It's said that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Vyatta, an open-source competitor to Cisco and Juniper, has now taken of several recent steps toward commodifying the existing networking software market, including a deal with the New Mexico Court System.
The reason for choosing Vyatta over Cisco and Juniper? As described in a case study (PDF), Vyatta delivered great functionality at a super-low price, according to Sam Noble, senior network system administrator, New Mexico Courts:
The No. 1 reason we went with Vyatta was the flexibility and the peace of mind, knowing that if we came up with an issue, we'd have lots of avenues to address it from...We considered using Cisco 2600 routers or a Juniper firewall and VPN, but both of those fell short in some key areas.
I downloaded and tested the Vyatta software and found that it gave me all the features and functionality I needed, great performance and, hands down, the most flexible system around. After test-driving the software, I knew I had found the ideal solution in the Vyatta open networking appliance.
New Mexico Courts went into the evaluation assuming it could save money, but the most important thing that Noble relates is the key enabler in the process: a free and unobstructed download. As I've noted before, that download is the key to derisking IT investment, one that is getting CIOs' attention in a recessionary economy.
Why should a prospective customer take a risk on software when they can know well before they buy - if they buy at all - that the software will work? This is the new face of sales, and it's something that open source like Vyatta delivers.
Part of Vyatta's value proposition is all the cost savings and flexibility Noble identified that comes after the implementation and sale. But the initial value proposition is that organizations like New Mexico Courts System don't have to rely on a vendor to spoon-feed them value. With a free download, the enterprise owns the future of its IT.
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Nestle's Nespresso division, a Switzerland-based global leader in coffee, with more than 1,700 employees and sales into 50 countries, had the kind of problem most companies would love to have: growth. As its traditional retail channels moved online, it found it difficult to scale its systems to be able to manage its online growth.
Enter MuleSource, with its open-source Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) technology, Mule. In conjunction with a leading open-source system integrator, Optaros, the two put together a highly scalable services-oriented architecture for Nespresso that makes the coffee drip on time:
Nespresso engaged Optaros and MuleSource to help its corporate architecture team define and implement a new middleware architecture called Nespresso Open Architecture, or NesOA. This new modern architecture is based on service-oriented architecture (SOA) principles, including fully decoupled systems that support both synchronous and asynchronous integration.
With these capabilities, Nespresso's IT infrastructure can now enable new distribution channels, improve business agility, cope with increased transaction volumes, and more easily introduce new applications and services, as needed.
Sounds great, but it's especially telling that the initial implementation took only six months, a testament to the lightweight, open approach that open-source projects like Mule offer enterprises.
But open source isn't just a short-term time saver. In fact, its biggest benefits may come from increased flexibility down the road, as Nespresso's Joel Schmitt, an enterprise architect, declares in a case study describing Nespresso's deployment:
We are committed to an open-source approach, including MuleSource's Mule ESB, because complying with open standards is key for future extensibility and growth...With our new architecture, we have been able to add flexibility and agility to our system landscape.
In this case, Optaros and MuleSource delivered cost and flexibility benefits, but the same types of benefits are being discovered for a wide variety of applications by enterprise IT.
Disclosure: I am an adviser to MuleSource, and my employer, Alfresco, partners with Optaros. I do not, however, drink coffee, so theoretically, I'm biased against Nespresso. :-)
BusinessWeek talks out of both sides of its mouth on Monday, on one hand carrying an op-ed piece from Collaborative Software Initiative's Stuart Cohen arguing that the "open-source business model is broken," while on the other hand talking up how enterprises are turning to open source to save money and drive productivity in tough times.
Which is it?
It's both, of course. Cohen is referring to a bit of a straw man when he claims open source is dead, referring to support-based business models that don't add "proprietary" value beyond the base, open-source code. All successful open-source companies have always had some value-add beyond the base code itself, whether that company is Red Hat, MySQL, SugarCRM, Zimbra, or IBM. We've just become more open about calling it out.
Cohen is therefore right to declare:
Open-source code is generally great code, not requiring much support. So open-source companies that rely on support and service alone are not long for this world. The traditional open-source business model that relies solely on support and service revenue streams is failing to meet the expectations of investors.
So we need more efficient ways to monetize open source. Point taken. But customers aren't waiting. As E*Trade Financial Chief Scientist Lee Thompson tells BusinessWeek, the benefits of open source are too good to ignore, and go well beyond acquisition cost:
For some companies, the benefits of open source extend well beyond cost savings, to such areas as license management. "Your engineers spend less time on contract negotiation and more time on the technology, which is really what you want them to be doing," says E*Trade's Thompson.
... Read more
There are many things that don't interest me at all as a blogger. I couldn't care less about the newest version of your product. I just don't. Unless you're Apple, in which case I care because I worship you. :-)
But for the PR people who want to find space on this blog, please send me case studies. I love hearing how customers are using software. The customer is always right, so even if I don't personally dream about your company/client every night, if a customer does, I want to know, and I'd like to cover it.
I cover many of Red Hat's customer wins and case studies because Red Hat PR is good about sending these along, and even better about having an RSS feed to which I subscribe that covers these. Please do the same. I'd love to hear about how companies are adopting open source.
While some in private-sector industry drag their feet on open source, it's instructive that arguably the most mission-critical systems in the world are being migrated to open source, namely, the US military's systems.
It's not just a question of cost that drives the US military to buy open source. Indeed, the biggest benefits come down to innovation and flexibility:
...[T]he increasing scope and complexity of military software requirements encourages the use of open source. "If the project is of a sufficient scale, you cannot get there without an open source approach," said Dewey Houck, a senior engineer at Boeing, the lead systems integrator for the Army's FCS.
That is a massively important statement. We may be rapidly approaching the point when it will make little sense to buy proprietary software at all, given the tremendous benefits of open source.
Other benefits? The military cites several:
... Read more
I just heard from Dan Agronow, chief technology officer for The Weather Channel Interactive, who will be speaking at the Open Source Business Conference next year (March 25-26). He's one of a range of IT executives who will be speaking at the event, sharing best practices and digging into the pros (and cons) of open-source adoption.
His session sounds fascinating:
CIO Best Practices: How Weather.com Uses Open Source Software to Deliver a Highly Scalable and Cost Effective Website
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Chip Chowdhry of Global Equities Research recently speculated (and that's all it was) that Red Hat Linux "is gradually being relegated to a position of non-criticality." The implication was that Linux is not ready for mission-critical implementations, a thought so bizarre and contradicted by the facts (and by Jim Zemlin's enthusiasm) that I'm struggling to say anything more polite than "Global Equities Research is not ready for mission-critical equities analysis."
The recent news that the New York Stock Exchange is idling Unix while scaling out Linux is just one more proof point. The reasons behind the shift are illustrative of why savvy CIOs increasingly turn to open source, generally:
The New York Stock Exchange is investing heavily in x86-based Linux systems and blade servers as it builds out the NYSE Hybrid Market trading system that it launched last year. Flexibility and lower cost are among the goals. But one of the things that NYSE Euronext CIO Steve Rubinow says he most wants from the new computing architecture is technology independence.
... Read more
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