Interestingly, Salesforce.com were joined by a couple of other PaaS vendors in the MQ this year – it will be interesting to see if there really is a new wave of infrastructure bearing down on the established platforms. The contemporary PaaS offerings I see today under-achieve as general purpose developer platforms and that leaves them competing with IAAS based on more traditional / established technology (Java, .NET) on cost and convenience terms. It will be good to see “Cloud” get beyond the current over-hyped phase so we can see how this will play out.

More Red Hat commentary here.

• Open Source is mainstream and it’s being used extensively to support customer facing, business and mission critical functions.
• Reduced TCO and no up-front license cost are still the major drivers for open source adoption but they’re closely followed by - vendor independence (and specifically MS independence), Quality, Innovation and Convenience / Flexibility. Or as Forrester [1] put it “OSS isn’t just cheap – it’s good and cheap”.
• The main inhibitors to adoption – ‘security’ and ‘lack of support’ and risk of patent / copyright infringement seem to be much less of a concern than a year ago. The suggestion seems to be that these risks are offset by working with commercial open source vendors or experienced System Integrators.
• The rate of Open Source adoption differs between categories of software – Application Development, Server OSes, Databases and Middleware have high adoption whereas Reporting / BI, SOA, Desktop and Security – adoption is much lower but adoption is moving rapidly up the stack.
• North America and Canada are  still behind Europe (excluding the UK) in adopting OSS; adoption is higher in larger organizations; and different industries are adopting OSS at different rates for different areas in the stack.
• Technology isn’t the only thing being adopted – principles and governance of open source is also being adopted in IT and development organizations. This is something I’ve already witnessed a few times.

OK, a little bit more detail from each of the reports.

The first report was prepared for Bull by Forrester [1], and specifically focusses on European and North American companies who have already adopted OSS. I especially like the following, so forgive the repetition :

OSS isn’t just cheap — it’s good and cheap. Only a minority of respondents said that OSS hasn’t met their quality expectations. A vast majority (i.e., 92%) said that their quality expectations have been met or even exceeded. The satisfaction regarding cost was on a similar level at 87%.”

The second report is Actuate’s annual Open Source survey [2]

I’ve only read the North American report and a I presume there’s more detail specific to France, UK and Germany. The report drills down into established open source technologies – Linux, Eclipse, Tomcat and JBoss and it’s nice to see JBoss included along with other Open Source mega-brands like Apache, Linux, MySQL and Eclipse . JBoss adoption in North America is 14.7% and Germany 22.1%  but in France it’s much lower at only 5.7% – while other technologies remain pretty constant. Any thoughts as to why JBoss adoption is so much lower in France or whether this is a bug in the survey  ?

The third and fourth tomes are from IDC [3,4] The first part outlines the key drivers and inhibitors to the adoption of Open Source.  The second part has some very nice detail on how open source technology is ‘acquired’ and how it’s supported and serviced. It demonstrates how a tiny little company called  Red Hat has managed to compete with and in many cases lead some much more established (ie. older) and significantly larger companies in the distribution and support of Open Source technology. That said – you can’t help but accept that without huge companies like IBM, Oracle and HP – distributing and supporing Open Source technology – it wouldn’t be as successful or as established as it is today.

As I keep saying – money makes the world go round and that’s true for the world of Open Source too.

[1] Open Source Paves The Way For The Next Generation Of Enterprise IT, Forrester Consulting, November 2008

[2] ACTUATE / Survey Interactive :Annual Open Source Survey, North America Edition, 2008

[3] IDC 2008 Industry Adoption of Open Source Software, Part 1 : Usage Drivers and Inhibitors

[4] IDC 2008 Industry Adoption of Open Source Software, Part 2 : Project Adoption

Given the big gap between JBoss World 2008 and JBoss World 2009 our marketing folks have come up with a great idea to keep our customers, partners and users up to date on what we’re doing and what we have planned for JBoss next year.

