Old dogs may struggle with new tricks, but they seem to be able to figure out new licenses.
In a shocking move, Microsoft announced Monday the release of Hyper-V Linux Integration Components (LinuxIC).
The news reflects Microsoft's continued interest in lobotomizing its virtualization competition through low prices, but also the recognition that it must open up if it wants to fend off insurgent virtualization strategies from Red Hat, Novell, and others in the open-source camp.
But the truly startling news is that LinuxIC is being released under the GNU General Public License (version 2). Microsoft once called GPL anti-American. Now it calls it friend.
The gods must be crazy.
Or maybe Microsoft is simply recognizing (finally!) that GPL can be a capitalist's close ally. That and the fact that many components within the Linux kernel are GPLv2-licensed make the move completely natural...at least, once you forget that this is Microsoft embracing GPL, rather than some other company like Red Hat.
LinuxIC is a collection of kernel drivers that enable Linux to recognize that it is running on Microsoft's Hyper-V and optimize accordingly, resulting in an "enlightened version of Linux," according to market researcher IDC. The device drivers have yet to be accepted into the Linux kernel, but the GPL license and general utility makes their inclusion probable.
The move opens up Hyper-V to much more than Windows, which has arguably been its weakest point. As IDC notes, this embrace of Linux is a "key element if Microsoft is going to successfully go head to head with VMware in large accounts--many of which already are dedicated VMware customers."
Importantly, Microsoft is now opening up even beyond its long-time Linux partner, Novell, to embrace an array of other Linux partners, including Red Hat. While Novell was the first Linux vendor to certify for Hyper-V, Microsoft's lack of real support beyond Novell's Suse Linux Enterprise Server was a weakness, as some have complained.
But this is arguably a new Microsoft. Redmond recently announced that Office 2010 will support Internet Explorer and Mozilla's Firefox. The company is learning that its customers run heterogeneous software environments, and it's (slowly) responding. Microsoft's Sam Ramji, senior director of Platform Strategy, notes: "We are seeing Microsoft communities and open source communities grow together, which is ultimately of benefit to our customers."
Microsoft, in short, can't ignore open source, including Linux, without ignoring its own customers.
But surely this move is more Machiavelli than Santa Claus? Maybe, maybe not. I asked Novell's Greg Kroah-Hartman, a prominent Linux kernel developer who was deeply involved in influencing Microsoft to release LinuxIC, what Microsoft's move means for Linux. His response reflects an enthusiasm that is as surprising as it is refreshing:
We want Linux to work well for everybody. This move is not bad in any way for Linux, Xen (Novell's preferred virtualization technology), or KVM (Red Hat's preferred virtualization technology). This is not a competition, per se.
With LinuxIC, Microsoft is doing two things. First, it's saying that contributing open-source software under GPL is acceptable. And second, it's supporting the idea, which I and others in the Linux kernel community have long advanced, that all Linux kernel drivers should be open source.
LinuxIC is the latest example of how Microsoft is changing, and it's a big proof point. When Microsoft embraces Linux, that's news. When it does so by embracing GPL, it's perhaps time to start the countdown to Armageddon.
Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.
Could VMware be the next Novell? That's the question Gartner managing vice president and chief of research for Infrastructure David Cappuccio asks in a provocative post, one that bears further discussion. While VMware is at the top of its game, there are several historical analogs between VMware and Novell.
I'll let you read Cappuccio's excellent post for his full argument, but the crux of it is that in the face of dominant but pricey technology, many buyers will turn to "good enough" to fill their needs. For Novell, that competition to its 90 percent market share came from Windows, which displaced Novell's "great technology that was more complex (or complete) than most customers needed."
Today, VMware faces a host of rising threats. Cappuccio picks out Microsoft's Hyper-V as chief among them:
[L]urking in the background is this little thing called Hyper-V; not as robust, or as tested as VMware, with almost no install base, and certainly not ready for prime time in most people's minds. However, it will be an integral part of Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 7 in 2010. Why should you (or VMware) care? Because like "free networking", or "free SharePoint", hyper-V will get used, slowly at first, but as more and more systems get installed the base will increase and within just a few short years companies will discover (surprise, surprise!) that they have business applications running on both VMware and Hyper-V.
Free-and-good-enough is a great strategy, and one that Microsoft has long used to exceptional effect.
Of course, Microsoft isn't the only one playing this game. Xen is included for free in Linux, though Red Hat is pushing to move users to KVM (and succeeding to an increasing extent). Virtualization customers are spoiled for choice.
