Eric's Nuxeo Blog

Agile @ Work: Kanban in the Kitchen?

I spent last week-end in NYC with my wife and we got back to Aldea for dinner. This place is becoming our favorite restaurant in NYC. The food is creative yet not too sophisticated (as in you get to actually taste and feel the ingredients) and really good. The wine list small but enticing.

We had a reservation for 9:30pm but got there 30min early. Our table wasn't available but we were offered to sit at the "chef's counter" where you are dining literally in front of the kitchen, fully open. So we sat there ordered and inevitably started to look at the kitchen's work...

At some point I surprised myself thinking: they have a perfect flow and are working so seamlessly together. It was really impressive and we spent a part of the dinner looking at them and trying to understand how they worked. Looked a lot like what we want to achieve in software development teams: fast flow, great collaboration, minimum waste due to unnecessary communication...

1. Signal-based communication: very few oral communication, which seemed weird at fist (and not like I imagined) yet meal are prepared and ready to be served in no time. They are using small signals. Orders comes in from the dining room, are stacked up and each cook take a task in the pool of orders (haven't determined the processing order). Of course there is some specialization (cold, hot, cooked, uncooked, etc.) but they just take the order and do it.

2. Focus on done: low level of "work-in-progress". When a cook start working on a meal, they work only on it until it's finished. Finished as in ready to be served or passed to the next stage. And when a meal is ready to be served, it wait for the others on the same order and leave. Same here, few orders in WiP stage at the same time.

3. Don't let tasks stack up: When tasks start to stack up somewhere, somebody comes to help. I noticed 1-2 cooks plus the chef able to change from one part of the kitchen to another to help completing orders when they started to stack up (i.e.: too many oyster to open for the lady in charge -> help came to open oysters faster).

4. Continuous testing: of course, no chance to miss a delivery here. They all go live . So you can see them check (at least visually) really often what they are doing (and start again if not good — which doesn't seem to happen a lot)

So of course I might be totally wrong and I know nothing about how restaurant kitchens work. Plus there is a lot of obvious differences with software development, but those similarities amused me and comforted my thinking that the core principle of Agile in general and Kanban specifically "Focus on the flow" can be applied to pretty much any team work.

I haven't asked but I'm pretty sure they also do Continuous Improvement to reach and maintain this stage of efficiency!

We have some experiment running to apply Kanban principle to other team than software dev teams. I'll share the learnings, but I am pretty positive on the outcome.

If you have any experience to share on this topic, I would be happy to learn about them.

Sneak Preview: Nuxeo Marketplace & Nuxeo Admin Center

I'm very excited and proud to present the new big thing for the ECM market! We’ve been working on this plan for the last few months and now it’s ready for our community to preview. We believe it can change things in the content management market and drive a whole new innovation stream from developers!

We are releasing, as preview, Nuxeo Marketplace & the Nuxeo Admin Center. As part of our Nuxeo Connect subscription program, the Marketplace is a new way to distribute plug-ins and apps on our ECM platform and packaged products. The Admin Center is a new administration console, featuring a great software update dashboard to install and manage upgrades, patches and new features, streamlining the management of a Nuxeo application.

Nuxeo Marketplace provides a completely new experience to install new features (packages) and customization/configurations in a Nuxeo application. Leveraging our platform’s architecture and extension model, the Marketplace offers a way to package those plugins and distribute them easily to enhance our products (Nuxeo EP, Nuxeo DM, Nuxeo DAM, or Nuxeo Case Management Framework).

The key point? It is not just another app marketplace! Most app markets today require a complete download, install, test cycle. We’ve made this easy for Nuxeo customers. We have focused on the experience, integrating it throughout the Nuxeo Connect services, allowing installation of new apps or plug-ins directly from your application.

We are delivering a completely integrated environment for our customers to browse, install and try new features, download Nuxeo Studio templates, etc. Installing new features and deploying a customization literally takes seconds and doesn’t even require a restart in most cases! THAT is innovation in ECM when most of our competing friends still take weeks to install and test new features… let alone create the customization… ;-)

More than just a new product, more than another new service, it’s the logical fusion of our products and services to make your job easier.

Want to join the preview and help shape the direction of Nuxeo Marketplace? Watch the sneak peak video and try it by yourself!

