In reading Scott’s reply to the Enterprise Agile post, I got to thinking: how much training do you need? In this area, training serve two purposes in my mind: the education everyone on the topic. to give everyone a shared…

One of the things I’m increasingly coming to understand concerning the “Barriers to Entry” meme that we continue to propagate around here is that it’s an intrinsically multi-layered issue, and one that depends heavily on context. I’ve been keenly aware…

If you could convince your software vendor clients to allow us to be more open, then we will be more willing to share…

Great post. Clearly, transparency is a core value of Zimbra and it makes it a lot easier for technology partners, customers and channel partners to know what we are up to and how they can get involved. I love the idea of encouraging transparency of vendors and IT choices. It makes it easier for partners and vendors to know how to add value for an organization. For example, if people know that a company is using Salesforce or Web Side Story it is easier for partners and vendors to make very specific recommendations to help the company maximize the value of their investment.

-jr

I think you are spot on in theory, but the practice of this will be a long time coming… individuals are still catching up on the declarative notions, and I think large enterprises are far behind. Many regard their IT portfolio as a competitive advantage in terms of software assets – they really should regard their IT people, processes, and culture as the advantage but there are yet a lot of managers to convince of that fact.

I think you are dead on though about the advantages in terms of starting to get more accurate metrics around use of open source, and companies (even competitors) should see the advantages of being able to collaborate (even collude) to have vendors cater better to their industry needs. There are some obvious cases like compliance…

But I do think enterprises are open to disclosing these if only semi-publicly to analyst firms in exchange for market analysis. This isn’t quite the public declaration you are asking for, but would start to open the doors. You are also correct that holding these cards close is part of what lets the big firms control information – it’s a competitive disadvantage to have to depend on their opinions to make platform decisions.

You also know you are doing something right if you cause controversy! Nice post

– one way we talk about this is that being an “open source” company is about more than the license. that’s a big part of what our 6 promises are all about – http://www.sourcelabs.com/?page=company&sub=customerpromise
transparency is a key attribute for an open source company. another way to put it is that customers don’t want any “hidden surprises” and that’s one reason why they are willing to do business with small open source startups.

– one way in which we’re helping to lead is opening up tests and test results. it seems pretty drop-dead obvious that that’s the right thing to do, both for the customer as well as for the vendor.

– i like what you say about SOx for software. we haven’t put it that explicitly, and i like it.

– on your piece about “competitive advantage” – i think it’s important to note that more generally competitive advantage in a world based on recurring subscription revenue is becoming more and more about ongoing value delivered to customers, and obviously a key element to that are things like trust. “declarative living” makes a ton of sense in that world, much more so than in the world of “hit and run” multi-million dollar deals that we used to live in (and some vendors still do).

offer the enterprise something of value – jesus christ if they could cut the Gartner budget by 10% and make more informed platform decisions – wouldnt that be value?

i am flabberghasted to have a couple of people ask what the value would be. you think the status quo is proving value? you think enterprises dont waste billions of dollars a year on procurement decisions? you think large vendors dont win against small vendors by buying off “independent consultants”…. what am I, in some weird alternative universe where we like to get screwed by people?

the best analog is commercial software – i defy ANYONE to tell me that open source software hasnt created massive advantages in technology deployment – even for 100% windows shops.

Though why listen to me – the MWD blog runs on blogger