All of which leaves VMware exposed. This isn't to suggest that VMware should resign itself to obliteration. Indeed, VMware has gone on the offensive, releasing a host of software as open source to combat open-source alternatives, most intriguingly its open-source virtualization client, as OStatic's Sam Dean notes.
Novell didn't respond to its Netware demise until it was too late. VMware seems to be learning from history.
The real question is whether it will be able to go as low as Microsoft and the Linux vendors on price while still maintaining "good enough" profits. I suspect it will fail in this because for VMware, virtualization is core and it must price accordingly. For Microsoft, Red Hat, and Novell, virtualization is a critical complement, but not the core of their businesses. Complements are cheap, core is not.
Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.
SpringSource announced news earlier today that it has acquired Hyperic. This is good news for SpringSource, but not everyone out there believes that it's good news for open source.
The PR representative for Nimsoft, a proprietary IT management company, decided that it would use the occasion to fling mud at Hyperic and open-source IT management solutions. In an e-mail pitch to me, it ends up going long on claims and short on substance.
My responses in italics below.
We noted with interest your article on SpringSource's acquisition of Hyperic this morning. We believe that this is very key for SpringSource, as it allows them to protect their business model, going forward, but wonder what it means for open-source vendors in general.
I work for an open-source company that has doubled or tripled sales every year since inception, and know a slew of open-source companies doing really well in the bad economy, including Hyperic, but apparently this PR person didn't know that. ;-)
An executive from Nimsoft, a performance- and availability-monitoring company, would like to share with you his thoughts on why you will see more open-source performance-monitoring companies either shutting their doors or becoming acquired in the near future.
I'm all ears! I guess this executive from Nimsoft isn't privy to the financial performance of Zenoss, Hyperic, Groundwork, and others, and so he doesn't know that if they're acquired, it's likely because they're doing well, not poorly.
Specifically, he would like to discuss:
- Why open-source models won't work, going forward
I've spent the last seven years blogging about why and how they will succeed, but hey! A proprietary software company that only managed to sign 29 new "logo" customers in its past quarter is probably well-positioned to advise the rest of the market on why open source will fail...even as Microsoft, Oracle, IBM, and others all buy into open source more heavily.
- What companies are discovering about the hidden costs --inexpensive up-front but high-manpower costs moving forward to manage the environment
I guess Nimsoft didn't get the memo from Forrester Research that 92 percent of companies it surveyed actually do save money with open source. Even after all those "hidden costs" are factored in.
- How the business model is affected by the economy: Why the practice of "giving the product away" and hoping companies will sign up for maintenance contracts is facing challenges.
Finally, something we can agree upon! I have seen many open-source companies facing the challenge of meeting big spikes in demand in the bad economy. Maybe the Nimsoft representatives should look at this chart: 
It shows the positive trajectory the negative economy is having on open-source sales.
Please let me know if you are interested in speaking with Nimsoft, and I will be able to get you in touch with them, as well as get you any follow-up material that you might require.
I think the only follow-up material I'll need is real data on open source, but then, I guess I've been posting that for quite some time here, so perhaps after Nimsoft has taken the trouble to read it...? Thanks.
Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.
SpringSource announced Monday its acquisition of Hyperic, a move that signals a new phase of commercial open-source competition.
Until recently, open-source vendors like SpringSource seemed content to play the low-cost commodity foil to the broader product portfolios of their proprietary peers. No more.
SpringSource, the company behind the Spring Framework, the leading open-source application framework for Java, has been nudging beyond its roots for some time. Most recently, SpringSource announced commercial support for Tomcat, arguably the world's most prevalent Java application server. It has also released tools to expedite and facilitate the development of Java applications.
In these ways, it has continued its march toward a more complete Java development model and, in the process, has girded its ability to monetize the otherwise free and open-source Spring Framework. With over half the Fortune 2000 as users of the Spring Framework, it is this ability to turn users into paying customers that has been perhaps most critical to SpringSource's product plans.
With Hyperic, SpringSource completes its vision to provide a "complete suite of software products that accelerate the entire build, run, manage enterprise Java application lifecycle," and moves from framework provider to a true solution provider--one that competes directly with IBM and Microsoft.
The acquisition of Hyperic cements a longstanding partnership between the two companies. SpringSource has been OEM'ing Hyperic's technology since 2007. By acquiring Hyperic, however, SpringSource makes it possible to fully manage the applications that its customers build using the Spring Framework.