Key benefits

For developers, a way better to serve your users:

• browse and install new features from the Marketplace into your Nuxeo product
• easily upgrade your product and related add-ons
• easily install software patches delivered by Nuxeo’s support team

For partners and contributors:

• create apps, features, add-ons for Nuxeo’s product and access our install base (application builders decide - free or priced as you wish)
• easily distribute updates and collect revenue from what you’re doing

For system integrators and developers:

• benefit from a completely unified experience, plus support and customization with Nuxeo Studio
• quickly deploy your Studio-based customization

How does this work?

The Nuxeo Admin Center lets you link your product with your Nuxeo Connect subscription (if you don’t have one, you can start a 30-day trial ). Once your application is registered, the Update Center is activated.

The Update Center manages packages: it can notify, download, install, upgrade and remove them. The Update Center communicates available updates (and patches) for installed software, fetching and delivering Nuxeo Studio-based apps/customization and installing packages from the Marketplace.

On the Nuxeo Connect side, Nuxeo Marketplace hosts the package repository and offers a central place to browse available packages via the web-based gallery of apps and plug-ins.

Want to create new packages?

Creating new packages is very easy when you have done plug-ins for a Nuxeo application. You just need to bundle them with an install script and the resources to create a new package suitable for the Marketplace.

How to help? Want to know more?

• Try the Marketplace & the Admin Center

• Read the FAQ

• Create and submit packages

• Report bug and give feedback

Timeline?

The Nuxeo Marketplace and Admin Center are available today for members of our community, contributors, partners and customers for preview, testing, improvement and package creation. Nuxeo Connect customers can benefit from this update system now, receiving bug fixes and patches from our support team for Nuxeo DM 5.3.2.

The general availability release of the Nuxeo Marketplace will be done for Nuxeo DM 5.4, at the end of September. We expect to have many packages available by that time and directly available with this version.

Let’s get started!

EB.

Can Day Software Propel Adobe Towards a More Open Business Strategy?

As most involved in the broad content management market, I’ve seen the news of the week: Adobe acquires Day Software, the hot WCM vendor.

I have known and respected Day for a while: they deliver neat technology, have a clean business model and contribute significantly to open source. Plus, I appreciate the people I know from there.

Waking up on Wednesday and seeing the news starting to pour in my tweet stream was a big surprise. I thought about it a bit over the breakfast. My take: great for them, I know some people in the industry are going to hate it, but won’t be change much for Nuxeo and for the open source projects Day’s people are leading. So sent some congrats, a dinner invite, and went on my day waiting for the analysis and industry reaction overview from our great CMO later in the day. Which, in turn, confirmed my take. All good, move on. :-)

I’ve been asked a few time about my opinion and gave it. Until the last time when I thought “but what if Adobe doesn’t follow the Day way?”. Because many people have talked about Adobe closing more of Day’s technology and I don’t buy it. Developers working on the open source project are well respected, they will continue to work on those projects be it for Adobe or for an other company. So that wouldn't be a problem.

The question that started puzzling me is: What if Adobe goes onto a more open way? First reaction: That would be huge!

Imagine, for a second, that Adobe open source the whole CQ5 product. You have:

• CQ5, great WCM software considered as one of the best in its category (the best?), available as open source

• Day’s team, a team that knows how to ignite and lead communities

• Adobe’s marketing war machine to let the world know

You get a winning product, with the capacity to transform the WCM market. By commoditizing this technology, Adobe would hit hard its competition in the WCM market. Despite the fact that it would unify some of the opens source WCM crowd, EMC/Fatwire, Autonomy/Interwoven, OpenText/RedDot/Vignette/Obtree and friends would be under heavy attack.

Adobe could concentrate on monetizing global service offerings: Omniture, Livecycle, end-to-end workflows for medias, acrobat.com on steroids, more online services, etc. Commoditizing the core WCM technology would keep the competition busy and let them make money where they hardly have any meaningful competition, innovate more with new services spanning and leveraging the wide reach of their offerings. We also would see an ecosystem thrive on CQ5, providing the ignition — for free — Adobe needs to enter the market. Kinda the Google way, after all.