On February 11th, 2009 we’ll be hosting a live on-line conference and trade show. The price of admission is an internet connection and your time and attention.

There will be keynotes from Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst, Sacha Labourey and Craig Muzilla as well as business, technical and government tracks including sessions, panels and BOFs. There will also be a virtual exhibition hall and a virtual Cafe for some social interaction.

All without the risk of catching anything or having to stay in some dive of a hotel or wade through the stinking open sewer we all know as ‘air travel’.

If you can’t make the the date – it will all be available for 90 days after the live event.

What are you waiting for ? Sign-up here.

I didn’t get to go to Devoxx but I followed some of the tweets and live blogging – sounds like it was a fun show. As with many of these style of developer event there was the mandatory whiteboard poll which I actually find very useful. I’m not saying the results are completely representative or useful in isolation but they’re useful all the same. A public spirited fellow called Sven snapped pictures of the whiteboard poll and put them up on Picasa.

Slide 2 captured the votes for different jvm-based languages (except Java) and Scala / Groovy seem to be the most popular followed by “don’t care”. On the “Java Cool Wall 2008″ – it’s interesting to see Spring mid-table whereas Seam, EJB 3 / EJB 3.1 are way up at the cool end. The big surprise for me at least was JavaFX which is at the extreme cool end of the scale.

But what really brought a smile to my face was the App server vote. Geronimo got the lowest number of votes – which provides some backup for my gut feel – ie. few people are using it. And the biggest cause for mirth was the Websphere (Websfear) column – which actually got some votes – slightly more than WebLogic but you have to read the comments !! As reflected in the comments of a recent blog post – people seem to despise Websphere with a passion. What has IBM done to piss so many Java developers off ?

I promised myself I wouldn’t bite; yet here I am. I’m contributing to the “Here’s what Sun should do meme”. And why not -  I’m as good a keyboard-CEO as the next person and I did work for Sun for almost 9 years.

But first I should note – I think Tim Bray was pretty bold starting this (as he’s still a Sun Employee); and Sun is a pretty unique company in that it’s OK to do what Tim did (assuming Tim didn’t get booted).

#1 Java. I’m part of the Java ecosystem so it’s important to me. Basically, do what James says:

…, at worst go back to SUNW as a stock ticker.”

then do what Tim says :

As for Sun’s role as Steward of Java, and in particular the Java Community Process, let it go already. Java has mostly won and is mostly the establishment, and the community is smart and conservative enough to keep anyone from doing what Microsoft tried last millennium, or in any other way to subvert Java’s interoperability. In 2008, the JCP is costing Sun opportunities and friends and gaining us very little that I can see.

So I’d like Sun to set the JCP free, turn it over to the community, and when we develop some cool Java-based technology in-house, take it to market, try to make some money with it, and after it’s caught on and the bugs are shaken out, consider whether or not it ought to be taken to the JCP.”

But the community is going to have to continue to be smart and I also think that a consortium of interested parties would have to step up and invest some resources in making it work really well. Getting the balance of commercial interest and community is the key – I think Eclipse has it about right. Money makes the world go round – sorry if that offends anyone. Oh and while we’re at it – OpenJDK should be treated like the Linux Kernel – we only need one code base (note IBM and Oracle).

#2 NetBeans

I’ve used both Net Beans and Eclipse (not for a year or two mind) – Net Beans is better, more polished, etc. But it doesn’t matter – it’s not a sustainable product. When Sun stops it’s investment – it will fade away. Eclipse won in mind share years ago; Sun should have recognized this in 2005 – I did. Java needed something like NetBeans in 1999 to attract developers but not anymore.

#3 Solaris

See above. Linux has won. Whatever technical merit Solaris has today will be commoditized next year. The innovation around Linux is relentless.

#4 Middleware

Sun has some great products and technology; some that are popular and fit well with Sun’s demand driven model (eg. Glassfish) and some that make money (Identity Management). Figure out what you need to do #5 – choose the best available OSS solution and run with it.

