Projity: Open Source Project Management that is SaaS-y!

I spent 12 years (1988 - 2000) creating Project Management software at Primavera Systems , and since I'm an open source guy, I always figured it was a matter of time before an open source alternative emerged that was good enough to disrupt Microsoft Project.

Well, that time has come. I recently downloaded Projity's OpenProj, and for those who still think that "open source" means less feature/function....well think again.

OpenProj offers all of the typical project management bells and whistles found in products like Microsoft Project...only in a more approachable, open source offering. After installing OpenProj, I started off by opening some of my old Microsoft project files and poof...they opened up right away and looked great.

I still need to play with it more deeply, but the product feels nicely polished. This, of course, made me curious as to who is behind the company. A look at the management team yields expertise from Scitor (which always boasted nice graphics) and WebProject (one of the early hosted, web-based solutions).

I have not yet tried out Projity's Project-ON-Demand, which is their hosted SaaS (software-as-a-service) offering, but at first blush, it appears to offer much of the feature richness of OpenProj directly in the browser.

So for those who don't want to install software, you can use Project-ON-Demand. For those who prefer a desktop app, OpenProj is a great choice.

IBM's Interest in EnterpriseDB

Like a few others, I found IBM's choice to make an investment in EnterpriseDB kinda interesting. Matthew Aslett (the 451 group) got the following quote from IBM in explanation:
"IBM has become a minority shareholder of EnterpriseDB. This affords us an opportunity to continue to participate in, and gain further insight into, the open source community. This complements other experiences such as with the Linux, Apache and Eclipse communities and previous investments we’ve made in Red Hat and Novell. IBM has been a long-time supporter of Open Source communities, and we continue to see interest among our clients for Linux and other Open Sources solutions. This investment supports our overall strategy to support Open Source solutions in the marketplace to further enable our customers to implement business-critical solutions"

If I'm in EnterpriseDB's shoes, I'm digging this quote since being thought of in the same breath as Linux, Apache, and Eclipse sounds like strategic company to me. After all, in my opinion, a large part of Red Hat's success can be attributed to the early investments and marketing done by IBM (as well as HP, Oracle,and others) on its behalf.

The quote above also tries to minimize the importance, of course, but why would IBM invest if it just wanted an arm's length relationship?

To me, this move is a typical IBM long-term strategy play. They are always looking 5-10 years down the road (which equates to 1-2 Big Blue Dog Years). And while EnterpriseDB is not going to immediately displace Oracle for the high-end database needs, they still have an interesting market opportunity.

Savio Rodrigues (IBM WebSphere dude) posted on this topic and asked the question:
"What do you think, does EnterpriseDB have a brighter future by targeting Oracle users that want "Oracle like features for MySQL prices" or by targeting MySQL users who have "hit the wall"?"

Since EnterpriseDB is built on Postgres (which has been around a long time and is quite stable) and since they provide an Oracle compatibility layer, my answer would be "Yes" and "Yes". I think they compete for general database business with both Oracle and MySQL.

Bottom-line: This investment by IBM gives them a potential future play that neither their DB2 nor their Cloudscape/Apache Derby investments address directly. Now we just need to wait 1-2 Big Blue Dog Years to see how it all plays out.

UPDATED: The EnterpriseDB One-Two Punch
Savio replied to my blog with "I agree in principal that EnterpriseDB will continue to go after Oracle & MySQL. But in practice, they need to pick one segment to be their primary focus, or else they risk less than optimal results in both."

While I agree with Savio that focus is usually a good thing, my experience at JBoss, for example, also taught me that sometimes you've gotta lead with a one-two punch. At JBoss, we had momentum from new application development projects AND momentum from BEA migrations. Both were valid and lucrative focus areas. We actually had solid WebSphere migration business too, but we treated those more opportunistically than strategically since battling IBM is always more complex.

Anyhow...my point is that if EnterpriseDB's Oracle compatibility is any good, then over the longer-term, they can drive solid business. Ex. think through the Oracle upgrade cycle (when faced with moving from an older version to a newer version....should I consider EnterpriseDB??). The combat with MySQL clearly will heat up over time...but I still think they need to milk the Oracle opportunity.