Actually the more I think to this and after having read Adobe’s plan for Day, I think it’s the best way to achieve it. If they truly want to create a platform for customer engagement management, this is the way. This is how the industry builds big platform nowadays, by open source software.

All this for a mere $240M and -$50M in revenue addition. That would be the slam dunk that Laurence Hart doesn’t see coming! :-)

Am I crazy enough to think that Adobe will execute this? No. And I haven't thought all this thoroughly. But that would be really fun to watch! :-)

Onto some real work now,

EB.

Business of open source: my take on "open core"

The “open core” debate has been around since the inception of the model itself, and gained significant adoption among so-called “commercial open source companies”. The debate is heating a bit these day, and I got inspired by 2 recent blog posts from Brian Prentice and Matt Aslett. I advise to read both posts to understand the reactions bellow. :-)

I think a lot about business models leveraging open source as it’s what makes our business run and I’m deeply convinced that "open core" is fundamentally flawed. This conviction has been formed by real world observations: running a real business for several years now. And I’m happy to see high-profile analysts reach the same conclusion with a sharper analysis and better process! :-)

About Sales & Marketing Savings

James Dixon from Pentaho argues — not suprisingly — that open core is the right model because it reduces the sales and marketing costs to distribute the software. And that might be true. But it is not linked to open core neither to open source, intrinsically. It’s linked to the internet distribution model and the rise of the web as a way for new and small companies to become known.

I would also add that I think the open core market is less powerful as a distribution model than a freemium (or free trial)-one based leveraging proprietary software. The reduction in sales and marketing spend is more related to the online distribution of the software than the open source aspect of “a software core”. So, of course, when you distribute a software online, you have to make it easy to install (hence improve packaging compared to traditional proprietary offerings). But it is really linked to internet-enabled distribution, not to the open access to the source code of the software.

Atlassian (or Skype) might be the flagship of success for this model... without being open source at all (but while contributing to it)!

About the “open core” model

With an open core model, you have to exclude/remove features (hence value) from the open source software to in order to preserve your business: you could be forced to even limit innovation in the open source branch because it could damage your business. It does not leverage any benefits that should be derived from the open nature of the code — which is the very core aspect of open source. It only leverage free distribution not the open aspect of the source code.

I would add that a subscription-based model (where subscription is for maintenance and support services) is superior on the long-term because it drives the company to align and organize itself around the value created for its customer. The more the customer deploy and benefit from the software, the more revenue goes to the vendor. So I think it’s a great way to align vendors and users on the same value stream.

Also, using an open source license does not require free download (advocated by open core users): RHAT is, I think, considered as the most successful company in the open source world. Yet their software is not freely downloadable, while 100% open source.

Hybrid?

I read a lot about "hybrid models", based some blend of proprietary and open source software, to justify/support an "open core" model. I don't believe in this at all. Of course, proprietary software is not going away anytime soon. It's a valuable and proven business model that works and can deliver value to customers when properly applied. Same for open source: it's here to stay for good. But the "open core" model offer no long-term benefit for customers: it just blurs the real value of open source for them, only leveraging the distribution channel it implies for the vendor benefit.

I believe in clear business models. Successful companies use clear business models because that's what enable trust from customers. Open core is not one of them: there is no clear line between open source / proprietary, neither serious justification for the customer. Open core is just the good old proprietary model, nothing new here. All vendors uses open source software today!

From a higher perspective, I believe that the whole IT market is moving toward service-based approaches — SaaS paved the way — because it aligns customer value with vendor revenue. That's why we — at Nuxeo — won't use the open core model even if it could increase short term revenue. We're here to stay and we believe that basing our revenue stream on the value we create for our customers is the best way to create sustainable growth.

Cheers,

EB.

What makes Nuxeo ECM different and worthy of interest? (No, it’s not “open source”)

Note: this post follows the previous one about the ECM market and I advise you to read it to better understand the context of this one.

What differentiates you from the other enterprise content management offerings?

I get this question regularly, and too often the expected answer is “open source”. While playing a role, I wouldn’t say that open source is what makes us different. Open source is in our DNA, but that’s not the key for our customers, nor the biggest change we’re aiming to bring to the market.

What makes us different? Our technology, the ECM platform.

