Ever wanted to create a Blu-ray disc?

I’m sitting here beside Sun’s A. Sundararajan before the JavaOne keynote starts. He is one of the core developers on Sun’s HDcookbook project. I didn’t know this, but all of our Blu-ray players have a J2ME JVM inside. So, if you want to create a Blu-ray disc, you’ll need to write some Java code. A. Sundararajan and team are tying to make this easier by offering libraries and tooling for developers. It’s all under the BSD license, so have at it.

Apparently Canada’s Neil Young is here at JavaOne to make an announcement about Blu-ray…

Captain Canada over and out.

 

OpenJDK & Ice Tea

Because I’ve been a hermit over the past few days, I’m only now reading about Sun’s open source event earlier this week. Sadly, I wasn’t invited (likely because I work at IBM and I’m a peon in the OSS landscape). :-)

Looks like there was more news about Project Indiana, Glassfish, and OpenOffice. I wonder if there’s a place to get the presentations that were used?

This statement caught my attention:

“Red Hat has created a project called Ice Tea to make OpenJDK run better in a Linux environment, Reinhold said.”

Just because two JDKs pass Sun’s test suite doesn’t mean there won’t be (unexpected) differences in the way they handle the same Java application. Sun’s TCK (Technology Compatibility Kit) attempts to minimize the impact of these differences, and generally does a good job, but differences will exist. That’s why most ISVs state which JDKs are supported. If your ISV says their Java product runs on all the leading JDKs, it could be that they’ve tested their app on the Sun, IBM and BEA JDKs. Or it could mean that the ISV has tested with one of these three (or an alternative) and is relying on Sun’s TCK tests to ensure there won’t be unexpected results on a different JDK. This isn’t such a bad strategy 99.99% of the time. But there must be a reason that some ISVs test on multiple JDKs ;-)

I wonder what % of ISVs will be enamored by the news that Red Hat is creating another JDK that could be added to the ISV’s test matrix. Being an OpenJDK variant helps if the ISV is already testing with the Sun JDK. But, a little different may be different enough. If Red Hat’s JDK doesn’t gain much traction (which is my guess, largely because of the ISV testing and support challenges), will Red Hat have spent their time tuning/improving the Sun JDK for RHEL?

Anywho, here’s a good description of Ice Tea from a Red Hatter.

 

Write on .NET, deploy on Java

Having spent the better part of my career working with products that are based on JEE, I sometimes have to remind myself that .NET is still quite prevalent. You’ll find that there are customers who are “JEE shops” or “.NET shops”. But a fairly large portion of customers have both JEE & .NET in their IT environments. I saw a Gartner estimate of JEE only/.NET only/ JEE & .NET/Other architectures representing 25%/25%/35%/15% of all customers. Take that “data” with a grain of salt as it’s old and based on my fuzzy memory. The larger point is that a significant portion of enterprises have both .NET & JEE.

We could argue about the pros/cons of each architecture, but customers seem to have voted with their wallets and use each as appropriate to address business needs. This statement could equally be applied to the OSS & Traditional software discussion.

I had the opportunity to speak with Jenna Dobkin from Mainsoft last week. (Mainsoft is an IBM business partner). Mainsoft provides .NET to JEE interoperability by allowing .NET apps to be cross compiled to run natively on a JEE runtime. I was intrigued by the technical feat behind Mainsoft’s offering. It allows customers with .NET skills and assets to continue benefiting from their previous investments while being able to deploy to JEE platforms. Why JEE? Well, it could be because customers want the performance, reliability, availability, etc. benefits of JEE. Maybe they want to shift towards open standards-based applications. Maybe their end customers are “JEE only” shops. Maybe dropping the “2″ from J2EE did the trick!

Jenna put me in contact with two Mainsoft customers to understand why they didn’t *just* deploy to .NET or *just* write in JEE. Note the emphasis on my implied simplicity of the word “just”.

