Latest Updates: open source RSS

• 

  Open Source Business Process Management Software

  kurt 4:18 pm on March 11, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: BPM (22), business process management software (8), open source, open source software (4)

  I just completed a series of blog posts about LMS trends and what they might forecast for BPM trends. One area I did not tackle was open source software. I can’t look at the open source topic in quite the same way. Both markets have quite a few open source options. At least 50 open source learning management systems exist, and at least 30 business process management open source software systems exist. Doesn’t sound like a case where one industry is leading a trend, while the other is following.

  Open source software has appealed to smaller businesses that can’t afford the licensing costs of enterprise class software. As costs increase, larger corporations are also taking a look at open source solutions. Some IT departments also prefer open-source systems because it provides greater control over the software. They aren’t constrained by the road path of a software corporation. The open source software can customize the software to meet its business needs. Of course, this can create problems as customizations to the open source software can make future upgrades problematic.

  Others don’t like open source because they wonder what support they’ll receive. Will they post a question in a community forum and hear the sounds of crickets or receive a few unhelpful comments? Sometimes this concern is justified. Support and maintenance may require a dedicated and strong internal IT group or contracting with outside vendors. Other times the open source community can and does provide excellent support. After all, they are a group that can feel a lot of enthusiasm for a good open source product.

  These hidden costs should not be overemphasized. Open source business process management software can still be great investment. Many robust open source solutions have an array of third-party vendors that can provide training, consulting, or product add-ons. Even with the additional costs of support or third-party services, the tradeoff with expensive enterprise software licenses may still tilt heavily in favor of the open source option. When selecting business process management software, you should be careful to weigh the benefits of open source and cost of additional support against the built in support of a licensed product.

  

  Google search on "open source bpm products"

  The three packages that top a Google search on “open source bpm products” include ProcessMaker, Intalio, and Bonita. (Strangely, the link for Intalio points to their cloud computing platform, not their BPM product.)

   

  Reply Click here to cancel reply.

  Name (required)

  Email (required)

  Web Site

   
• 

  "Born Free" - THE ECONOMIST and the emerging threat to Open Source Software

  brian 9:12 am on June 5, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: , BPM (22), fsf.org, open source, Paas, Workflow (9)

  I suppose that when Matt Asay is quoted in the Economist, then Open Source truly has gone mainstream.  Although I would be inclined to say that this is definitely good news for all of us Open Source Software companies out there, the Economist does allude to an interesting problem regarding “message/brand” dilution.

  The Economist article says, “Indeed, open source is so widely accepted that traditional software firms are beginning to dabble in it, while some open-source firms are starting to sell proprietary add-ons to open-source programs instead of charging to provide support to firms using open-source software. If current trends hold, traditional software firms and their open-source rivals will soon be hard to tell apart.”

  I’ve heard this point alluded to before and there is both a good and a bad side to the story.  If Open Source fades away because all software becomes truly open, this would be a good thing.  It would mean that the open source movement had in fact succeeded and was effectively no longer needed.  I don’t think this will happen anytime soon and this is not what the the point The Economist is making.

  The risk is that open source starts to get used by software vendors as a cheap gambit to trap consumers into buying proprietary software. 

  In fact, it is already happening to a large degree.  Just ask the average software user the following question:

  Which one of the represents open source Software?

  A) Offering a free and open version of your software while trying to convince users to buy a per user licensed version of your software with additional enterprise features.

  B) Offering a free and open version of your software while trying to convince users to buy a commercial plug-in (based on a one-time fee instead of a per user license) which provides some additional features for your software.

  C) A  solution which is totally free to try online for up to 10 users but if you want more than 10 users you need to pay.

  D) Gmail

  E) None of the above

  (See end of article for answers)

  If you are confused, you are definitely not alone.  And this will represent an ever increasing challenge for organizations like the Free Software Foundation.

  The role of the FSF.org will begin to transform.  It will not just be tasked with informing an uninformed public, but it will have the even more difficult task of informing a MISINFORMED public.  As every politician knows, this second task is much more difficult and represents an even greater threat to the Free Software Movement.

  The Cloud is a great example of a new threat of misinformation that will affect Open Source Software in a big way.  “The Cloud” is slowly reshaping the entire vocabulary around software in general.

  Remember, free software follows four basic tenets:

  • The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0).
  • The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
  • The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2).
  • The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements (and modified versions in general) to the public, so that the whole community benefits (freedom 3). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

  Software in the cloud is almost entirely not Open Source because1) Your vendors don’t give you access to the source code

  2) Your vendors might not even give you access to your data when things turn sour.