This is by far our main market advantage and what we have to bring to the market: Nuxeo Enterprise Platform (EP), our ECM platform. We’ve built superior technology, leveraging an up-to-date Java stack, design pattern and modularity. This is hands down the main reason that we win deals today with enterprise architects and technology-savvy business sponsors.

The value proposition here is simple and compelling — We dramatically reduce the time and the cost of building on top of the ECM platform when compared to LiveLink or Documentum. This is why we won major deals with Jeppesen — a Boeing Company, Orange, BBC, EllisDon, Cengage Learning, Overstock.com, and many more.

We don’t try to hide from architects, we bring them back to the center of the game and give them the tools to answer challenges of the 21st century. To fully bring competitive advantage and deliver the value it promises, technology is important. We believe software is an engineering discipline, at the service of the business.

Of course, open source is deep in our DNA and brings a lot of value, ease and insurance to our customers. But from a decision-making standpoint, it plays a role but isn’t usually a key factor. The same is true for cost. Yes it is important but clearly only satisfying the functional and technical requirements are paramount. Ironically, price regularly plays against us: such as when our competitor friends have the financial resources to buy deals from us when money is key. Hence the best case for us to win is when what we offer is not achievable by the incumbents.

We offer a better ECM platform, enabling a new generation of content applications

On the platform side, our mission is to commoditize the market for “ECM platforms” with standards, widely known technology and great infrastructure. We made a strategic bet 3 years ago on a stack of technology and infrastructure that is now mainstream. So we have a great ECM platform, leveraging open standards and a well-known technology stack, highly modular and flexible. It runs on a wide range of hardware (from embedded devices in planes to large farms with terabytes of data) and serves very diverse needs (from mission-critical editorial systems for press agencies to a highly secure case management system for a nuclear agency or a mobile document repository for an offshore welding engineer.)

The net result of all this is that our platform is the most flexible and modular on the market and is widely recognized as such. This has become a great market advantage for us with the rise of content applications (CEVA/CCA: Content Enabled Vertical Applications / Composite Content Applications - as Gartner puts it and discussed at its recent Gartner Portals, Content & Collaboration Summit).

Content Apps represent a steady move in the ECM market where buyers want to buy vertical solutions, solving actual business problems. They don’t want to pour money into generic technology anymore. We are seeing a new category of ISVs, packaging business knowledge into software to create and sell those content applications (ex: construction project management, clinical facts management for biotech and life sciences, software for control and command centers, etc.). Content apps are a logical evolution of the ECM market toward more vertical, business-ready solutions. And we believe we offer a great development and composition model for the next generation of content apps.

As such, I believe Nuxeo is well-positioned to benefit from this evolution given that:

• Open source software has shown superior ability to commoditize markets, recycling big vendors’ license revenue into a new stream of value. We participate actively in this commoditization, deriving revenue for us and offering better value for the customers.
• Our platform’s flexibility and feature scope combined with the open source aspect of the software ease the life of content app architects and developers. The development model the platform offers is widely recognized and praised. We believe we can enable a new way of building content apps. Easier, cleaner, faster.
• Our business model derives value from applications built on top of Nuxeo EP (thanks to the subscription-based business model we have created).

That’s why we’re here. To offer and evangelize an ECM platform and the associated content apps, responding to the new needs of businesses in this era of information explosion.

I hope this also bring some clarification and will entice people to look beyond the “open source” label. Because there’s a lot more to discover and that could really help your business!

Cheers,

EB.

Is there room for Nuxeo in the mature and crowded ECM market?

While exchanging with a well-recognized and successful industry expert about our differentiators and the market we are in. Since they popup frequently, I thought it might be interesting to publish the answer.

ECM is a mature and crowded market. Is there really room for anything more than a niche player at this late stage in the game?

Hegemonic vendors

At a macro-level, the enterprise content market is composed by 5 hegemonic vendors (OpenText, EMC, IBM, Oracle, Microsoft) and a set of minor ones (~15 notable), after a strong and fast consolidation of this market. Gartner says: 3 top vendors have 52% of the ECM market. The Triad of ECM? ;-)

As many vendors have skipped investment in technology aggregating software from their acquisitions (with the notable exception of Microsoft) much of the current batch of software has been designed 15 years ago and hasn’t evolved much. They have forgotten they are in engineering, not retail. In this world of lean, on-demand, instant-on, the major ECM payers still talk literally in days or weeks to install their software. It’s faster to setup a whole virtual datacenter processing and storing terabytes of data on the Amazon Cloud than setting up a vanilla ECM system!