I spoke with Bart Sijnave, the CIO at UZ Gent, a university hospital in Belgium. I also spoke with Atul Mistry, VP of Technology at Urix, an ISV in the healthcare industry.

Both Bart & Atul indicated that their organizations had .NET skills and re-training their developers (teams of less than 20 in both cases) for JEE was not a viable business option. Bart suggested:

“If I had a larger team, I would add JEE-specific development skills. But I could not meet my customer’s time-sensitive demands if portions of my team were out getting re-trained”.

UZ Gent uses RHEL and other OSS products and looks for opportunities to expand OSS use as appropriate.

Atul said:

“Business is the key decision criteria for us. If you have to reinvent the wheel because of a religious technical belief then you are not doing the right thing for your business.”

Urix has customers whose IT environments are largely Unix based. Faced with not addressing these customers or adding new staff to port the application and continue development on Unix, Urix made the business decision to use Mainsoft. Urix also uses OSS technology such as log4net and other OSS technologies aimed at Microsoft developers.

Both organizations are believers and users of open source products. But, for these two companies, business results trump beliefs. I suspect this is the case for the majority of customers. This is why I believe that OSS will never truly “take over” the software world, nor will OSS fade away. Pragmatic customers wouldn’t allow either to occur.

Customers have to be pragmatic because their business depends on it.

 

Pragmatic Interface21

During the opening day SpringOne keynote yesterday Interface21 explained how they plan on using the funding they recently secured. Later in the day, I spent a few minutes with Neelan Choksi, COO at Interface21.

Neelan explained that for Interface21, the use of an open source license (Apache License 2.0), an open development model and a free product with paid support business model is about one thing, developing software. Yes, Spring is open source software, but that was a pragmatic choice. A choice born out of the market landscape at the time, not from an ideological love of all things open source.

Keeping this in mind, it shouldn’t surprise you that Interface21 announced they’d use their funding to, amongst other things:

1] Rod & business functions are setting up shop in Silicon Valley to be closer to partners, investors and advisors
2] Setting up small, but growing, product development centers in the UK (Southampton), US (Melbourne, Florida) & Canada (Vancouver) because they feel co-located employees speed product development
3] Hiring seasoned Sales reps to go after larger enterprise deals
4] Hiring seasoned Marketing professionals to market to VPs and CXOs
5] Continuing collaboration with Microsoft to bring Spring to .NET developers

Clearly, Interface21 is going to do a lot more with the funding. I wanted to highlight these 5 because they are counter to “conventional wisdom” we hear from OSS visionaries.

Moving key staff to Silicon Valley, co-locating development teams, hiring professional sales teams (i.e. the expensive professionals driving Porsches), spending significantly on marketing and working with Microsoft are steps you’d expect from a software vendor. Good to see Interface21 acting like a software vendor and leaving others to play the part of an open source software vendor.

One other thing that Neelan mentioned that gave me the warm and fuzzies. He spoke about the funding process and how many VCs came to Interface21 explaining that using open source meant they wouldn’t have to spend much on sales or marketing. These VCs were, shall we say, excluded from the shortlist, because as Neelan and Interface21 understood, that’s a piece of conventional OSS wisdom that doesn’t hold when you’re trying to scale the business.

Interface21 is pragmatic about building a viable software business. Good on them.

 

MySQL IPO and Oracle Unbreakable Support for MySQL?

Matt Aslett writes that Oracle may be considering Unbreakable Support for MySQL and that MySQL Co. is likely to IPO later this year.

When MySQL files for IPO, we’ll get to view their financials. We’ll get to compare their performance metrics against Red Hat (which, until now, has been the only pure-play OSS player with public financials) and traditional vendors. I’m willing to bet that their metrics will be (surprisingly) close to metrics from traditional software vendors.

BTW, in case we’re keeping score, yes, Oracle is already distributing MySQL with their Linux distro. But, Oracle isn’t providing support for the copy of MySQL that you get with Oracle’s Linux distro. Here’s my take on the Oracle support rumor (which could just have been a passing threat in an Oracle/MySQL meeting).

