Stuart Cohen at Grand Central Station in New York.
(Credit: Matt Asay)Most of the software in the world is written by enterprises that never intend to sell it. They write it for internal use.
Think of all the good that would come by sharing that code between enterprises with similar needs. Think long enough and you'll come up with Stuart Cohen's Collaborative Software Initiative (CSI).
CSI hit the news this week for some intriguing work with the state of Utah, which promises to deliver the world's first open-source infectious disease management system and break down the walls between enterprises to introduce a new era of sharing code.
At least, that's the promise. It starts with one state. Where it goes next is what CSI (and open source) is all about. According to CSI's statement:
... Read moreI spent some time on the phone Wednesday with Mike Herrick of the Collaborative Software Initiative. I knew Mike back when he was at Liberty Mutual, building out its open-source team. When Mike left to join CSI, I wondered what would cause someone with a great job in a Fortune 100 enterprise to join a start-up.
Today, things became a bit clearer.
Remember Avalanche? It was an open-source co-op formed by several major enterprises (Best Buy, Wells Fargo, etc.) to share code in areas of common need (call centers, for example) but little to no competitive overlap. The idea was to share code and thereby improve innovation while lowering costs.
CSI is similar in its aims, but I think it's a better approach to the problem because it should do a better job of coordinating collaboration. CSI's mission is to:
build communities of like-minded IT leaders to reduce software development costs, accelerate compliance and consolidate project timelines.
CSI does this by helping to bring different companies to collaborate on IT projects that each individually needs, but that can be done more cost effectively as a collective. So, for example, perhaps CSI found that Credit Suisse needed to develop a trading platform. As it turns out, this is a common need for Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, and other financial services companies. So, CSI would then approach these other companies to gauge interest and then to coordinate the development.
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