On top of this technology breakdown, many of these acquisitions have been poorly integrated, to say the least (with a special mention to OpenText on this side). And the pace of the recent consolidation has created a disturbance in the market.

Those two combined dynamics enable new vendors with good technology and the right go-to-market approach to enter the ECM arena, tickle the incumbents and rise, and bring some fresh air and fun to this market.

Perspective shift from customers

We see important shifts in how customers evaluate and choose ECM platforms:

• More and more Architects are actively involved in the choice of next-generation ECM platforms (not only business users / archive managers) and are putting it at the core of their information system. This sets high expectations in terms of software architecture, integration capabilities or flexibility and technology stack.

• They need to update systems deployed in the ’00s because incumbent vendors are not supporting those versions anymore => the cost of upgrading is high and they are looking for alternatives. Often we can offer efficient and better replacement for those systems for a fraction of the price of the ongoing maintenance. Let alone the license fees…

• Given the lack of technical investment and the legacy of major ECM platforms, implementation is complex and expensive => we can do better with today’s technology. Monolithic is no where near the state-of-the-art of software-and Architects care because it directly impacts their ability to make these ECM platforms meet the new business challenges.

Move fast, commoditize legacy, create value with the rest

I really believe that the market maturity combined with the legacy technologies of monolithic players is a key advantage for us: we are disrupting the market by commoditizing the technology (platform) and deriving value from this commoditization.

We target what hurts: the fat and comfortable maintenance stream. We target it with more flexible, up-to-date technology and a company organized to provide superior service for support & maintenance as our customers actually deploy and use our products. That’ll tickle! ;-)

So yes, I’m firmly convinced that there is a room for new players, like us. And timing seems just right for a big one. The market needs to evolve and renew, in the best interest of customers. And they well deserve it, given the challenges of the knowledge era that just starts…

That’s going to be a tough ride. But… feels fun too!

Cheers,

EB.

Recruiting 2.0 @ Nuxeo - a real world story

As you might have noticed, in September we (proudly) welcomed a new member of our executive team, Cheryl McKinnon has joined to lead our marketing, bringing many years of ECM experience from big name players.

Cheryl is a key member of our executive team and I am proud to have her on board: she brings deep knowledge of ECM alongside great sense or marketing. It's a unusual hire for a company like Nuxeo. I believe the hiring process is a very interesting aspect of this story... It's a total "2.0" process.

Earlier this month, Cheryl organized and hosted a workshop for tech professionals who needed to get back into the job market – a move that 'went viral'. She has lived the new Recruiting 2.0 experience and offered to share her learnings with others – because this is how we found her:

For several months I was thinking of finding a CMO to accelerate and strengthen our go-to-market strategy, as well add some serious brain power and experience in the field of ECM to our company. It wasn't an active search at first – it took time to imagine the profile I was looking for. Once figured out, it became one of those sticky ideas I get sometimes... I had to fix this!

I considered several options to find the right person:

1. Hunter Route -> great to find the typical "world-class marketing guy" but he/she might miss the twist that I was after. Plus I wasn't sure I could properly explain the profile, let alone assuming the head hunter really gets it. :-)

2. Wait for somebody to send a resume spontaneously -> can work, but I wasn't confident in the exact timeline for obvious reasons! :-)

3. Find her/him myself using my own (limited) resources.

As the first route seemed wrong (and/or too expensive) and the second one too uncertain I went for the third one and started to work on the topic.

I wanted an "ECM expert / Web 2.0 thinker / social media pundit / community-aware marketer". That would have been the first brief for a head-hunter. Hence, I headed to LinkedIn: refined searches, careful manual review of profiles (including blog / twitter-feed reading).

Applying several rules: proper Linkedin profile, a professional blog, a twitter account, some activities in social media and communities of practice. But more than anything, I was looking for the "twist", the small things, difficult to describe, that make a person right for a particular job at our company. The thing that makes your company special and that is so difficult to describe. I was looking for "Nuxeo's CMO", not "a CMO".

