.
The scale in my bathroom has moved a few kilos in the wrong direction.
I’m dreading the arrival of my next credit card statement – a concern my financially-cocooned children blissfully ignore as they keep pestering me for all the downloads and accessories that their digital christmas presents now require.
As the fading autumn light tells the deciduous tree that it’s time to put on its annual spectacle of fall colors, all of these are signals that tells this analyst that the spectacle of annual prognostication, unique to my species, is now upon me. But this year is special. With the advent of a new decade I can now indulge myself in an entire ten years worth of predictions. What unbridled joy.
So, what then do the teens hold for open source? Well, if I look back over the previous two decades I see the nineties as a time of inception and establishment. The naughties were largely about proliferation through growing understanding. I believe we are now moving to a era of “open source normalcy.” What do I mean by that? By 2020 open source will be so conceptually and practically integrated into the way business is done that the concept of blogging on open source in 2030 will be about as interesting as predicting the future of double-entry bookkeeping.
Of course that road will not be without a continual shift in perception and some discomfort as we face a wave of creative destruction. There are five major themes tied to open source that I believe will be taken for granted by 2020.
Open Source is a supply chain solution – One of the things that makes open source such an interest topic is the amorphous nature of exactly what it is. Is it simply a licensing agreement. Is it an approach to software development. Is it philosophical movement? By 2020 we’ll have answered that question – open source is a necessary component of all organizations’ supply chain strategies. It is essentially a way to manage cost and mitigate 3rd party dependencies. All other aspects of open source will be seen as the tactical components of achieving this objective
Politicians have a greater impact on open source than entrepreneurs – The politicisation of the IT industry continues to gather steam and unfortunately I see nothing stopping that momentum. IT companies are taking their place alongside large media, pharmaceutical and financial organizations as major lobbyists. Over the last ten years, the advancement in entrepreneurial business models has been central to the growth of open source. But as innovative business models start impacting entrenched industry interests you can rest assured that the establishment will increasingly turn to politicians for legislative and regulatory relief. What we’re already seeing today in areas such as patent reform or anti-trust investigations is only the start of things to come.
Open source globalizes the software industry – I’m not sure many people in the US realize this but open source has long been seen as an industrial policy strategy by governments around the world. In it they see the opportunity to de-couple a critical industry from the US firms that dominated it. Open source, it’s reasoned, can reduce the cost of government, support greater local employment and retain profits in-country for taxation. The problem is that this lofty industry policy objective is very difficult to achieve in a pragmatic manner. But I’m convinced that these challenges will be slowly overcome and the ramifications for the software industry over this new decade will be massive.
Open source impacts ERP afterall – Yet another fascinating aspect of open source over the previous ten years has been the way it has moved up the software stack. No longer is open source about operating systems, databases and development tools. It’s about collaboration, content management, middleware, and social software – to name a few. But the one place it really isn’t is in ERP. Some people believe that ERP represents a line that open source simply can’t cross into. I don’t believe that. Does that mean that in 2020 we’ll see large scale open source ERP solutions that compete directly with SAP and Oracle’s products. I doubt it. But I do believe that we will see a proliferation of open source business processes. And that will call into question the value of ERP as a packaging construct for distributing non-differentiating business processes.
Free is fringe – “Free” – be it gratis or libre – was a defining characteristic of open source in 2000. It is notably less so in 2010. Expect that momentum to continue. I know this will rub some people the wrong way but we don’t live in a world that longs for things to be free. So the more open source becomes woven into the fabric of the world’s economy the more the notion of “free” will be seen as quaint – much like communal farms are in the world of agriculture.
December 22nd, 2009 by Brian Prentice · 14 Comments
Jonathan Rosenberg, Senior VP of Product Management at Google, should be congratulated for sharing his expansive thoughts on “The Meaning of Open.” This will no doubt generate a lot of debate on whether people feel Google is acting within this definition. But I think it’s necessary to take issue with some of his logic, particularly as it relates to open source and open technology.
First off, I think it’s fair to acknowledge that while Google may not be the paragon of open virtue they’re certainly better than most. They are, in my personal opinion, one of the most positive forces for the advancement of open source in the market today. So, what could I possibly disagree with? Well, my primary issue with Rosenberg’s views boil down to what I see more as a sin of omission rather than commission.
