Business Archives - Page 67 of 72

Open Source – Socialism? “Döm inte hunden efter håren”

Posted on November 16, 2005 ·

(updated)
No, I don’t speak Swedish … but it’s cute:-) More on it later… The recent controversy around Shai Agassi’s remarks about Open Source prompted Marten Mickos, CEO of MySQL to come forward with his own prospective.

But first things first, what was the controversy? “SAP Slams Open Source” – quoted CIO Today. SAP’s very own Jeff Nolan found himself in a rather invonvenient situation (at least initially) of having to distance himself from Shai’s perceived message: “I wasn’t at the Churchill Club event so I can’t comment on the context of Shai’s comments, but I do not agree with them if they are as represented in this article.”

In his speech at the Churchill Club Shai supposedly strongly came out against Open Source and equated it to “IP Socialism”. Hm…having grown up in a communist country I certainly don’t like the way it sounds… although if we look at what he actually said in the second half of this very statement, it actually makes sense: “IP socialism is worst thing that can happen to any IP-based society…If there is no way to defend IP, then there is no reason to invest in IP. “ Remember, this comes from the guy that invests over $1B in R&D. Jeff later listened to the full podcast of the session and realized the quotes were taken out of context. See more details and a link to Shai’s own blog at ZDNet.

My two cents: the traditional Enterprise Software model (mega $ licence fees, complex and costly implementations, expensive maintainence, questionable ROI) is not sustainable. Enterprise Software companies and their whole ecosystem (Implementation partners, 3–rd party plug-ins, etc) are experiencing Pricing and Innovation pressure not just from Open Source, but the increasingly adopted On-Demand model. One can’t really expect a SAP / Oracle ..etc Executive to be truly, entirely happy about the changes being forced upon them. That said, they can try to be obstructionists, or realize the world is changing with or without them – might as well go for the ride, take the challenge / opportunity to invent new business models and survive/thrive in the New World.

Marten makes the point that SAP is the latter group: “ SAP is the first and most significant ERP vendor to publicly, officially and in actuality embrace open source. SAP was the first enterprise ERP vendor to ship on Linux. SAP has an investment in Zend, the PHP company, and a strategic partnership with MySQL. By its actions, SAP is one of the great supporters of open source.”
On legacy software companies in general: “ At the end of the day, deeds count more than words. If you support open source, you will be supported by the millions in the open source community who are working hard to shape the future of the software industry. “

I fully agree with Marten’s views … but there’s one area where I’d take a step further: “ Perhaps open source can commoditize the infrastructure components and make applications more affordable.” Not just infrastructure, IMHO. Applications are next.
SugarCRM is a pioneer in commoditizing the application (CRM) market … yet they got outwitted themselves by their own ecosystem. The trend is unstoppable, even outside Open Source. A closed-source, on-demand company, 24SevenOffice offers its innnovative, fully integrated Web-based SMB suite for about a third of NetSuite’s prices, in fact they undercut Open-Source SugarCRM themselves, when comparing the On-demand version of their product.

As for the incoming tidal wave of Open Source Applications: CRM is just the beginning, the low-hanging fruit… there are literally hundreds of business-grade Open Source applications, ranging from accounting, manufacturing, purchasing, all the way to complete ERP-like solutions, or industry-specific point solutions, like patient management for health care, restaurant management .. etc. One of the reasons why they are not used widely is that they are “trapped in the land of the Nerds” (out-of-context quote by Joe Kraus of JotSpot at the recent SDForum Collaboration SIG event, but I just could not resist using it). Really. Most Open Source apps are difficult to implement, one has to be a real techie to navigate through the maze.

This is where companies like SQLFusion can help small businesses: by providing an easy way to create their web-presence, then offering a pipeline of pre-packaged Open Source applications that can be installed, used, kept up-to-date by a single click of the mouse they bring open source apps within reach of millions who otherwise would not have the expertise to use them. (disclaimer: I am affiliated with SQLFusion)

Update (11/16) Other points of view:

IP Socialism

SAP talks smack about open source

Bigamous contrition and open source faux pas

And now SAP looooves open source?

Big Brother

Update 2 (11/19) I’ve received inquiries about the title – it is explained in Marten’s article I linked to. Btw, it looks like Scandinavian style is in fashion.