I ended up with a very small hand-picked group of people that seemed to fit the profile. Next, I sent an intro email to explain the opportunity, got answers, (lot of) calls, in person meetings, explained and discussed about vision and strategy. Kind of a standard hiring process, actually, for a key position. With a difference, however, from the old times... I would never had been able to do it, just 5 years ago. LinkedIn, social media, blogs and twitter made that possible: find great people for key position in (close to) no time. Less time than describing such a complex profile and complex position to a head hunter actually.

I now use this approach for all key positions in the company: you don't find us, we find you (well, if you find us that's cool too...). The social web is just a wonderful opportunity for great companies to find great people and for great people to find great companies. It enables to hear the voice of the talents and connect with them, before the first interview. That's a brand new way of seeing the hiring process. This would have been completely impossible just 5 years ago. And I don't think we're an isolated case, my wife has been hunted and hired the same way a few month ago (which is maybe what got me started with this approach, actually).

As a CEO, it's the most valuable result I'm getting from social media: being able to connect and engage with great people that can join and strengthen the company, at no cost (except participating to the system, being very open and transparent). I have access to a virtually unlimited pool of talent: just need to pay attention and look for people. This is a huge opportunity, totally new compared to what our predecessors had to deal with. And a great threat for those who don't get it.

We're living amazing times...

EB.

Open Source vs. Proprietary Software Platforms: the Market's Perspective

Matt Asay, in the good post "Open source is a platform, not a product", is claiming the end of the platform wars because open source has won. Clearly, open source platforms are winning. Just take Eclipse (development apps and desktop apps), Java, Android, etc.

But saying that open source platforms are winning doesn't mean the platform wars are over. I would say the contrary. Platform wars will continue, and this helps innovation (if the wars stop, then I would worry actually). We'll see a lot of open source platform wars. Competition rules the world! :-)

The question is: why are open source platforms winning? I don't think it's because of their flexibility. Flexibility is a feature of a software platform open source or not. Being open source doesn't give you inherent flexibility, goodness or ease of use. Of course, flexible platforms win, and often they happen to be open source. But not always. :-)

I think the core reason lies in the intrinsic economic efficiency: open source is a better way to produce software platforms from a market perspective. It's just more efficient at the macro-economic level, factoring cost and fostering collaboration. Hence, it wins. Period.

I believe the economic efficiency aspect is key in the success of open source software, especially for platforms. And it's not pure magic. Open source licensing scheme and open development models enable collaboration between self-interested entities, which can combine forces as they need within a clear legal framework, and such without a complex initial collaboration setup and big contracts negotiation.

And as platforms are inherently meant to serve a wide range of needs and people, open source reveals its superior nature: it enables great collaboration between actors using the platform, hence aggregating their work to advance the platform.

This virtuous cycle is clearly shown by great successes such as the Eclipse Platform (the more vendors joined the game, the more Eclipse became the de facto platform for dev tools), Apache projects, Wordpress as a blogging platform, Firefox and WebKit as browser platforms (on different fronts), and the list goes on...

And, open source doesn't kill innovation. Quite the contrary - thanks to the inherent openness of the model and the competitive nature built-in (forks are an extreme example) – open source fosters great innovation.

So yes, as Matt says, for any given market segment, open source platforms win, are about to, or at least represent a significant share. But it's not because of their flexibility or because of their open source license. It's because the open source licensing scheme catalyzed by an open development model bring so much efficiency that it beats any proprietary competitor.

That's economic reality, not software architecture. And it's a lot stronger!

Commercial Open Source — Or Just a Free Demo?

I’m reading a lot recently about “Commercial Open Source” being the next great thing in the software industry. I’ve just read the presentation “Talk Slides: The Commercial Open Source Business Model” by SAP Labs's Dirk Riehle. It’s a great presentation that really captures the vision and strategy of some high-profile companies in the so-called “Commercial Open Source” arena.

In summary, the “commercial open source” business model is based on the 3 pillars:

1. a GPL (or GPL-like) software tagged “community”
2. a proprietary version of the GPL software with some “proprietary extensions” sold using a traditional license
3. a serious dose of communication efforts to explain how open source magically creates cheap great software for everyone (and that in fact you’re not really selling it) and generates a ton of leads allowing you to get to market faster and cheaper

Core myths of the “Commercial Open Source”

Here is how I analyse the core speech of the current "Commercial Open Source" model. I would be happy to hear about your opinion.