Rosenberg introduces the following idea early in his piece:
To understand our position in more detail, it helps to start with the assertion that open systems win. This is counter-intuitive to the traditionally trained MBA who is taught to generate a sustainable competitive advantage by creating a closed system, making it popular, then milking it through the product life cycle
OK, let’s run with that idea and compare it to Google’s actions. When we look at the areas where Google embraces open technology, open standards and open source it becomes clear it’s focused on the way Google operates its business. But when it comes to Google’s core advertising business things start looking a whole lot less open. Remember, Google’s core link analysis algorithm, PageRank, is a patented process. The refinements and improvements they’ve made over the years are strictly held secrets. Sure, Google have proven to be masters at strategically applying open source in the provision of their core business and in removing competitive obstacles. But embracing things like open advertising networks are another thing altogether.
Again, I’m not interested in criticizing Google. Nor is Rosenberg trying to paint Google as purely an open organization. But the disconnect between Rosenberg’s assertion that open systems win and what Google actually does is indicative of a common misunderstanding of how modern businesses are using open standards, open source and open technology. Openness is by and large a strategy to reduce operating costs and remove supply chain dependencies. Open is not a revenue engine in its own right. In that regard, Rosenberg’s observation about sustaining competitive advantage through closed system are still valid. The only real change is that organizations are increasingly understanding how to balance both closed and open systems.
The truth is that closed systems still win. Open systems, practically speaking, are basically good for making others lose.
The art of business in the 21st century is figuring out how to open up your suppliers’ and competitors’ business while keeping yours tightly sealed. And in that endeavor Google has proven highly successful.
But here Rosenberg gets all tangled up trying to explain this away. He says:
While we are committed to opening the code for our developer tools, not all Google products are open source. Our goal is to keep the Internet open, which promotes choice and competition and keeps users and developers from getting locked in. In many cases, most notably our search and ads products, opening up the code would not contribute to these goals and would actually hurt users. The search and advertising markets are already highly competitive with very low switching costs, so users and advertisers already have plenty of choice and are not locked in. Not to mention the fact that opening up these systems would allow people to “game” our algorithms to manipulate search and ads quality rankings, reducing our quality for everyone.
It’s so good to know that Google has our back, isn’t? And I’m sure there’s a broad consensus that Google is in the best position to determine which parts of the internet should be open and which parts should be closed. Coincidentally, the part that should stay closed is the part they make their money.
Seriously though, I don’t think Rosenberg is making any attempt to mislead. I think he’s thinking out loud and trying to reconcile the paradox he’s created for himself – that open systems win even though Google’s success is so clearly the result of being strategically closed. Jonathan – just accept that modern businesses need both open and closed systems and the paradox of your achievements will disappear.
If you get the opportunity to take a look at the quick video explaining LA’s reasons for making the move, two points immediate spring to mind. The first is that they see Google Applications as a way of saving $5.5m over the five year life of the contract. I don’t know whether any one of the 14 proposals LA considered was an open source alternative. But that detail will probably be lost on many who increasingly realize that open source is not always entirely free.
Extrapolating this out, there seems to be the very real potential for cloud applications to overtake open source as a means for the more daring organizations of the world (what Gartner calls Type A organizations) to achieve “order of magnitude” savings. I think this will be a serious challenge for open source adoption if its no longer seen as the price leader.
But there’s another point that’s very clear in the video. LA didn’t make their decision on costs alone. There were unique things that Google Applications was going to do for them – things in the area of “collaboration, disaster recovery and archiving that they don’t currently have today.”
Clearly, Google has gone in an entirely different route with their approach to applications. They are shunning feature proliferation and instead focusing on simple applications that exploit the collaboration potential of the web. But what about open source alternatives like OpenOffice and Zimbra? Can applications like these be considered new approaches to personal productivity software or simply an open source re-tread of well-worn themes? If it’s the latter – and I’m inclined to say it is – then for many enterprises the only discernible value proposition is price. And I return to the point I’ve just made.
Why don’t we broaden this out. How much does open source development, overall, depend on proprietary alternatives for design cues? Is open source more mimicry than artistry?
As I think about this I would have to admit that in my conversations with our clients I’m hearing a lot more questions about the possibility of migrating to Google Applications than I’m hearing about migrating to open source personal productivity alternatives. And I’m beginning to wonder whether cloud applications, in general, are capturing people’s imagination in ways open source hasn’t because of a lack of imagination in open source development.
Yes, open source has many powerful value propositions that extend beyond the specific piece of software. But the cruel reality in the enterprise IT world is that those benefits rank well down the list compared to the benefits attached to the product itself. Is that just? Probably not. Will that change anytime soon? Probably not. Maybe we’re at an inflection point where the next big upswing in open source software will be dependent on real out-of-box thinking in the types of software being created.
But just being open source may not be good enough any more.