I'm just a Philly guy who loves a nice one-two punch. :-)

OFF TOPIC: McCain Just Lost My Vote?

This post is a bit of an inside joke for my fellow Bluestone crew.

I stumbled across the following article: McCain Embraces Tech Executives For White House Push - TechCrunch Interviews Carly Fiorina

Carly Fiorina was HP's CEO when HP acquired Bluestone in 2001. Bluestone pretty much got lost in the shuffle after HP acquired Compaq...or as I like to describe it...when the giant anaconda swallowed the wildebeest. Yes folks...it was physically possible for HP to swallow Compaq...but it looked ugly going down.

Anyhow, I always got the impression Carly was positioning herself for politics, so the above news is not a shocker. It's just that my Carly-nerve...twitch twitch...is still sensitive after all these years.

Call me old-fashioned, but I prefer my CEOs to have a vision and drive a company to success. Looking at the performance of HP CEOs over the past decade...I must say that I'm impressed with Mark Hurd's performance.

My momma taught me that if you can't say something nice, then don't say anything at all.
:-)

Purposeful Risk-Taking

In Matt Asay's article "Executive moves: Shaun Connolly leaves Red Hat", he covers the fact that I have chosen to leave Red Hat and take a little time off before finding my next challenge

In a prior blog, I asked "When Was Your Last Giant Leap?". In it, I stated that, in my opinion, the best changes, the sweetest changes, the most impactful changes are those where you make a conscious and informed decision to "go for it".

So, I have decided to go for it. In answer to a couple of Matt's points: No, I don't plan on staying out of the game for too long....and Yes, I am hoping to reinvest my experience in other open-source companies.

But first, I do have some family plans in March and April...starting off by literally smelling the flowers with my wife at this week's Philadelphia Flower Show, then hosting an exchange student from Switzerland in March. I will continue to help my son hone his programming skills on ROBLOX. And since my daughter is a high school Junior, it is time for a College Road Trip of our own. I'm not THAT overprotective, am I? ;-)

I feel privileged to be in the position to be able to take some time off between challenges, and I have the JBoss / Red Hat team to thank for this. Thanks to Marc Fleury, Bob Bickel, and Joe McGonnell for recruiting me to JBoss. Thanks to Rob Bearden, Brad Murdoch, Tom Leonard, Ben Sabrin, Rich Friedman, Francois Dechery, Michel Goosens, Steve Raby, Matt Quinlan, Katie Poplin, Martin Musierowicz, and Sacha Labourey for the pleasure of working with a strong and motivated JBoss management team.

Thanks to the talented JBoss Core Developers (Bill, Scott, Adrian, Bela, Gavin, Mark, Mark, Tom, Dimitris, Max, Thomas, Ivelin, etc., etc.), the platform productization team (Andy, Patrick, Ryan, Alex, Fernando, etc.), and the support team (Francois, Luc, Stan, etc.) for creating and supporting technologies and products that continue to delight the community and customers.

Thank you to the JBoss Community, Customers, and Partners for your continued passion, interest, and help in making JBoss a success.

Thanks to Tim Yeaton, Todd Barr, Aaron Darcy, Iain Gray, Ed Boyajian and team, Mark Entzweiler and team, Charlie Peters, Deb Kane, and Deb Delegge for making Red Hat home for the JBoss team.

And finally, thanks to Craig Muzilla, Jon Atkins, Aaron Darcy, Rebecca Goldstein, Rob Morrison, Pierre Fricke, Burr Sutter, Rob Cardwell, Ken Johnson, Rayme Jernigan, Keith Burres, Kevin Barfield, and too many others to name for continuing to lead the charge...and while I'm at it, well done at JBoss World Orlando!