#5 MySQL

Invest, Innovate. Hire sales people who can sell data-based solutions – steal $1bn from Oracle this year, $2bn next year, repeat.

Demand for storing, archiving, cleaning, replicating and accessing data is going to grow. Forever.

#6 Storage, SPARC, Volume Servers

Keep only what is required for #5.

#7 Open Office

I’m a beneficiary of Open Office – I use it exclusively but have never paid a penny. That’s the problem – I use it because it’s free and it’s the best Office Suite available for Linux. There is no business case here. Thanks for a great product though.

#8 Java FX

Drop it. Nobody will notice.

If this sounds depressing – I’m sorry but it should be clear that Sun isn’t going to be the company it was in 1999. It needs to adjust its cost-model inline with its Open Source strategy; it needs to be much smaller; and needs to do much, much less, much, much more sucessfuly. Even if Sun goes private.

When I saw this headline in my alerts – “Nigerian Bank Chooses Red Hat and JBoss SOA Solutions for Mission-Critical Banking” – I immediately assumed it was a 419 scam manifest as RSS. Sad – but the misdeeds of a few have created a stereotype that the Sub-Saharan finance industry will take decades to erase. However, I’m glad I didn’t ignore the alert; the press release actually has some pretty nice quotes :

Bank PHB migrated to Red Hat’s open source solutions to achieve the next step in scalability, performance and the ability to handle heavy workloads and achieve cost reduction more effectively than with other proprietary software platform

and

Cost saving was not the only reason we went with open source, though it was certainly icing on the cake. Our decision was driven by the fact that Red Hat Enterprise Linux and the JBoss Enterprise SOA Platform provide constant innovation and the flexibility that enables us to develop products that we can launch to market faster …

And another success story from from Booz Allen Hamilton :

The combination of efficiency provided by the virtualization capabilities embedded in Red Hat Enterprise Linux Advanced Platform, the scalability provided by Red Hat Cluster Suite and Red Hat Global File System, the clustering feature inherent in JBoss Enterprise Application Platform and the agility provided by the JBoss family of products has led our client to consider these products as their top-tier choice

Alec Muffet makes a good point - something I’ve said a few times on this blog – Open Source isn’t an excuse for not being as good or better than competing proprietary technology. The mass-market doesn’t care about the ideology – they just expect stuff that works.

I’ve been playing with Fedora 10 on the XO and will be trying it on my home desktop in the next week – this discussion of the 13 prime features of Fedora 10 is a good read if you’re thinking the same.

LinkedIn has just added a host of new features / app. integration for networking – I’ll be giving them a closer look if I get time.

On the subject of social networks – I recive a couple of invites every week inviting me to a new social network platform thingy – just FYI – I’m not really interested in managing new networks – I’m completely satisfied with LinkedIn, Flickr, Twitter and Facebook at a push or if you get really desperate give me a call or send me an email.

IBM’s WebSphere application server is now ten years old, and during that time, it has evolved and matured into what its users think of as the best application server anywhere, but most especially in the large enterprise market where IBM has traditionally had its home. Make no mistake about it, WebSphere is a powerhouse in many ways, and its users truly love this
product.

Fantastic – already written in press-ready language – could be lifted and dropped straight into a press release. So good – it could have been written by Websphere’s marketing team themselves !

OK, by now you think you’ve seen through by thinly veiled blast at EDC’s report. You think I’m bitter because JBoss came in 5th (out of eight). Right ?

Well hold on. Though I have some issues with the report which I’ll get to – JBoss actually did very well – after all we beat Weblogic – which is no small feat. And there are other bits of the report worth highlighting. Here’s one quote I like which enforces what many other analysts are saying about JBoss and something that differentiates us from our Open Source brethren :

JBoss Enterprise Application Platform competes with Oracle’s Application Server, WebLogic, and IBM’s WebSphere in the high-end market for large corporate applications. The recent acquisition of BEA by Oracle may provoke some consternation and uncertainty amongst the end users of both WebLogic and Oracle AS, which in turn provides an opportunity for both JBoss and IBM.