December 9th, 2009 by Brian Prentice · 31 Comments
Let me ask you a question. I’m going to assume that at some point over the last twenty years you bought a car. So, how important was the car maker’s use of just-in-time manufacturing to your purchase decision? I’m going to go out on a limb here and say it was of no consideration at all.
Well, I think we’re fast approaching the point where open source to software will be like JIT to automotive manufacturing. While it will critical to the producers of software, woven into the fabric of its operations, it will be of no importance at the point of consumption.
As hard as this might be to accept, open source is not a value proposition in its own right. That’s because the market for software is driven by four questions customers ask:
does the software do what I need it to do (feature bake-off)?
who will help me when I have a problem with the software?
who will maintain the software and how much will that cost?
will I end up being beholden to the software supplier?
Open source is only relevant to the extent that it creates meaningful differences in these categories. But ultimately, customers only care about the differences – not the way it’s been achieved.
This point was brought home to me again in a recent conversation I had with Cheryl McKinnon, Chief Marketing Officer at Nuxeo. As she highlighted to me, Nuxeo endeavours to frame themselves as a viable Enterprise Content Management provider that happens to utilize open source software – not the provider of an open source Enterprise Content Management solution. This marketing approach is not unique to Nuxeo and is based on a pragmatic realization of how customers acquire software. No amount of open source spin is going to compensate for a substandard solution. The product still has to be functionally competitive within its technology category.
And while open source can have a positive impact on support, maintenance and vendor lock-in, those effects are not universally consistent. Different open source projects have different dynamics based on its diversity of code contributors, licensing provisions, and the extent to which support is required and the willingness and availability of a community to do so (just to name a few). These dynamics, in turn, can be effected by the organization which is using the project for their commercial solution. So again, astute customers will not just assume that the existence of an open source license creates better support, maintenance and lock-in conditions. They will drive each individual provider to prove it.
Open source might have a feel-good glow today. But the more enterprises consider open source software the more that glow will fade under serious scrutiny. In that environment, generic open source value statements ultimately provide little meaningful benefit to a software provider. Or worse – they come across as patronizing, mom & apple pie statements. The more that’s recognized the more open source will be banished as a selling proposition by marketers across the industry.
In years to come, open source will be prevalent across the software vendor landscape. But they’ll be selling the sizzle, not the sausage.
For those of you not familiar with commercial open source software – which I will now refer to as COSS (hey, I’m an analyst, it’s my job to create acronyms) – it is essentially a business model loosely tied to the concept of “freemium.” On one hand a vendor provides a free, open source offering (and by that I mean that it’s covered under a license agreement recognized by OSI) which is usually supported by the community. On the other hand there is a “value-add” solution which is not free, is directly supported by the software vendor and is a proprietary-licensed offering.
First things first. COSS doesn’t mean you get some hybrid software that’s half open source and half proprietary (a dessert topping and a floor wax). You pick – you’re either using the open source version or the proprietary version. And if you’re picking the latter than you might as well remove the words “open source” from the term commercial open source software. You’re basically just acquiring good old fashion software in the good old fashion way.
So, from the users’ perspective nothing really changes. The innovation in commercial open source software is largely on the vendor side of the equation. COSS is a way for a software vendor to leverage the positive aspects of open source – particularly community development – as a way to build a business and defray some of the engineering and sales & marketing costs. Not that there’s anything wrong with that!
But, as a user, if you decide to go down the free open source route – especially as a long term decision – you need to be crystal clear on how the vendor is “value adding” their proprietary version. If you don’t, you could be in for a surprise.
The most common way of value adding commercial open source is via the product. In this approach, the vendor not only separates the open source and proprietary versions of the product by providing direct support but also by adding more features to the proprietary version. The proprietary version is therefore a functional superset of the open source solution (this is a topic I’ve explored in more detail in “Commercial Open Source Software: Is All That Glitters Usually Sold” – Gartner subscription required)
Product differentiated COSS has a specific weakness. If the vendor is the primary, or sole, committing organization (in other words there’s not much of a community outside the vendor) then unless you’re either happy with the product as is, or plan on doing all the needed product modifications yourselves, then you are highly dependent on the vendor for product improvements.
The problem comes from the fact that over time the vendor has a financial incentive to see a growing functional gulf emerge between the open source and proprietary versions. After all, they make their money only when you move to the proprietary version. If those couple of extra features you need require an “upgrade”…well so much the better. And that incentive is fuelled when the vendor has a group of venture capitalists hounding them for revenue.
This problem is simply solved. COSS vendors should create a fully transparent charter of development that describes the criteria they will use in determining whether new capabilities go into the open source project or when they’re allocated to the proprietary version. Additionally, it should describe the conditions under which features in the proprietary version will migrate their way into the open source project. That charter of development should be open for audit. With such a charter there may still be a yawning gap between the two versions of the software but at least you’ll know exactly what you’re getting into.