Unbreakable Support for MySQL is likely the first step towards an acquisition:
There’s really little long-term benefit from Oracle providing support to a competitor’s database. In doing so, you’re validating the competitor, and not really doing anything to “bury the competition”. With the Oracle Unbreakable Support for Linux, they’re going after a related market, and failure doesn’t have any direct competitive consequence. Sure failure means that Red Hat gets bigger, but that’s not a big deal (until/unless Red Hat acquires a leading open source database support provider). But failure with the MySQL support would result in a much stronger direct competitor (MySQL Co.).

The more likely option here is for Oracle to buy MySQL. After the acquisition, if Oracle tried to move the user base onto Oracle DB products, add restrictive support conditions, raise prices, etc. then an alternative support provider would have room to grow. Otherwise, MySQL customers would likely continue to get support for MySQL through Oracle. Oracle would need to consider the impact of the MySQL product set on the Oracle DB portfolio. Issues like, customer confusion, pricing, customer negotiation tactics, etc. However, I think Oracle could deal with these issues.

Worried about cannibalization? It’s going to happen to a certain degree, but the alternative is losing business to a competitor without a fight. Oracle can respond by giving customers choice. Cannibalization that occurs will be much, much, smaller than the potential revenue that Oracle can drive using a mixture of open source & traditional software. IBM took this approach with the WebSphere Application Server business (with great success) and Oracle could do the same with their database business.

The result would be two database platforms (MySQL & Oracle DB), which get closer over time, but likely don’t merge (at least for the next 5 years). Customers can choose (remember, choice is good) to use the light-weight MySQL product for a good portion of their needs, and the high-end Oracle DB products for other projects. Let’s not forget that the majority of Oracle DB customers will stick with Oracle DB for products that are already running today (i.e. “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”). And when these customers want to use something more light-weight, simpler to use, Oracle has an offering for them. Leave no customer behind!

After the acquisition, Oracle cold shift some of their development efforts away from Oracle DB (except in the high end product category) and put those resources into the Oracle Applications business which is where they want to grow revenue. MySQL products would deliver support stream revenue; very much in keeping with Oracle’s huge maintenance revenue.

Less focus on selling new Oracle DB licenses, and more on selling Oracle DB & MySQL (after acquisition) support would be a big win with Wall Street which looks for steady and continuous revenue. Forget the upfront license cost, and just pay for support & maintenance. Move some development resources to the higher-value offerings. Neutralize a competitor by providing customer choice (with something that a customer wants; not just a crappy offering under the guise of choice). It all sounds interesting. Let’s see how this plays out!

[The image is from flickr user net_efekt - it made me laugh and seemed to be a good way to represent the worry of cannibalization in the face of a serious competitor.]

 

Open Up And Say Growth

Matt points to an interesting article about using an open business model.

Not sure if the author, Henry Chesbrough mentioned that IBM made significantly more than $100m/yr in revenue as a result of its Linux investments, whether through increased hardware or services sales. And, we continued to drive revenue to AIX. This last point isn’t often covered, but the AIX business didn’t die.

Very few customers take a one-size-fits-all approach to their IT needs. So, yes, you may need AIX or Solaris or a System z for some of your applications. But you’ll also need some RHEL, SLES or Windows for other parts of your infrastructure.

Customers want choice. So when a new option in a given software category becomes available that saves money, time, is easier to use, etc., customers will pay attention. If IBM had tried to ignore Linux, customers would have satisfied their curiosity (initially) and desire for Linux with another vendor. At the same time, these customers wanted to know how Linux fits into their current infrastructure (i.e. technology integration & skills reuse). Having an answer which included AIX and other parts of IBM’s offerings helped. Far from being a hindrance (i.e. related products that needed to be protected at all costs), these related products gave IBM the ability to speak to customer needs for the given project and other projects with different needs.

