 |
 |
| Recent
Articles |
Software Test Automation And Strategy
Companies are turning to automated testing tools more often than ever before to ensure that their applications are working properly prior to deployment. That is particularly important today as more and more applications are written for use on the Web which is the most public of arenas. But for many IT and quality assurance managers, automation is a daunting task.
The Oddness (and Evenness) Of Spry 1.4
Ok, I'm not sure if "evenness" is really a word, but if Steve Colbert can make stuff up - so can I. Before Spry 1.4, Spry supported a simple way to apply different CSS styles to datasets rows to support even/odd colors. It was done using the built in variable ds_EvenOddRow.
JavaScript: Alert.Show(”message”) From ASP.NET...
In highly interactive websites and intranet sites, you probably want to let the users know what's going on when they delete, save, export etc. on the site. Those kinds of status messages are widely used and are often implemented by a JavaScript alert box on the...
Working With Fractions In PHP
There are a few ways to display fractions in the web. The most common way is just to add a slash between 2 numbers, like so "1/2". There are also special HTML characters that we can make fractions look more professional. Eg. to display 1/2, we can make fractions look more professional. Eg. to display 1/2, we...
MySQL's Regular Expression Support
Many months ago I reviewed Ben's MySQL Crash Course, an excellent book that discusses MySQL at a very high, quick to read level. One of the cool things I discovered was that MySQL supports regex in SQL queries. How about some examples...Consider a typical OR style search...
Use An HttpModule To Spam-proof Your Website
Every time an email address is written on a website, it allows spam robots to collect it and abuse it. If you have a website (e.g. blog or forum) that displays the users e-mail address it would be a nice service to mask it for the spam robots. The safest way to display an e-mail address is to break it up and convert it to something like....
Web Developers Vs. Traditional Developers On CSS
In the year of 2006 it can be hard to avoid doing web development to some extent no matter what kind of developer you are. The lines between the traditional windows applications and the more web based ones have become grayer. Today, a lot of developers blog...
Top AIM Developer Now With Google
Justin Uberti announced Saturday that he has left AOL after nearly 10 years as a lead developer for the company's widely utilized AOL Instant Messenger software. He joins the Google development team this week. The Googleplex is rapidly becoming the equivalent of Yankee Stadium as Erich Schmidt, the George Steinbrenner...
|
|
01.10.07
Integrating W/ (Future) Competition
 By Savio Rodrigues
Alex Fletcher has a nice list of hypothetical new year's resolutions for the open source community.
I started thinking about his first resolution: "Enable ease of integration into enterprise stacks".
This one is really important, and it's something we heard from IT managers in customer research into open source options back in early 2005. Saving license fees only to have to spend on integration costs with my 'legacy' investments isn't going to help drive open source adoption.
Today, open source projects need to integrate with related traditional commercial software already installed in the enterprise and with other related (leading) open source projects/products. Such decisions are often made by balancing time/resources with the number of potential customers using the product that is to be integrated with. The decision gets difficult when the open source project/vendor decides to offer a competing product to the one they're considering integrating with.
I'm going to use the following products to help explain my case. I am not making a judgment of JBoss business practices. They are well within their rights & fiduciary duties to do what is necessary to drive Red Hat/JBoss revenue:
• JBoss Co.: The vendor deciding which 3rd party message queuing products will be integrated with their JBoss App Server product
• WebSphere MQ: The leading traditional message queuing product
• JBoss Messaging: An open source message queuing product from JBoss Co.
• AcitveMQ messaging: An open source message queuing product from a competitor
The "integrate with?" decision around a related, leading, traditional commercial product is often simple for an open source vendor. If the market is already dominated by a traditional software product, (WebSphere MQ), then you'd better make sure your open source product (JBoss App Server) plays nice with said product. JBoss Co. may want to compete against that related, leading, commercial product (WebSphere MQ) in the future as they build out an open source stack. But to begin with, JBoss has to respond to customer demand for WebSphere MQ support in order to drive the adoption of JBoss App Server. Once JBoss AS is a known entity by customers, then JBoss can offer their competing messaging product, JBoss Messaging, as they've done :-)
The "integrate with?" decision gets difficult for open source vendors when faced with integrating with a competing open source related product. Should JBoss Co. spend time/resources offering rock solid integration with ActiveMQ when JBoss Co. markets JBoss Messaging, a competitor to ActiveMQ? In this case, neither ActiveMQ nor JBoss Messaging have the customer base that the leading traditional commercial product (i.e. WebSphere MQ) does. So why would JBoss Co. want to help drive adoption of ActiveMQ? This scenario has played out several times already at JBoss, and other open source vendors are going to be faced with a similar situation.
It will be interesting to see how these "integrate with?" decisions play out in 2007. What's good for the customer may not always win out in these decisions.(but one could argue that happens to the same degree with traditional commercial products). An open community with a plurality of vendors with competing & joint goals is one way of addressing this situation with the scales weighted towards "what's good for the customer".
Comments
About the Author:
I am taking a semi-break from IBM life as I return to finish a PhD in Industrial Engineering. I've held roles in market intelligence, strategy and product management. I'm ex-product manager of IBM WAS Community Edition, and blog about enterprise open source topics.
|