  Remember what happened to Coghead and all of its users when Coghead went belly up?  Coghead was a cloud competitor of ProcessMaker.  Like ProcessMaker, it was a BPM/Workflow solution and a PaaS (Platform as a Service) provider.  The scraps were purchased by SAP.  Coghead failed overnight and left their users and their user’s data stranded (see my comments in this ZDNET Article).

  So, what is the answer?  I think it all starts with getting the right information out there.  In other words - make your contributions this year to the Free Software Foundation (and tell them I sent you :).

   
• 

  ProcessMaker at Openbravo World Conference in Barcelona to announce Mashup

  brian 6:50 am on April 17, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: BPM (22), mashups (2), open source, openbravo (3)

  It is wonderful to be here in Barcelona, Spain for the Openbravo World Conference which begins today.  I had some free time yesterday, and I took full advantage by renting a bicycle and cruising around the city.  Barcelona is more magnificent than I remember, and this is definitely a great city to see by bike (I actually always prefer to see any and all cities by bicycle).  I was here in 1992 as a backpacker and had the added bonus back then of getting to see a number of events  at the Summer Olympics (including the original Dream Team play Nigeria) held here that year.

  Myself and our CTO, Fernando Ontiveros, are both here for the conference (and so are some of our Danish partners from Xcompetence - IB and Kathe).   I’ll be delivering a presentation in the Community Building section of the OBWC on Sunday afternoon at 2:30 pm where ProcessMaker will be officially announcing its integration module with Openbravo’s ERP software.   It took us a few months for Fernando and his team to really get their heads around the Openbravo software and how we should integrate ProcessMaker with it, but the results are fantastic!

  I will be talking about how Openbravo partners can expand their business by looking for BPM opportunities where ProcessMaker can be applied in existing and new ERP implementations.  BPM and ERP fit together perfectly and it is our experience that a company that is investing in ERP will almost invariably need custom workflow routing capability to enhance their ERP experience.  We have a number of customers that have integrated ProcessMaker with other ERP software including SAP and Great Plains.  Openbravo is a particularly great fit though because they use an open source license (they use OBPL a version of the Mozilla license) as does ProcessMaker (we use the AGPLv3).

  We will be doing a demo of an Expense Report and Time Sheet Custom Approval Process.  This is a classic case where many companies need advanced workflow functionality that their ERP software simply does not provide.  In Openbravo, for example, you can declare expense report expenditures and you can issue reimbursements, but you cannot manage a workflow which allows an employee to declare expenses, route them to his/her manager for approval, and then route it to finance for reimbursement approval.  So, in our integration with Openbravo, we begin the expense report by pulling in fields from Openbravo related to types of expense categories and other information already in Openbravo, then we route the form to a manager for approval, and then once it is approved, the expenses show up in Openbravo so that they can be registered for payment.

  We are proud to have the ProcessMaker-Openbravo listed as one of the first modules on the openbravo forge.   We are sure that this new forge is going to become very popular.

  Here you can see a video of how the integration works courtesy of our own Marketing Guru, Amy Wyron.

  Well, looking forward to the conference, some great seafood tapas, and of course a healthy (if not excessive) amount of Sangria (in the evenings, of course).

   
• 

  Colosa CEO speaks at Cloud Computing Conference in London

  brian 11:26 am on February 11, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: , Cloud Computing (2), open source

  It’s not often that I go to London to speak at a conference.  Next time, I will certainly think twice about participating in a February conference in London.  Who could have guessed that last week London would receive one of the biggest snowfalls its had in the past 20 years!   And as a person used to living in the northeast of the US where snowfall is a relatively common occurrence, who would have known that London totally shuts down when there is snow.  That’s right, they don’t have snow removal trucks in London (nor do they have automatic street sweeping trucks which means that you don’t have to move your car 2x every week like you do in New York - a big bonus!).

  So, like most of London, I was immobilized on Monday and missed the first day of the Powered by the Cloud conference.  Luckily, Tuesday the snow wasn’t as bad and I was able to make it to the conference.  The conference was very well done with good panels and a very focused and highly professional public - lots of data center types, some telcos, and application providers mostly.

  I was one of only two Open Source Software companies speaking at the conference (Ubuntu was the other - they actually have office in the Lewis Media Ceter), so I felt compelled to take the contrarian viewpoint on Cloud Computing in support of  some of the outspoken critics of Cloud Computing, namely Richard Stallman.   I think Stallman’s point is very timely and well made - we need to be wary of all of the Cloud Computing hype going on.  In many respects, Cloud Computing is the reincarnation of proprietary software - only this time around they’ve got the code and your data too!