Update 3 (11/29) Water into Wine: Monetizing Open Source via On Demand – great article by Rightnow CEO Greg Gianforte, obviously describing his company, but also a perfect fit to SQLFusion’s business model described in the last paragraph about. I love it, thanks, Greg! 🙂

Update 4 (5/10) The Stalwart woke up, blew the dust off of a half-a-year-old speech by Shai Agassi, and starts the Open Source as IP Socialism debate again. (hat tip: Jeff Nolan) Nothing new, why today? Anyway, perfect timing, anyone interested in the subject should come to the Who Pays For Software? New and Old Business Models event tomorrow, where Open Source will definitely be in the focus of a star-panel.

Filed Under: Business, Enterprise Software, ERP / CRM, Open Source, SaaS, Software, Startups · Tagged: 24sevenoffice, Enterprise Software, MySQL, On-Demand, Open Source, RightNow, SaaS, sap, SQLFusion, SugarCRM

MapStats Got Better: now with Link Tracking

Posted on October 31, 2005 ·

Recently I wrote about MapStats

that replaced the previously used Gvisit button on my blog (see right

sidebar). Well, it just got better, now offering in– and

outbound link tracking.

The service allows you to track all links clicked on your site by just

adding some JavaScript to your site. It provides a breakdown on a

per day/week/month/year basis, and if you look up info on a link,

it gives you a breakdown on that link, on what page it was clicked from

and what link text was used. They also track unique clicks

and total clicks. Demo available here.

The

company behind MapStats, BlogFlux has some other goodies, e.g. a Google

Page Rank display, pinger, Button Maker. Worth checking it

out!

Tags: Visitor Map, Google Maps, mash-up, Google mash-up, Blogs, Blogging, MapStats, BlogFlux, Link Tracker, LinkLog, ButtonMaker

Filed Under: Blogging, Software, Startups ·

SVASE VC Breakfast Club

Posted on October 31, 2005 ·

I’ll be moderating another SVASE VC Breakfast Club session on Thursday, November 3rd. It’s an informal round-table where up to 10 entrepreneurs get to deliver a pitch, then answer questions and get critiqued by a VC Partner. We’ve had VC’s from Draper Fisher, Hummer Winblad, Kleiner Perkins, Mayfield, Mohr Davidow, Emergence Capital …etc.

Thursday’s featured VC is Jason Pressman, Principal, Shasta Ventures, one os the sponsors of the recent TechCrunch BBQ. Event Information and registration is here.

These sessions are an incredible opportunity for Entrepreneurs, most of whom would probably have a hard time getting through the door to a VC Partners. Since I’ve been through quite a few of these sessions, both as Entrepreneur and Moderator, let me share a few thoughts:

Yes, it’s a pressure-free environment, with no Powerpoint presentations, Business Plans…etc, just casual conversation, but for God’s sake it does not mean come unprepared!
Bring an Executive Summary, some VC’s like it, others don’t.
Don’t just talk freely about what you would like to do, or even worse, spend all your time describing the problem, without addressing what your solution is.
Follow a structure, and don’t forget “small things” like the Team, Product, Market..etc.
It would not hurt to mention how much you are looking for, and how you would use the funds.
Write down and practice your pitch, and please be aware that whatever your practice time was, when you are on the spot, you will likely take twice as long to deliver your story.
Last, but not least, please be on time!

See you on Thursday … and now I get to show off my cool new Zvents button:

Tags: Venture Capital, VC Breakfast, Funding, Startups, SVASE

Filed Under: Bay Area, Blogging, Business, Startups ·

Communication a Two-way Street? Not (quite yet) on the Blogosphere.

Posted on October 31, 2005 ·

There is an abundance of tagging / tracking / linking / stat’s tools to enhance the Blogosphere, but they are all one-directional, missing a major part of the “Conversation”.

Steve Rubel talks about RSS being a passive “receive medium”, and how RSS is one-way, feeding info to those who passively consume it – but there is no “active” feedback channel where a business / organization could subscribe to the feed of all those interested in their product, service, or simply those that expressed a particular interest.