As Javier Soltero, CEO of Hyperic, told me in a phone interview:
The SpringSource philosophy has always been about making it easier to build enterprise-grade Java applications. But the pillar of this acquisition is about offering the full application lifecycle: build the applications, run those applications, and then manage those applications using Hyperic.
This is more than a marriage of code. It's about merging the best people in IT management with the best in Java application development. It gives us broader and deeper visibility up and down the software stack and across a company's network and data center, including virtualization and cloud computing environments. It means that we've just reduced and, in some cases, eliminated the gap between application development and IT operations.
Soltero will become CTO of management products with SpringSource.
I asked Soltero about speculation that this acquisition was simply the fulfillment of a whim on the part of Peter Fenton of Benchmark Capital, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist who has invested in both SpringSource and Hyperic and is an active investor in a range of open-source companies. As Soltero explained it, while "Benchmark is of course happy with the combination," it was not involved in promoting it and, for legal reasons, could not be involved.
Regardless, the SpringSource/Hyperic combination creates a clear and present danger to IBM and Microsoft, two companies that have largely stood alone in the ability to build, run, and manage applications. It's also a significant boon to companies looking to open source to save money and improve productivity.
Is it a sign of good things to come from not only SpringSource, but also open source, generally? Time will tell, but I suspect we're on the cusp of an aggressive and ambitious new phase in open-source competition.
Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.
What with all the virtualization hype, one would think that virtual servers had the option of parting the Red Sea or walking on it.
While there's a great deal of promise in virtualization, there's also the peril of managing virtual servers, as Luke Kanies, founder of the Puppet project, points out in a blog post.
You have significant problems when you rely on golden images (i.e., virtual images complete with all necessary services): image sprawl, updating your images, and image state vs. running state...Maintaining these (virtual) images is more like managing a foil ball: it's difficult to pull apart, difficult to press back together, and if you get too many of them, they just get into the way.
It's perhaps not surprising that Kanies sees Puppet as the answer to this image sprawl and confusion:
If, instead, you use a single, base image for all of your work--I call these images stem cell images for what are hopefully obvious reasons--and then use a tool like Puppet to configure them, once they're running, you avoid all of the above problems: you have one image to maintain, and it's necessarily simplistic, you use the same tool and the same configuration base across all images, and Puppet keeps your machines updated within 30 minutes of any central change.
His point is good. In moving from physical machines to virtual machines, we've tended to gloss over the complexity that this introduces, preferring to focus on all the efficiency gains virtualization promises.
In other words, the sexier that virtualization becomes, the more important (and, dare I say sexy?) systems management becomes. Suddenly, Hyperic, Reductive Labs (the company behind Puppet), RiverMuse, Zenoss, GroundWork, and other IT management companies take center stage as virtualization, and the cloud-based computing trend it enables, become de facto IT strategies.
As this new competition emerges, however, the IT management companies that know the cloud best will do best. So far, crowns probably go to Reductive Labs and Hyperic, as both have aggressively targeted cloud-based computing. Over time, however, this may change.
Regardless of the eventual winner, it's good to see IT management gaining some sex appeal.
As we navigate the second year of a global recession, enterprises need to be looking for ways to optimize existing infrastructure. Sure, new IT projects will bring in additional technologies, an increasing percentage of which will be open source and software as a service, but the pressure is on to do more with less.
Hyperic, an open-source systems management company, just released a new service--Hyperic Operations IQ--in partnership with open-source Business Intelligence vendor JasperSoft, which promises to do just that.
Hyperic isn't taking any chances on the integration with Jasper server, either: the company hired JasperSoft's ex-chief technology officer, Barry Klawans, to lead development on the integrated product.
I normally don't care much about product announcements, as this blog is more about strategy than technology. But I like what Hyperic Operations IQ promises: a tool that gives IT executives and business managers the same insight into IT performance and Web operations as highly technical system administrators. In other words, Hyperic and JasperSoft are lowering the bar to systems management utility.
As Javier Soltero, Hyperic's founder and CEO, declares:
For companies who are dependent on Web technologies, access to data center and application performance metrics is a critical strategic weapon that should not be limited to the IT and operations teams. Service-level interruptions or downtime can have serious implications to a company's bottom line.
With Hyperic Operations IQ, our customers can see everything that's happening in their data centers at every level of the stack. They'll be able to make better and timelier decisions to support their customers and strengthen their businesses.