And another that demonstrates that JBoss is focussed on our customer’s highest priorities :

JBoss really shone in the areas of security where users gave it the best ratings of any product in the survey, compatibility with other software, and the very important value to cost ratio.

The second point is worth repeating, given the economic situation we find ourselves in – JBoss had the best value to cost ratio.

So I’m actually not bitter – if you’re the underdog competing with some significantly larger competitors – this kind of validation is golden and It shows that JBoss is till punching way above it’s weight. I’m not bitter but my spidey-senses are tingling; there’s something just not right about this report.

Methodoloy

I find EDC’s methodology odd. It’s not clear how many responses were received for each question or for each vendor. For example you would expect to see many responses for Windows Server 2003 vs something like NetWeaver (which isn’t quite as main stream) – the number of responses is significant both statistically and as a proxy for adoption / acceptance.

Bucks the general consensus

The results just don’t seem right. I’ve worked for 2 of the vendors on the list (previously Sun and currently Red Hat) and know the other vendors really well having been involved in this space for as long as anyone. Though I trust my instinct – that isn’t good enough so let’s compare some other data. Forrester recently released a report (also based on a user survey) covering some aspects of the EDC report.  In that report WAS 6 did significantly better than WAS 5  but generally scored lower than JBoss. For example :

The EDC report doesn’t correlate with the summary points of the recent Burton report on JBoss. Also it doesn’t correlate with our own (sponsored) satisfaction surveys (like this). I find it strange that WAS scores so well and Weblogic scores so badly – putting them in seventh plance out of eight just seems a little too extreme and a little to convenient. I’ve yet to personally meet a Websphere customer who says good things about WAS – maybe I only meet the customers who’ve already decided to move to JBoss ?

Third – I talk to customers every week and Red Hat’s sales team a couple of times a day and I just don’t see Geronimo mentioned at all – few if any user satisfaction surveys actually call out Geronimo – what was it about these respondents that give them an unrepresentative affinity towards Geronimo ? I just don’t understand why Geronimo is in the survey.

So a couple of request to EDC – 1. open up the unfettered results; 2. provide a little more detail on the methodology; and 3.  confirm that this was a purely independent survey that wasn’t paid for or unduly influenced by any of the vendors included in the survey.

We’re constantly checking how we’re performing and one of the latest customer satisfaction surveys we’ve commissioned for JBoss has just been published – the above chart came from the survey. While there’s always room for improvement I think we’re doing well both in terms of quality and value of our services.

But the reality is – no amount of progress with Open Source Java and GlassFish, sales of MySQL, Solaris or Web2oh coolness is going to move the needle enough to make a material difference to Sun’s fortunes as long as it lags the competition in selling servers. Because Sun is still dominantly a hardware company – and that’s where the revenue comes from.

And the issue is, and the reason I’m ranting is that this is fundamentally the same problem that Sun faced 8 years ago as Wintel and Linux started to creep onto Sun’s turf. From the recent IDC WW Server Tracker – that issue still hasn’t been addressed and I’m no longer confident it will be addressed adequately or quickly enough to save Sun. And that is a real shame – but if you’ve been staring at the oncoming steam train for 8 years and still get flattened – no-one is going to sympathize.

I hope I’m wrong.

What’s worse is that the new NT 6.0 kernel (the kernel that powers Vista and Windows Server 2008) isn’t competing strongly either. According to SearchEnterprise.com – Windows Server 2008 is a real power-hog compared to RHEL; a poor sign when just about every vendor in the industry is pushing efficiency and power savings. Even Microsoft’s friends at Intel IT have decided to ignore Vista – declaring that they won’t be upgrading some 80,000 desktops – that’s pretty significant.