I’ve been thinking about a similar problem, but specifically limited to why blogging is still an incomplete conversation. “ You’re linked to me, I’m linked to you. That’s a conversation.” – says Ethan at OnoTech. Well, almost. There is just the small issue of manageability.

If you’re a Technorati top 100 or even 500 blogger, most of the conversation happens around your own blog, in the form of comments and trackbacks from other blogs. However, for the the rest of us, the other 20 million bloggers, chances are the conversation really takes place outside our own blog, and I for one certainly can’t keep track of all comments I left on other blogs. An occasional Google search on my name reveals lots of these “half-conversations” where I left a comment, the blog owner or other readers responded, but I’ve never seen the response, since I forgot to go back and-re-read all those blog-post.

Jeff Clavier points out that Blogware, one of the lesser known platforms (which I happen to use) can send emails when comments are made on a post you have commented on but that is email, and that’s not great… what about the other platforms? The current crop of tracking / linking services all have a top-down publisher-centric view, everything revolves around a blog and related posts, totally missing this other, “bottom-up” half of the conversation. Don’t we all need something that shows an integrated view of all conversations where we are participating per subject matter (blog title), whether we started it or someone else?

Jeff in his post quoted above invites creative minds to come up with a solution, and so does Steve Rubel: “boy is that a business for someone”. At the recent TechCrunch BBQ I heard Dave Winer complain that he hasn’t seen a major breakthrough innovation around blogs for quite a while – I bet half the crowd at the event (200 techno-crazy minds) could create what we need here. C’mon guys, what are you waiting for?

Update (11/7) : Here’s a somewhat manual workaround. Still not quite the real thing 🙁

Update (11/9) Jeremy Zawodny discusses comment tracking – some of the comments on his post are also worth reading.

Tags: Blogs, Blogging, Weblogs, Tags, Tagging, Tracking, Conversation, RSS, Feed, Technorati, TechCrunch,

Filed Under: Blogging, Business, Collaboration, Personal Productivity, Social Networking, Software, Startups ·

Flickr Print Arrives

Posted on October 27, 2005 ·

Finally, Flickr now offers printing, either by mail or local pickup at Target. (hat tip: Search Engine Journal, TechCrunch).

Too bad they did not match Snapfish’s 12c price (4×6 prints) – Flickr’s prints cost 15c.

And too bad Flickr went to Yahoo, instead of Google .. integrating with Picasa nicely:-(

No, I’m not negative, just whining about a missed opportunity….

Powered By Qumana

Tags: Flickr, Snapfish, Photo Printing, Yahoo, Google

Filed Under: Business, Personal Productivity, Software, Startups, Technology ·

Zvents. Probably the Best Event Calendar in the World!

Posted on October 26, 2005 ·

Probably the Best Event Calendar in the World! (Updated)

OK, I am biased. How could I not be, when we have the in common?

Seriously, it has the most user-friendly interface of the bunch: Eventful (formerly EVDB), Upcoming (acquired by Yahoo) and of course Zvents. Ease of use is really important, as this dummy (yours truly) never fully figured out how to work evdb, so for me it really doesn’t matter how powerful it may be if I can’t even pull an event into sevaral calendars.

Zvent is the only one of the crowd to serve up a Google Map of your event location, and it’s loaded with features: private / public / group events, subscriptions, blog integration (check my right sidebar) … just to name a few. The database currently has events of the San Francisco Bay Area only – btw, the database itself is another significant differentiator, as they scout the web and scrape events off the entertainment venues themselves.

This wealth of information is also a problem in certain situations: if I do a search based on date / location, I may have to flip through dozens of pages of generic entries like wine-tasting, permanent exhibitions ..etc. It would be nice to find a way to optionally turn off display of these recurring programs, and list only the real “happenings”. For example if I search the Napa area, I don’t want to see hundreds of regular tastings – those are non-events, but if one of them has a Chef’s dinner with wine-pairing, or a musical / theater show, that’s definitely an “event”.
The ability to exclude search arguments would also be nice, e.g. “-wine” should skip everything tagged as wine, wine-tasting ..etc.

There are lots of reviews on zvents, including here, here, here, here, and here – the last link happens to be Ethan Stock, Zvent CEO’s blog. Hmm… I don’t see any way to leave a comment or trackback – what happened to the “conversation”, Ethan?