The same thing is happening in the application server space. When JBoss started popping up on customer’s radars, the traditional app server vendors didn’t pay attention (maybe to the degree they should have - depending on who you ask). But, customers satisfied their needs none the less and JBoss downloads and revenue grew.

Lucky for IBM, JBoss started out by targeting customers from other application server vendors. That’s when we made the move to purchase Gluecode Software Co. (a key member of the Geronimo community) and throw our support behind the Apache Geronimo open source application server. We delivered a paid support offering for Geronimo. We also came out with WAS Community Edition (WAS CE), a free product built on Geronimo that developers, customers, and partners could use without support or with paid support.

At the end of the day, customers want choice. And while the WebSphere Application Server (WAS) portfolio is broad, it didn’t give customers a free, light-weight and open source offering, some of the things that were attracting attention to JBoss. We filled that portfolio gap and our revenue continues to surpass market rates. Ensuring a strong tie between these offerings and the rest of the WebSphere portfolio has been a tremendous selling point because customers have different needs for different projects and want to take advantage of the skills they have.

Do we see JBoss in more deals? Yep. Do we lose some? Sure, that’s the software business for you. Do we win a lot more than we would have if we didn’t have the Geronimo Support or WAS CE? Absolutely.

Do you have a point that summarizes this long post? Yeah, thanks for asking: Don’t view open source competition as something to ignore. Get into the ‘game’, give customers the choice they seek and explore how your higher-value offerings (the ones you think you need to protect) can be an asset to your business.

Should we have made the move to support Geronimo earlier? Yeah. But our WAS revenue was growing so fast and our sales teams weren’t running into open source competition, so maybe we became a little complacent. It happens. I have one possible explanation for why, but that’s for another post. BTW, please read my disclaimer here.

[The pic is from Flickr user jawcey]

 

Geronimo Plugins

Alex Fletcher posted about Eclipse needing to establish a better/standardized web delivery strategy for the vast number of Eclipse plugins and Eclipse technology.

His post made me think about the Geronimo Plugin Model. It does a lot of what Alex is looking for from Eclipse, except it’s for Geronimo ;-)

The Geronimo Plugin Model makes it really simple to get plugins (i.e. extensions, new features, samples, things that work with Geronimo, etc.). These plugins are easily installed, pulling down required dependencies and all without having to restart the server (in most cases - See here). You can also copy the plugins from your development server over to your production server(s) or any other server(s). Use the Geronimo console to get plugins, or download the plugin initially through Geronimoplugins.com and then use the console to install the plugin. There are a lot more Geronimo plugins than I’d last seen about 6 months ago. Keep ‘em coming!

[The pic is from Flickr user dAVIDb1]

 

Innovation, Maintenance & Open Source

A NetworkWorld article quotes Google’s GM of Enterprise Business as saying:

“insane complexity of technology is leading companies to spend 75% to 80% of IT budgets simply maintaining the systems they have already.”

The 75%-80% figure is a little higher than the 60%-70% figure I’d seen in customer research we did a few years back. But the issue I have with the quote is the suggestion that spending on systems you have already is a waste of money or time.

Very few companies have the luxury of implementing greenfield applications. Most of the time, your new app has to integrate with a large number of your old apps. And that may require some tweaks to your old apps. Or maybe your company changed or added a new business process, so you’ll need to make some modifications to your existing apps. That’s not waste, that’s a normal business expense. The alternative would be to throw out the existing app that needs to be modified and start again; to me, that’s waste.

If you tell me that SOA or loosely coupled web services are the answer. I’ll agree, to a a certain degree. But now, instead of modifying existing app “XYZ”, you’re going to modify existing component/service “YZA”.

On the topic of innovation, here’s a good article from Business Review Online about customers using Open Source as a means to drive innovation. Interesting that OpenLogic is seeing customers that either want to save money or open up technical innovation. I’m surprised that customers don’t want to do both.