This is a smart business move. Why? Because the more people within its customer base that Hyperic can invite into its product experience, the more support it will have at renewal or upgrade time. Making systems management an executive affair is shrewd and should pay dividends.
Disclosure: I am an adviser to JasperSoft.
Follow me on Twitter at mjasay.
To get a glimpse of the changing face of open source, look no further than InfoWorld's "Future of Open Source" roundtable. Some of the thoughts expressed by various leaders in the open-source community are insightful, but that's not the real story.
No, the real story is who InfoWorld chose to profile.
Sure, you get the obligatory Bruce Perens and Eric Raymond call-outs, because these are two of the guys that formed the foundation of open source upon which the rest of us build. But they're the only throwbacks to the "good ol' days" of open source, back when open source was suspiciously anti-corporate (until Raymond and an elite group dubbed "free software" "open source").
Today? Nearly everyone on InfoWorld's list is corporate.
The companies represented include big companies (IBM, Microsoft, Google), small companies (Alfresco, Digium, Hyperic, EnterpriseDB), and in-between companies (MySQL/Sun).
It's perhaps this last one that demonstrates the profound change open source has made over the past three to four years. MySQL was and is a community favorite, but at a cost of $1 billion it has demonstrated the corporate value of open source and, indeed, has begun to alter its business model to ensure that it balances its free (developer) community with its paid (enterprise) community.
Dave Rosenberg writes that 2009 will be the year when open source becomes paid software, but I think we're already there. We've been there for at least two years, in fact. We just didn't know it.
InfoWorld's roundtable, however, makes it abundantly clear: open source is corporate, and that's a compliment, not a slight.
It's easy to talk about how well your company is doing, but the proof is in the revenue (generally private) and in the people (generally public).
I know that Hyperic is doing well on the revenue side, but I'm particularly glad to see it doing so well in attracting exceptional talent to its team. This week Hyperic announced that it has hired Matt Stodolnic, former vice president, Interactive Marketing and Creative Services at Salesforce.com, as its vice president of Marketing.
With how well Salesforce.com has been doing, it's a real testament to Hyperic's opportunity that Stodolnic chose to leave the SaaS CRM leader after seven years.
You can judge a company by the money it generates and the company it keeps. In Hyperic's case, it's doing very well on both counts.
Free Software Foundation President Richard Stallman recently went on a tirade against software as a service (SaaS), suggesting that consumers of SaaS are "putty in the hands of whoever developed that software."
Apparently, Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, missed Stallman's memo, because it's advertising for a Salesforce.com developer to help it manage its proprietary (gasp!), SaaS (gasp!) CRM system.
Not that Canonical is alone. Red Hat, Hyperic, MySQL, and other open-source companies also use Salesforce. Are they bad? Are they putty in the hands of Salesforce? Maybe. But they're also companies that need to make the trains run on time, and apparently, they felt that Salesforce was the best tool for the job.
My own company uses SugarCRM (as well as Zimbra and other open-source software), and we've been very happy with it, but we also use proprietary software where it's more mature and hence makes more sense. Open source will eventually be on par or better than its proprietary counterparts in most or all product segments, but until then, we need to use what works.
This is the point that Hyperic's Stacey Schneider makes while analyzing the comments of Oracle CEO Larry Ellison and Stallman, relating how Ellison's critiques of SaaS sound eerily similar to early complaints about open source, all of which have been disproved over time:
We didn't do (open source and SaaS) because they were cool, or for any desire to be some sort of fashionable IT software company. We did it because it makes sense for our users, and both are an approach to building more affordable, useful, and scalable IT.
In other words, if it works, do it, whether you're a vendor or a buyer. It's really not any more complicated than that.
Roberto Galoppini has a great write-up on Hyperic, a leading open-source systems management company, and its efforts to crack the European market. After seeing 50 percent of its downloads trend toward Europe, Hyperic has begun hiring technical and sales resources to manage its growth there.
It's no surprise to see Hyperic doing so well. Hyperic has long been one of the most prudent open-source companies, managing (and driving) its growth well. Lately it has been delivering things like CloudStatus to help companies monitor their cloud-based computing resources. (As a testament to how good it is, Hyperic was the first to discover Amazon's recent S3 outage.)
As Hyperic continues to execute against its business model, I expect that it will increasingly reap from the fertile ground of Europe. Sometimes companies get exactly what they deserve.
