jboss

Random Sampler: Being like Google, JBoss worth the wait, and more

So many good stories, so little time....Here are a few of the best posts today:

You might not be able to get Google-like profits, but at least you can treat your employees more like how Google treats its own employees. There's a good lesson in there.... Most of the music on the iPods of UK youth has been pilfered. Surprising? No. There are two interesting factoids in the data, however: "80% of those who admit to illegally file-sharing are prepared to engage with a legal file-sharing service, and place a considerable monetary value on it"; and The older people get, the more they pay for music. 55 percent of youth aged 14 to 17 illegally download music, jumping to 60 percent when they're aged 18 to 24, but dropping down to 39 percent when aged 25 and above. Does this mean that "old fogey" music is more likely to be monetized than Britney Spears?… Read more

Speaking of great personalities...Marc Fleury

I just wrote about Linus Torvalds, and how his personality feeds into the success of Linux. I then came across Mark Hinkle's "Five Reasons Why JBoss Founder Marc Fleury is My Hero," and thought Mark was spot-on in his assessment of Monsieur Fleury.

I didn't know Marc well when he was at JBoss. My familiarity with him came after. He had dinner at my house earlier this year and joined the open-source crew for the inaugural Open Source Goat Rodeo.

I particularly appreciate two things about Marc, which Mark Hinkle calls out. First, his legacy didn't end with JBoss. He hired people that have since gone on to start or heavily contribute to a range of other startups: Ringside Networks, Loopfuse, Alfresco, Pentaho, Appcelerator, etc. Much as I respect Red Hat, you'd be hard-pressed to find much in the way of open-source off-shoots that it has fostered. Ditto for Novell.… Read more

Ringside Networks snares Shaun Connolly

Well, that didn't take long. First it was Barry Klawans taking an "extended break" (which lasted approximately 3 minutes ;-), and now it's Shaun Connolly of JBoss fame getting back into the ring with Bob Bickel and friends at Ringside Networks, the open-source social networking platform.

This isn't surprising, as Shaun worked with the Ringside team at Bluestone and again at JBoss. It was bound to happen....

Random Sampler: Digium's double, Linux desktops, and more

I'm falling behind on the blogging (Hey, it's my end of quarter!) but thought these articles/posts were too good to let slip:

Digium is apparently doubling revenue each year. Given that it was doing $10 million (at least) two years ago, if memory serves, we may be looking at our next open-source IPO. Red Hat received kudos from Gartner and Forrester. In particular, Forrester's report has an awesome statistic: "86 percent of JBoss users are confident that it can handle their largest workloads." I guess presence, not absence, makes the heart grow fonder. Shlomfish … Read more

Now SpringSource is an application server, too

I read the news that SpringSource has named itself the "first proper" Java application server product in a decade, and I was left scratching my head. Over the years I've heard just about everyone call themselves an "app server" at some point (Funambol went through a spell when it was a "mobile application server" [PDF] and ActiveGrid was a "grid application server", or something, as just two examples), and the only two times it made sense to me (in the open-source context) were with JBoss and Geronimo.

How did SpringSource become an application server? I thought it was a framework.

So, apparently, does Marc Fleury, who had some blunt counsel for SpringSource's founder, Rod Johnson:

To me this is a VC driven move. Spring is a natural consultancy, being a development framework, but they have been struggling with their sales in the runtime. So voila, we now have a box drawn around an OSGi kernel, the Spring framework and Hibernate/Tomcat, and it has a name: it's an application server. It is the same thing you had yesterday for free, except it is now under the GPL and a proprietary subscription license.… Read more

Former JBoss executive to Red Hat: Don't rest on your laurels

Shaun Connolly, formerly an executive with JBoss/Red Hat, offers some interesting counsel to his former employer. In Shaun's view, Red Hat needs to "think big" if it wants to "lead big," and rigorously fight complacency:

...Red Hat needs to realize that past success does not guarantee future dominance. Red Hat needs to improve its ability to grow into new areas. It needs to make its ability to expand its footprint a strategic weapon.

Focusing purely on business as usual may yield some solid results over the coming year, but will ultimately result in decreased momentum...and the crowning of a new open source big dog.

This is what Jason Maynard used to say, and it's what some among us have been asking Red Hat to do: Lead. Red Hat's response to this is often, "We already are." Sort of.… Read more

Behr colors outside the lines with JBoss Application Server

Behr, the paint manufacturer, was looking for a way to upgrade its Behr.com website from IBM's Websphere to make it more cost-efficient, flexible, and improve reliability and response times. Instead of opting for more of the same with another proprietary solution, Behr chose Red Hat's JBoss Application Server.

The result?

Behr has already reaped significant benefits from implementing JBoss Enterprise Application Platform. For starters, the JBoss technology is completely compliant with industry standards, and doesn't lock Behr into a particular vendor's products. "That's the nice thing about open source - it's open, it's consistent, and you know it's going to work," said [Behr]....

Response time for visitors of the website has dramatically improved, making for a better customer experience. And bringing a new node into the cluster, which took a full day under WebSphere, takes just an hour with JBoss. "With WebSphere, you had about six different processes to complete, and then you crossed your fingers and hoped it worked," said Stevenson. "JBoss practically installs itself."...… Read more

Alfresco's sales up 320 percent, hits 30,000 active deployments

Yes, you can make lots of money with open-source software. Alfresco, a leading enterprise content management and collaboration vendor, just announced its 2007 financial results. The numbers speak for themselves:

Surpassed the one million software download mark; Grew community membership to in excess of 45,000 members; Grew customer bookings by over 320 percent year-on-year with more than 400 enterprise accounts [including Activision, Electronics Arts, Boise Cascade, and Sony Pictures, as well as five of the top 10 investment banks world-wide and major government organizations globally]; Announced significant OEM partnerships - including a major deal with publishing giant Quark; Exceeded 30,000 active deployments of Alfresco worldwide.

There's apparently gold in them there open-source hills. Lots of it.

As an employee of Alfresco, let me add some more local color to the numbers, which provide a glimpse into the power of open source as a distribution model (putting to one side its power as a development model for just a minute):… Read more

What Marc Fleury taught my children last night

Last night my wife and I had "the bad boy of open source," Marc Fleury, over for dinner. He was in town for the Open Source Goat Rodeo (to be blogged (and YouTube'd) separately later today). I was fortunate to get his time over dinner.

I've known Marc for a few years, but not as well as I would have liked. I didn't really get to know him until after JBoss was acquired and he became somewhat less involved in the industry, taking a well-deserved break.

He may have once been a "bad boy," and he might still be such in his spare time, but over dinner and with my kids he was great. You can see him here overseeing the education of my kids: More math and science, less of the Asay staple of literature. :-)… Read more