  If you’re interested, I’ve included by presentation here:

  cloud-computing-presentation-feb-09-brian-reale.pdf

   
• 

  PM Mobile, the iphone, 3G, and the coming mobile revolution

  brian 12:34 pm on January 26, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: BPM (22), handhelds, mobile computing, open source, Workflow (9)

  Hold the Press!  ProcessMaker mobile is now available on a mobile phone near you.  And it is a Killer App.

  You might be asking yourself, “Did I miss a release?  When did this come about?”

  Well, truth be told, it has only a little to do with our own fantastic ProcessMaker developers and a lot to do with general industry timing.  In the pre-iphone days, the idea of offering a  mobile BPM or Workflow solution meant building a specialized client application which had some synchronization methodology for passing information captured on the handheld device back to the server.  In fact about 2 years ago, we had a client that requested such an application as part of a complex, multi-party workflow for surveying Art Museums around the world.  In retrospect, we realized that the request and the project came at the moment of a pretty big paradigm shift in the mobile world, and the iphone was its prophet.

  For this particular client and at this particular juncture, we decided that our best alternative was to approach a mobile forms/survey provider and then integrate with this provider through Web Services.  We thought briefly about building the application ourselves but then realized partnering was the best option.

  This project project started off well, but the client continued to make lots of changes in their mobile forms which caused the project to drag on.  Additionally, the continued changes added new costs from the mobile solution provider.  About half way through the project the iphone was released.  We continued down the path we were on with this client.  We thought that it wouldn’t be wise to change course based on the whims of an unproven new technology.   But as we moved forward, so did the iphone.  They didn’t hit 10 million units of sale as fast as Jobs predicted, but they were certainly becoming more and more ubiquitous.  Oh, and then they were put on a 3G network.

  So why was this so important?  After all, a serious enterprise application like ProcessMaker wasn’t going to announce that it was offering Mobile workflow on the iphone (a highly targeted consumer device), or would it?

  Well, it all boils down to one pretty important detail - that unbelievably beautiful browser!  When the iphone hit the streets, one look at the gorgeous browser and the team at PM thought, “wow, this is amazing!”  And more importantly, our next thought was inevitably, why would I browse any other way?  Well, we wouldn’t and we won’t.  Apple set the bar, and now no one can go lower.  The acceleration in the browser wars on mobile devices means that everyday more usable browsers (unlike the one I have on my Blackberry 8800) become ever more present.  This means that as an application provider that is entirely based in the browser (no client/server architecture), quite suddenly our potential audience of users is growing at an exponential rate.

  That’s right, with no real changes in our application, users can now build sophisticated, custom workflows and execute them in mobile environments like the iphone.  And that eliminates a whole host of other issues.  Now we are truly agnostic with regards to how our users use PM - mobile and desktop to us are one and the same.  And once you’ve tried truly clientless computing there is now going back.  After using Zimbra, I could never go back to Outlook.

  So, if you have a mobile component to your workflow, don’t look any further.  Why pay other vendors tens of thousands of dollars to license their mobile workforce solutions?  It just doesn’t make sense.  ProcessMaker now gives it to you and it’s Open Source!

   
• 

  Yahoo, Microsoft, and Open Source Software

  brian 8:12 pm on May 6, 2008 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: , microsoft, open source, yahoo

  It is always nice when a major awaited event comes to conclusion (even if only temporary), so that you can try and remember which pundits had it right and which didn’t.  I specifically remember a TWIT episode where Jason Calcanis predicted that the merger would happen within the next week.  I think he also mentioned that Google would buy Skype from Ebay either in that same podcast or one around the same time.

  Although YAHOO is up about 1.4% today so far, it has generally been down while MICROSOFT has generally tended on an up trend.  Still seems strange to me how a company with so many great properties cannot manage to come up with a real strategy for the future.  Just goes to show that money doesn’t but happiness, right?

  Well, if anyone came out as a winner from the whole deal or lack thereof, it would have to be open source software.  After all, YAHOO is a major LAMP stack company and open source user.  Had Microsoft taken them over, wouldn’t all of their services have gone the way of HOTMAIL?  Eventual conversion to Microsoft platforms?  I tend to think so.

  So in summary - institutional investors are left flat (they own both Yahoo and Microsoft), Microsoft is slightly up, Yahoo continues to be down but by no way out, and the open source community is the true winner.  Hurray!