Commercial Open Source Software

Having had the chance to chair the Open Source Analysts session at the Open World Forum I want to share here some takeaways. Matthew Aslett, senior analyst at the 451 group, opened the session anticipating some results from the upcoming revision of the “Open Source is NOT a business model” report, due between the end of October and the beginning of November. Continue reading ‘Notes from the Open Source Analysts Summit 2010′

The Open World Forum has concluded and it was another great success. The “Open Innovation Awards” this year have been awarded to the following companies:  Disruptive Innovations (for the BlueGriffon project), Jaspersoft, Obeo (for the Acceleo project), Talend and XWiki.

SOS Open Source today had a closer look at XWiki, below a small excerpt of the analysis.

Continue reading ‘Open Innovation Awards: XWiki’

The FLOSS roadmap 2020, now at its third edition, has now opened the call for contributions. I asked Jean-Pierre Laisne - Chief and Open Source Strategist at Bull, OW2 President and coordinator of the roadmap - to tell us more about the new edition. Continue reading ‘FLOSS Roadmap 2020: Call for Contributions’

The deadline for the call of proposals of the third Open World Forum - to be held in Paris, 30 September - 1 October 2010, plus an optional Geek Day on 2 October - has been extended from March 30 to April 15.

Continue reading ‘Open World Forum 2010: 19 Days Left For Apply’

The following 5 “Open Innovation Awards” were assigned on Friday afternoon at the Open World Forum held in Paris. This year a jury of ten international open source experts considered as the most promising and representative of open innovation the following companies: Bonitasoft, Kaltura, Scaledb, SonarSource and Ulteo.

Let’s have a closer look at all of them by alphabetical order.

Bonitasoft, a provider of open source BPM software, recently raised 3 Millions from Ventech and Auriga Partners:

“The team, the business model, and the BonitaSoft solution completely captivated us. Given the reputation that this BPM solution has in the open source community, we are confident that BonitaSoft will contribute to the ‘democratization’ of BPM in business through its technological innovation” says Claire Houry, Ventech. “BonitaSoft has everything it needs to quickly become the open source BPM leader in the marketplace,” says Philippe Granger, Auriga Partners.

The idea of ‘democratizing’ BPM sounds fascinating, but justifying a BPM project maybe not trivial. Download numbers - if these were meant to mean anything - are  ’big’ (140.000) considering that we are talking of a BPM software, but converting users into customers is a different matter.

While Intalio - probably the most famous open source BPM player around (see 2008 BPM Gartner’s magic quadrant) - goes commercial by layering editions (open core), Bonitasoft today generates revenues only through support subscriptions and services. The business model paragraph of their manifesto reports:

BonitaSoft will develop additonal versions of Bonita with professional grade technical support and advanced features to facilitate collaborative work and to industrialize Bonita deployments. BonitaSoft reserves the right to give access to these versions on a subscription basis to its customers only.

My suggestion in this respect is: the sooner the better, upselling is hardly welcomed by the users, and being clear about the business strategy can help potential customers to make their decisions.

From a community standpoint, Bonitasoft is starting to get traction, at least in terms of bug reports and feature requests, much less in terms of code contributions.

Sharing R&D costs doesn’t appear to be a major concern at the present stage, along with standards co-creation and alike.

BonitaSoft business strategy might take inspiration from Talend, but they need to work hard on fostering their ecosystem, provide third-parties with documentation and tools to ease extending the platform and maybe consider to move (also) in the cloud.

The Open World Forum next week will bring together speakers from all over the world at the Eurosites George V in Paris.

Paris on the 1-2 October will be for the second time the European open source hub. Look at the program to figure out which of the 34 open source conferences is your favorite to learn, share and discuss about the technological, economical and social impact of open source technologies.

Continue reading ‘Open World Forum 2009, Paris, 1-2 October’

The Open Innovation Summit application deadline has been extended from the 1st of September until the 8th, take your chance to raise capital or meet potential partners to bring your open source solutions to the market.

If  you are an open source entrepreneur willing to meet up with VCs take your time now to fill up the application form and be sure to cover the following topics: Continue reading ‘Open Source Startups: Open Innovation Summit, Last Call!’

The Open Innovation Summit - taking place on the 2nd of October within the Open World Forum - will give twenty companies the opportunity to make a 7-minute presentation to VCs and major systems integrators to promote their company and projects.

If you are an open source entrepeneur needing funds, take your time to explain how your open source offering is innovative by sending your application before the 1st of September.

If you want to raise money in France and/or want to open an office in the Paris region, this is definitely your chance to make it.