I've been a little busy lately

There is lots of good stuff happening at EnterpriseDB these days.  I did a webcast with Curt Monash (Monash Information Services) last week and it was a whopping success. 

Curt is a well-known database analyst and always tells it like it is.

We had over 700 registrations and almost 400 people on the webcast.  In addition to the 50+% of attendees that were decision makers from Fortune 500 companies, I was surprised to see a lot of state and local government and non-profit organizations on there.  I guess I shouldn't be surprised.  They stand to benefit the most from open source because they have less money to spend and need to spend wisely. 

The webcast was about choosing the right database for your enterprise application.  You can view the webcast on demand here.

I plan to pick up my blogging pace now and you can call me on it if I don't...

You are just a tool!!!

I have been thinking about the tools that make my job easier over the past weekend and those that certainly do not.  Here is a brief list of those that help improve my personal productivity.

1. Trillian - Instant Messaging is an essential tool for me.  It makes quick conversations from one office to the next easier, and for those of us who tele-commute, it is almost like being there.  But, I have folks on Yahoo, AIM, MSN, etc.  Trillion handles them all very easily.  Nice tool and the basic version is free.
2. Windows Live Writer - I am currently managing 2 blogs.  In addition to this one, I also have a blog entitled Obsessive Compulsive Reef Disorder, which talks about my reefkeeping hobby.  Window Live Writer makes it so easy to post to both blogs in a single tool with  point and click ease.  Adding pictures, inserting links are all a piece of cake.  The fact that it is free adds to its appeal.
3. Microsoft Office - Being in an open source company, this one is always under debate.  In fact, we used Open Exchange briefly.  But, the rest of the known world uses Outlook and I can't live without it.  Its not the mail that is essential because there are many ways to handle mail, but it is the calendaring.  I let Office manage me.  If its not on my calendar, I will miss the meeting, plain and simple.  And scheduling a meeting is a piece of cake, too.  You can see when people are available and schedule accordingly.  Don't see a real replacement here yet.
4. PDA/Phone - I have been searching for the ultimate combo unit for a long time.  I have had the Treo 600, Treo 650, Treo 700p and Treo 700w.  I loved my Treo, but was not a big fan of the Windows version.  It had promise but I was constantly forced to reboot.  And to make matters worse, we implemented Good Messaging at work for a while which disabled my standard calendar, email and contacts.  That really became a nightmare.  Now I have the Blackberry 8830.  This is my first crackberry and I can see the addiction.  It just works.  It does not have a touch screen.  But, I miss that less and less every day.  I am hoping that the next generation of iPhones will move the bar even further and be available on Verizon. 
5. Netvibes - Netvibes is a great web 2.0 home page.  It has slowly replaced My Yahoo for me.  I can add multiple tabbed pages and get all the information I need in one spot from news, sports, weather and stock info to manage my eBay account, pull RSSS feeds and search videos and images.  I can even track this blog through it and analyze web stats about our corporate site.  Check it out.

My new favorite software by far, however, is Clearspace.  Its not a personal productivity tool, but rather a collaboration software suite for your intranet or extranet.  I am going to dedicate a whole post to Clearspace.  But, you can check it out here.

Do Open Source Developers Fix Bugs Faster?

A recent article from CIO Magazine discusses the recent surveys done by Forrester and Evans Data Corporation.

According to the Forrester Report (sponsored by BMC), the average time to resolve an application problem is 6.9 days for enterprise developers and 6.7 days for software vendors.

The EDC report surveyed the open source communities and found that the average time between discovery and solution of a serious bug is under 8 hours for 36% of open source developers!  However, 57% of open source developers say that typical (not serious) bug fixes take more than 2 days.

I recommend reading the article by Esther Schindler.  She gets into all of the complications that enterprise developers have to deal with such as meetings, prioritization, meetings about meetings, etc.

It is a worthwhile read.

Can you make money from open source?

The question asked below was:  Can open source software be used to create a successful business model and generate real revenue?

And the full answer was:

I am assuming that you are asking the question from the point of view of building a business based on open source software, not just using it within your organization. Given that, I think the answer is a very large...it depends. And I would ask you if it matters in today's world.

For those that have been successful and profitable, look at the obvious ones, MySQL and Red Hat. Both very successful so far.
But, you also need to look at the ones that are not yet profitable that made out well via acquisition. XenSource was bought by Citrix for $500 million on $3 million in revenue. JBoss was purchased by Red Hat for $350 million and they were not yet profitable. Zimbra was just bought by Yahoo for $350 million on about $3 million in revenue.

The money is definitely there for sure. But, there are also a ton of open source start-ups who will never make it and the reasons are almost infinite. The two that seem to jump out at me are:

1. The open source project they are based on is too much of a niche product and has no viable market.

2. The team building the company does not understand the model and fails to execute.   As I said there are a million other reasons, but they are the two that jump out at me right away.

What I can say is that this is not like the internet boom of the late 90s. VCs are not throwing money at open source just because it is open source. They are looking for a solid business plan and a path towards profitability.

Another important question is how do you plan to make money? There are many models here.
1. Simply sell support for an existing open source product: Zmanda
2. Add value by bundling components to the open source project and sell support: Red Hat
3. Build your own open source product and sell it: MySQL
4. Take an open source product, add significant value and close source it: EnterpriseDB, IBM Websphere
5. Use open source components to lower your development costs and bundle it "invisibly" into your product: TiVo

The model matters just as much as anything else.