enterprise

Britney ban at Enterprise-Record extended another month

On Thursday, I wrote about how David Little at the Chico Enterprise-Record issued a decree in his January 20 column declaring that Britney Spears would go unmentioned for at least an entire month in the newspaper's print publication. After salvaging my e-mail from quarantine (neither one of us have any idea why my e-mail ended up marked), David wrote back Thursday night to share the news that the Britney Blackout has been extended for another month. He attached a section of the e-mail he sent out to his staff announcing the decision. I doubt any of you had this written on your calendar, but the E-R's Britney Blackout ends today. Except it doesn't end. Nobody has canceled their newspaper. Not one person has even called or written to complain. And yet approximately 50 people have called, written or told me personally that they are glad we're doing this. ...

Anyway, we're going to do this for another month. Of course, we won't be able to announce that in the newspaper because that would violate our no-BS ban. So we'll quietly continue to keep any mention of Britney out of the newspaper. Not even any secondary references in unrelated stories. Nothing. Not even a mention if she storms the stage at the Oscars on Sunday and, in a drunken stupor, pulls a Janet Jackson. Nothing.

How to ensure eternal life for your open-source project?

A friend pinged me a few weeks ago with a Very Good Question, one for which I still don't have a good answer and so I thought I'd throw it out to the larger community. The question?

How can a company best preserve its customized code...when there's no guarantee that future management will support open source?

It's a big question, and one that an increasing number of companies will face as they learn to innovate again. Here's the same question with a bit more context:

I've been thinking about the source base we have on Sourceforge and who should really hold the copyright. I've spoken with [my CIO] and both of us agree that [we] may not be the best copyright holder. [We] are not a software company and when [the CIO] and I are gone the company may lose its stomach for open source....… Read more

A Chico newspaper decides to "leave Britney alone"

At the time of this writing, a search for "Britney Spears" at news.google.com reveals 23,600 articles. By comparison, Britney's friend, Lindsay Lohan, who appears nude in in this month's issue of New York Magazine, and has also had significant personal drama in the past, has a paltry 4,028 articles currently linked to from Google News.

Last month, David Little, the editor of the Chico Enterprise-Record, decided that he had had enough. In a column published on January 20, titled Sit back and enjoy a Britney blackout, Little announced that "This is the last mention you'll see of Britney Spears in the E-R until Feb. 20. If we find this newspaper can exist without her, we may go even longer." It's now February 21st and the E-R is still running Britney free. I e-mailed Little to find out how long he plans to continue the blackout and will update this blog when I hear from him.

( Update here) In his column David Little describes the impetus for the "Britney blackout:"...an assistant bureau chief for the Associated Press sent out a memo to all Southern California AP reporters. It said: "Now and for the foreseeable future, virtually everything involving Britney is a big deal. That doesn't mean every rumor makes it on the wire. But it does mean that we want to pay attention to what others are reporting and seek to confirm those stories that WE feel warrant the wire."… Read more

Thoughts on the ArcSight IPO

Kudos to ArcSight for having the chutzpah to go public rather than wait around to get acquired. What does the company's IPO mean to the market? Three things.

1. The space is on fire. ArcSight revenue was up about 75 percent year over year--from just under $40 million to just under $70 million. A testament to ArcSight? Absolutely, but the whole log management space (along with its security and compliance analysis aspects) are as hot as can be. ArcSight is one of the boats in this rising tide.

2. ArcSight makes the short list. Yes, the competition is steep. … Read more

Enterprise software is dead - just ask Silicon Valley

For some time now, many of the best and brightest minds in Silicon Valley have been focused beyond enterprise software. The New York Times carries a feature today on Silicon Valley's efforts in solar power, coinciding with a steady drumbeat of news on Silicon Valley and Green Energy.

Add to this the dominance of consumer-facing players like Google and the push of Software-as-a-Service vendors like Salesforce.com and you have what appears to be a complete rout of the traditional enterprise software market. Selling upfront license fees for millions and dinging enterprises on an annual basis is sooooo 20th Century.

All of which begs for the rise of the IT department again.… Read more

US Treasury wasting tens of millions on a $1 million problem

CMS Watch's Kas Thomas is reporting that the US Treasury is asking to bump up its content management budget from $16.9 million to $28.2 million. Kas further notes that the budget is for commercial off-the-shelf software not consulting bloatware.

It also likely means no open-source software (Alfresco, Drupal, etc.), which is the only way that the Treasury could manage to waste tens of millions of dollars on a $1 million (or so) problem. Other departments within the US federal government (US military, most notably) are weaning themselves from the proprietary nipple, as the federal IT spending report shows. But not the Treasury.

This isn't sour grapes: A wide range of US federal agencies already use open-source enterprise content management software (and other open-source software), including Alfresco. Rather, it's the same song that I've sung before about other wasteful government spending on proprietary bloatware. Governments shouldn't overspend on technology that locks citizen data into proprietary, private-sector software companies. Period.… Read more

Dell to acquire enterprise e-mail service MessageOne

Updated at 5:55 AM PT to include comments from Dell.

Dell is expanding its horizons a bit further.

The PC maker plans to acquire enterprise e-mail service MessageOne for $155 million in cash, the company said early Tuesday.

Though Dell has made very few acquisitions over its two decades in business, this one isn't that much of a stretch: Austin, Texas-based MessageOne, which manages the process of archiving, e-discovery, and long-term storage of e-mail, was founded by Adam Dell, the brother of the PC maker's CEO, Michael Dell.

To ensure fairness, the company says founder and chairman … Read more

Google Apps aims to move companies to the cloud

Just like rogue employees in the 1990s forced instant messaging into corporations, the new Google Apps Team Edition being launched on Thursday offers a way for workers to slip a hosted apps service into the enterprise.

This could help Google in its efforts to lure more people off desktop applications sold by Microsoft and onto the mostly free Web-based apps Google offers.

Google Apps Team Edition is a free service that lets people within the same e-mail domain collaborate easily with Google Apps, a package that includes Docs, Calendar, Talk, and Start Page.

Unlike IM applications, which open communication to … Read more

DreamWorks wins an award for its innovative use of Linux

Linux (and principally Red Hat Enterprise Linux) has become the primary production platform for the animation industry, largely due to the engineering efforts of DreamWorks. Behind that effort sits Ed Leonard, chief technology officer at DreamWorks, who has been recognized for his work with an Annie Award for "promoting the Linux open system for animation in animation studios and gaming software development."

I first met Ed back in 2004 while still at Novell. I was trying to dislodge Red Hat within DreamWorks. Needless to say, I failed. :-)

Ed was a director back then. He's since become … Read more

Two questions on the future of open source

I had two conversations today that set me to pondering the future of open source. One was during a panel I moderated on "cloud-based computing" at the Webguild Web 2.0 Conference. The second was over lunch with an old friend.

First, what happens to the open-source development community if the world moves to cloud-based computing? Open source has been a server or PC-based phenomenon. Why did Linus Torvalds develop for an x86 architecture? Because that's what he had. He didn't have a massive server farm to work with. Neither do you.

Think about it. What software could you or I write in a world where there are only a few "computers" (five, according to Yahoo), computers to which you and I don't have access? I suppose developers will increasingly be able to write code for others' "clouds," but will this be the same?… Read more