OK...OK...I see that I've exceeded my time limit on thank you's!
So, I will simply close with a few choice quotes:

• "Do or do not... there is no try." - Yoda
• “The most difficult thing for people to say in 25 words or less is good-bye.” - Anonymous
• “Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened.” - Dr. Seuss
• "Smile well and often, it makes people wonder what you've been up to." - Anonymous
• "Never get so busy making a living that you forget to make a life." - Anonymous
• "I'm on my way, I don't know where I'm going, I'm on my way, I'm taking my time, But I don't know where..." - Simon and Garfunkel
• “You and I will meet again, When we're least expecting it, One day in some far off place, I will recognize your face, I won't say goodbye my friend, For you and I will meet again.” - Tom Petty

And last but not least: "Onward!" - Sacha Labourey

OFF TOPIC: 30 Years Later

I received an invitation to attend a 30-year reunion of my St. Peter Celestine 8th grade graduating class. Wow! I did the math and yep...it's been 30 years.

Of course I had to rummage through the old pictures and stuff to see what remembrances I could dig up from this byegone era. I kinda felt like Indiana Jones in search of ancient treasure. After a little digging, I found the picture below of me and three of my 8th grade amigos:


My friends are from left to right:

• Bart Heenan: currently lives in Virginia Beach and is CEO of Morphix Technologies. 20 years ago, Bart and his wife Karen set me up on a successful blind date with my [future] wife; and we have been happily married for 18 years.


• Steve DeLuca: currently lives in the San Francisco Bay area and is a Portfolio Manager at Spinner Asset Management. I ran into Steve a couple of years ago at an Investors conference in San Francisco.
  
• Bill Nicoletti: currently lives in Wilmington Delaware and is President of Visual Innovations. About 10 years ago, Bill and I played on an "over 30" baseball team together.

Yep...that's me on the right...pretty scary!

Lest I wallow in remembrances too long, I've come to the sobering realization that I was actually younger than my high school Junior daughter and I was one year older than my 7th grade son.

30 years goes by so quickly!

Technology News at JBoss World

While the news for Day 1 of JBoss World focused on the Enterprise Acceleration initiative, Day 2 unveiled the product and technology news.

For customers chomping at the bit for our ESB-based solution, the team announced the arrival of the new SOA Platform.

For folks interested in new community technologies, they were greeted with news around three new OSS projects:

The RHQ project is a joint effort between Red Hat and Hyperic focused on providing common services for infrastructure management. This project will provide the basis for the upcoming JBoss Operations Network 2.0. We've had a long standing partnership with Hyperic and this project represents the fruits of our joint engineering labor over the years.

The DNA project is a new JBoss.org project, spearheaded by the MetaMatrix team, focused on providing an open source repository and tools that make it easy to capture, version, analyze, and understand the fundamental building blocks of information, models, service and process definitions, schemas, source code, and other artifacts. This is just the first project designed to address the complex and varied needs of SOA governance.

The BlackTie project, while not yet launched, is arguably my favorite of the three new project announcements. Why? Because I have been competing with BEA for many years and hopefully the name of this new project is an indicator of what it's about...namely freeing Tuxedo customers from the yoke of their massive maintenance fees.

Anyhow, that's the tech news for today at JBoss World...we hope you enjoy it.

ROBLOX Redux

In my Future of Open Source blog, I posed the question: "Are online destinations like ROBLOX grooming the next generation of open source developers?".

What leads me to ask this question is how platforms like ROBLOX are encouraging our next-generation of developers to interact with its cloud-based platform and create and extend virtual worlds using collaborative approaches that are arguably at the heart of professional open source development.

John Shedletsky (aka Telamon), a ROBLOX developer, picked up on my post and wrote a great article drawing the corallary between the ROBLOX model and the open source model.

1. He begins by illustrating the fact that there are Multiple Levels of Engagement (Basic User, Intermediate User, Advanced User, and Power User); his simple pyramid diagram is quite effective
   
2. He describes the power of Massive Peer to Peer Collaboration
3. He discusses how ROBLOX uses Economic Incentives to encourage production of high-quality content.
4. He closes with how an Exposure to Engineering at an early age influences the future
   

So, I'd like to thank John for his post. I could not have described things better. I do believe that sites like ROBLOX are absolutely shaping our next-generation of developers. And since it promotes what is arguably an open source collaborative methodology, I maintain my assertion that they are shaping our next-generation of professional open source developers.