Believe it or not, there has been a full blown Enterprise level software package based on the San Francisco Project principals available from Mid-Comp International in Melbourne, Australia since 2002. It’s called Odyssey, and it has fully embraced all the SF concepts with the exception of distributed databases. ( We opted for a central data respository after it proved 10 times faster in trials)

Is it a toy? Well, it has completely replaced JDEdwards & IMAS, and has sucessfully competed against SAP, Movex, IBS, Great Plains, etc.

Mid-Comp has deployed Odyssey into the Australian subsidiaries of companies like Nintendo, who have been using it to run their entire Australian operations for the last 4 years.

It currently consist of over 22,000 classes & approximately 800 JSPs.

IBM have known about it for years, but unfortunately are not all that dynamic in assisting us to tell the world ….. that it exists and that it actually works !! Maybe there is simply disbelief?

Anyway, just thought your group should be made aware that we’ve “been there, done that”

Best Regards,
Steve

Then we can develop new business from this viewpoint. For an example, currently mobile phone operaters’s call center can say “hello, Mr. Bao” when receive my cell phone call, and actually they know my location when calling. In a usageware era, any enterprise can get this advantages for their customer services, by using a usageware from MP operaters, without the need to know the MP user database and how to locate the users.

my blog in http://proven.iblog.com

I too have been giving further thought to this over the past few days, and hope you will do a follow-up at some stage because its such an interesting concept. Here’s how I see some key issues.
- Irving Wladawsky-Berger has made some interesting posts recently on his blog concerning the industry-wide benefits to be obtained in standardizing common business processes. Whilst he has focused on SOA as a means for businesses (and industries) to adopt these, a San Francisco project would also facilitate this (although its sounds like it was SOA-ish to a large degree anyway).

- I agree with one commentator to your original post that SFP won’t work with large enterprises: however, it would with SMEs, and the ISVs who serve them. In fact, given SOA is a long way off entering the SME world (its still a long way off entering the large enterprise world, if people are honest), then SVP would be the best way to achieve what Irving is envisaging;

- Is it really practical to dust-off and deploy SVP? I wouldn’t have thought so. I also cannot imagine such a large, distributed project as SVP 2.0 succeeding in a time frame that is acceptable. However, what about IBM buying such a product (i.e. a generalist ISV), adding to it and then opening it up for use by ISVs? What about using Compiere for this purpose?

- In your original post you say “IBM could begin to make arguments and investments against Oracle, SAP and Microsoft”. I can see the arguments angle, and I can see investments in general marketing. But did you mean investments in ISVs? Doing so raises the conflict issue. But on the other hand, without doing so leaves IBM open to another PeopleSoft or Siebel scenario, that is, losing important ISVs to acquisition by infrastructure/middleware competitors.

Cheers,
Nigel

Nigel and Chui Trey have really made me think more clearly about opportunities and so on and how it all fits together

1. ISVs, particularly those serving the SME market, know they are under threat from the impending weight of aggressive competition from Microsoft, Oracle and SAP, let alone the existing SME heavyweights, Sage and Intuit. If they build to SAP’s or MS’s platforms in order to reduce their development costs, they know they are very likely to be squashed in due course by their “partner” when it builds out its functionality to include the ISV’s niche (unless its a really small niche). Only IBM offers a no-compete promise that an ISV can rely upon; and

2. IBM does need to try something to halt the ongoing aggregate success of Oracle, MS and SAP in being able to bundle and sell applications with infrastructure (JP Morgan’s analysts call this “appli-structure”). In a world where infrastructure has become commoditised (well, at least its commoditising), IBM’s pitch to ISVs to use our infrastructure just isn’t all that compelling: however, using our infrastructure AND base business application software is exciting. And if IBM did this, yes it could think of creative strategic deals with the likes of Sage and Intuit, and offer the larger ISV world a way to thrive against Oracle, MS, SAP.

Keep up the good work!
Cheers,
Nigel

This is how it plays out:
1. IBM open sources a reference implementation which provides standard API for integration between various application blocks, such as GA to Asset Register to HR. IBM then encourages VAR to either sell hosted versions and for committed buyers to host them in house

2. IBM then provides on-demand facilities to provide load balancing, as well as a migration path to a more performant version.

3. IBM continue to command mind share through providing add-on Rich Client components such as Outlook plugins, etc

4. Customers already on other platforms get to pick and choose application blocks which have better functionality than their own and hires IBM to integrate to it using the standard APIs.

5. IBM’s hosted service might chose to aggregate customer information and selling them to bureau of statistics, or like Google, sell ads… integrating into the Purchasing system.

6. IBM could provide a user-pays WS backend which vendors pay to determine when the next sales call is appropriate, and for production planning. This is viral and will bring more players into the system.

7. Existing ISVs which doesn’t have a complete offering (e.g. GL for small businesses) could expand their offerings by integrating to the API and offer a full suit. This brings in existing players. In their long term interest, they will see it fit to migrate their GL to the integrated IBM offering too, since it’s less development expense in the future.

Who does this put at risk?

The losers are large Small Business Accounting vendors which often have scaling problems. e.g. Microsoft Small Business Accounting, which by default doesn’t work over a LAN, and software such as Quicken.

The market dries up for medium sized ISVs, who market their GL or HR or manufacturing product. Some who survive on their existing support agreements, but find it harder to win new clients.

how can we help enterprises better understand open source governance and its advantages. instant shared escrow anyone?

and what better way to customise open frameworks than with vertical community… you said this last week (infoworld):

McGovern said his Hartford, Conn.-based financial firm would be more receptive to open source products if they existed in a format that would address specific components of the financial industry off the shelf.

“In our particular industry, selling insurance, we have some things that are common amongst all other players in our vertical [including] notions of rating engines [and] claims and policy administration,” he said. “If there were OSS components that we could pull off the shelf and [that] get us closer to solving our real business problems, we would be very interested in those things.”