We found that customers that adopted Apache Geronimo (support from IBM) or WAS Community Edition (WAS CE) were seeking to save money and build a platform that allowed their developers to write and deploy applications faster and with more flexibility. Often, they were using Apache Geronimo or WAS CE for a specific project that needed to get rolled out ASAP. But, these customers cared about how “this stuff will work with the stuff I already have”. They wanted to know what options they had if the app transformed from “a quick and dirty request to something that users relied on, would be less productive without and wanted more out of”. Cost savings, a platform for innovation and future flexibility and choice were all considerations.

Most IT folks know that applications seldom fade away quickly, they just get integrated and maintained with all the other “legacy stuff”.

The pic is from A.M. Kuchling over at Flickr

 

All Together Now

OSDL and FSF have announced a merger today with plans to become the “Linux Foundation”. This merger brings together industry vendors (i.e. represented by OSDL) and the community (i.e. represented by FSF); two sides of the same coin. Cool, this is a great move for the community.

Next, the OSI board is asking the “community” to provide input on whether to accept or reject the proposed SocialText license. To say that this is a delicate topic is an understatement. If the OSI decides that the proposed SocialText license does not fall into the boundaries of an open source license, companies like Zimbra, SugarCRM, SocialText, MuleSource & Alfresco wouldn’t be able to wear the open source badge without a license change.

Hence, the OSI board has asked the “for” and “against” crowds to get together in their respective corners and make arguments for their side. The OSI will then take this input into consideration when they deliver a ruling at the end of February.

I believe this is a great move on the part of the OSI. It gives everyone an opportunity to make their argument; there’ll be no crying foul about a closed decision. So, Roberto, I don’t think that this move reduces the influence of the OSI. In fact, this route is actually what makes an open community with multiple players so valuable. Imagine if the OSI were to make their decision without open input. The community would say that the decision was wrong because of X, Y or Z or biased because of where the various board members work. Considering the alternative, I’d say this is a great move from the OSI (and very much in line with how true open source development is done).

 

Reports of My Demise Redux

IBM announced 4Q revenue of $26.3B (vs. $24.4B in 2005 & $25.66B forecasted by the street for 2006). Earnings came in at $3.54B or $2.31/share. See more details here or here.

All in all, a pretty solid quarter. The stock is down about 4% (sell on news?), although it’s up over 10% in the past 90 days (…why am I even trying to explain the ‘rationality’ of the market?)

A few points:

1] IBM Software grew at 25% (or 21% at constant currency: i.e. if currency exchange rates were fixed to equal their 4Q05 rates)
2] IBM Software grew at about 2x the market growth rate
3] The WebSphere division grew at 22%

So, updating the table below, we see that the track record of strong WebSphere division growth continues. This is where the WebSphere Application Server family, including WAS Community Edition (WAS CE), gets counted. There are other elements including our integration products. But like I said before, the majority of the revenue comes from the App server family, so it’s a good measure IBM’s App Server growth. Is the WebSphere family getting hurt by JBoss? The revenue doesn’t suggest as much. Why? Well, because when we were faced with competition from open source we didn’t ignore them or fight the open source movement. We got involved in the community, and gave our customers more choice, more flexibility and protected their investments.

WebSphere Portfolio Quarterly Revenue Growth:

Quarter	Y/Y Qtr Growth	From:
1Q04	24%	Source
2Q04	N/A	Source
3Q04	14%	Source
4Q04	18%	Source
1Q05	11%	Source
2Q05	18%	Source
3Q05	14%	Source
4Q05	4%	Source
1Q06	26%	Source
2Q06	17%	Source
3Q06	30%	Source
4Q06	22%	Source

Advice for traditional software vendors hoping to address your customer’s needs with open source and your traditional products:

“Enter the open source game and ensure that customers can choose from a spectrum of products, based on their specific needs and budgets, and that the OSS-based products increase the value of existing and future customer investments in you commercial software. “