Unfortunately, development charters like this are rare – really rare. Most COSS vendors I have spoken to assure me that they have criteria and they’re committed to assuring a good open source version is available. But there’s no documentation nor full transparency so it basically boils down to “trust me.”
If you’re a trusting type of person, working for a trusting type of organization then no problemo!
By the way, not all COSS is product differentiated. Some COSS providers differentiate themselves based on their service levels (things like indemnification, certifying stacks, consolidating release intervals, etc.) – what I like to call “Community Gap Coverage.” That approach I consider to be much cleaner than differentiating by product.
Why is it that Open Source Software hasn’t had as big an impact in the area of business applications as it has for infrastructure software? It’s a question that regularly circulates around Gartner.
[note: by "business application" I'm referring to the acronym-laden category of software that encompasses an organization's business processes - things like ERP, SCM, HRCM, CRM, ETC., ETC., ETC.)
Now, don’t go overreacting to that first sentence, please! I am not denying the existence of many good Open Source business applications (ERP5 is still one of my favourites in terms of the elegance of its approach). Nor am I denying that there are organizations benefiting from the use of such projects.
But let’s be honest here. Open Source business applications have just not had the same disruptive impact that Open Source operating system, database, middleware and collaboration projects have. The fundamental question is whether this is simply a matter of timing or whether there is a structural impediment to this ever happening.
Personally, I think it’s a combination of both.
In order to explain this I need to come back to the concept of “Collective Competency” (Gartner clients can also read the associated research note – “Collective Competency: A New Business Pattern“). Collective Competency represents the strategic decision frameworks and ongoing tactical efforts needed to create collectively-owned assets. These types of assets – distinct from “entity-specific assets” – are emerging as the only real way for an organization to deal with distortions in a value chain system created by a dominant supplier.
When you look at Open Source as a manifestation of Collective Competency what starts to become clear is that it has been the software vendors’ efforts to alleviate themselves of value chain system dependencies which have fuelled so much Open Source development. Oracle doesn’t want to be dependent on Microsoft for an operating system so they support Linux. SAP doesn’t want to be dependent on Oracle for the DBMS so they try to drive MaxDB. Those concerned about Oracle, Microsoft and SAP dominion over middleware get stuck into things like JBoss.
But the story changes when it comes to business processes. The fact is that there is no real value chain dependency between vendors when it comes to the business process layer of the software stack (that will probably change in the future as SOA matures – but that’s a separate discussion). Generally they have been happy to build their own discrete process stacks and customers have been happy to buy them.
This is the structural impediment. Without a value chain system dependency somewhere it is doubtful that Open Source will have a serious impact on the business applications landscape. But that brings me to the timing issue, because I think there is a value chain system dependency which has the very real potential of emerging.
It is a mistake to see enterprises as the “user” of a business application. The processes represented within these products are ultimately used to deliver their products and services to market. From that perspective, business application providers are part of these organizations’ own value chain system. So the question here is whether or not business application vendors start distorting the value chain systems of their collective customer base.
I think this is absolutely a possibility, if it isn’t already happening in some areas. Increasingly business applications are cementing organizations into high dependency relationships with their suppliers, bound by steep exit costs and vendor copyright control of the IP. Those relationships are becoming increasingly expensive as maintenance costs continue to defy gravity (with the potential of taking on a whole new dimension as some business application vendors continue to explore “value-based” pricing models). All of this for what is effectively a partially used collection of non-differentiating process capabilities.
So, is there a point where enterprise IT organizations will start questioning the long term value they’re receiving from these business applications? If that starts to happen what they’ll rapidly realize is that the only sustainable long-term solution is to participate in the creation of collectively-owned business application assets.
In other words, it would be the Collective Competency efforts of the user community, specifically targeted at business application vendors, that will be the most likely scenario that will drive Open Source business applications.
There are some examples of this happening already. The SAKAI project in higher education is one. Collaborative Software Initiative is a company which is building a business model targeted at creating exactly these types of solutions.
But in general I’m not holding my breath. The fact of the matter is that most enterprise IT organizations do not look at business applications through the lens of value chain system dependency. They look at it through the lens of mitigated custom development cost. I’m not suggesting that’s not valid – but if that’s the only measure its a dangerous mistake on the part of the CIO and his or her IT organization.
I think the will be a growing realization by users on the nature and extent of the value chain system dependency they have on their business application providers. And if business application vendors don’t manage this carefully then watch out! Those users will do unto them the way software vendors have been doing unto each other for the last decade.
