4 Ways to Play in Enterprise Open Source

As the value of business open source becomes clear, there are several ways for software vendors to join the game.

By Tom Berquist, Ingres Corp

From my 10-year vantage point as a software analyst with Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and Piper Jaffray, I’ve watched my share of enterprise software trends come and go. In the 1990s, I covered Red Hat after it went public. Many thought it would challenge Microsoft on the desktop. It didn’t but it revolutionized the server market and made clear the opportunity of open source.

The power of open source to individual developers is now well understood. A large, active community, low costs and fast deployment are just a few of the advantages that make open source attractive to its converts.

Now is the time for open source to move into the enterprise. We will see open source continue to move up the stack - from operating system to database, application server, development tools, security, systems management – over the next decade. That’s why I left Citigroup to become CFO at Ingres Corp., a business open source software company recently spun out of CA by investment bank Garnett & Helfrich Capital.

It is hard to imagine a massive shift away from propriety software driving the enterprise - but it happens. In the 1990s, IBM was in charge of IT systems. Their hold on budgets was broken when many best-of-breed vendors came in and sold comparable products based on new technologies at lower prices.

It takes a long time to create an entirely new footprint – lots of Oracle products today still run on midrange systems from IBM. But today’s software vendors have a chance to participate in the transition of the enterprise to open source.

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SaaS in the Supply Chain – What Users Really Want

As software vendors scramble to offer Software-as-a-Service options to automate their supply chain, a new study from Aberdeen Group finds few enterprise customers are looking to their traditional SCM vendors for SaaS offerings. Most CIOs want a SaaS specialist. Read more eye-opening findings from Beth Enslow of Aberdeen Group in this week’s post to the SandHill.com Blog on SaaS.

An Enterprise Mashup Market?

“Mashups” are all the rage in consumer content right now. They compile various sources of online information to deliver new value to users. Guy Smith of Silicon Strategies coins the term “Enterprise Mashup” and identifies five market opportunities within the soon-to-be-hot sector in this week’s post to the SandHill.com Blog on SOA.

The Greatest Challenge Facing China

As more software vendors seek to outsource to and do business with China, it is critical to understand how the “harmonious” society is changing. David Scott Lewis provides a glimpse into how socio-economic changes in the countryside are poised to impact the path to China’s economic prosperity in the 21st century in this week’s post to a new SandHill.com Blog topic, Doing Business in BRIC.

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New Podcast: 20 Software Companies You Should Know

Innovation is alive and well in the software industry. And what better way to provide proof than to showcase the best-of-the-best, fast-growth software companies today? The Software Showcase at Software 2006 gives the stage to a select group of software vendors so that they can highlight their business models, products and strategies for success. Hear more about the 20 Software Showcase companies from organizer, Bruce Pham and Sand Hill Group’s M.R. Rangaswami in this month’s podcast from SandHill.com.

More at SandHill.com:

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Metaweb Technologies receives $15 million.
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VeriSign buys Kontiki.
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Michael Ellis named CEO of Univa.
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Parting Thought

“Innumerable confusions and a feeling of despair invariably emerge in periods of great technological and cultural transition." - Marshall McLuhan

Courtesy of Malcolm Kusher, The Kushner Group