“Community Editions” you mean… “Free Demo”?

I don’t get the fundamental difference between offering a “low-end” open source version of your software and offering a free but proprietary one. Especially when I read that the “Community version” is for “developers, hobbyists and small deployments ‘cause it’s cool and fun tech” while the “Enterprise version” is for “enterprise deployment ‘cause it’s full of tests and stable code.”

Hmmm… how do you turn an untested, unstable software into an enterprise-grade, rock-solid software with “some extension”? Well, you don’t. :-) Either your software is well-tested and rock-solid, or it’s not.

If you just want to create a product line with different features depending on varying customer size, that’s fine but let’s call it this way.

Open source software generates leads, right?

Wrong. Freely downloadable apps generate leads. Free trials generate leads. Smart marketing efforts generate leads. Having access to source code does not generate leads, at least not when you are offering applications (it might be different for middleware or dev tools).

Want to generate leads? Create great software and offer free trial and downloadable software.

“It’s not proprietary software, it’s giving reason to buy when people use the software”

I love this one! Seriously. Of course customers need a reason to buy. That’s why they buy. :-)

The reason to buy is called “license fee for usage right”. It’s been around for 20 years and if you want to give people a “reason to buy” your software, just use a “license fee” for usage and maintenance. That is what it's designed for — it will save you a bunch of marketing dollars.

Open Source is good for Communities

It helps but it’s not enough. And it’s not limited to Open Source.

Openness, honesty, good software and good marketing create community. Ask Atlassian, Google, Twitter, Salesforce or even Microsoft. Not open source, but great communities and vibrant ecosystems.

“Commercial Open Source” or “Ashamed proprietary software”?

There is nothing wrong with selling “usage right to use binary software” (or more often called “license fees”…), which is what all “Commercial Open Source” vendors are doing. It doesn’t prevent you from creating great software, building a community and be nice. It just requires a bit more effort.

It's time to go public and add some clarity to all this. There is nothing wrong selling proprietary software, especially when you're contributing a lot of open source code (I’m a great fan of Atlassian and Day, in this respect). It is nothing to be ashamed of. Just be clear and focus on your software's competitive advantage rather than its open source "nature."

“Commercial Open Source” is not the business model of open source

There is no such thing as a business model of open source, by the way. There are many reason companies are producing open source software (from Microsoft to Google, from Oracle to RedHat). The only common fact: it’s a tsunami in the industry. Everybody’s using it, software vendors being the firsts. And many are producing some.

There are a lot of reasons to produce open source and a lot of ways to make money leveraging it, as some brilliant analysts and bloggers already said (two notable reading: “On open source business strategies (again)” by 451 Group’s Matthew Aslett or “Making Billions with Open Source, Revisited” by Redmonk’s Coté).

Here is how I would summarize it:

1. Proprietary software (!): Build and distribute proprietary software leveraging open source ones (be it complete apps or just extensions). Take Day Software, quietly producing tons of good open source infrastructure components, they sell a great proprietary app. Or IBM with Geronimo / Websphere. Or Oracle. SpringSource and most “Commercial Open Source” companies fall into this category too. I think it’s the easiest way to make money out of open source.
2. Support & Packaged Services: Sell support as subscription and high-value packaged services (monitoring, inventory, etc.) for open source software you’re producing. JBoss was the flagship in this business with quite a success making money with it. This is Nuxeo’s business too.
3. Proprietary distribution: assemble open source software into a proprietary stack. It’s all open source software, but the recipe to assemble the different components together and deliver a coherent and supported stack is kept secret. This can also include some “proprietary services” such as automated updates or monitoring. This is RedHat’s business. Sun seems to look toward this way too (see Solaris and the recent WebStack).
4. Proprietary tooling: sell proprietary tools that help running / operating / managing open source products. These tools are usually development tools, administration tools or deployment tools.
5. SaaS: package open source software to deliver apps as a service. This is the business of managed apps hosting (to make apps run) and packaged services (to deliver great customer support and business domain knowledge). This is also Nuxeo’s business.

So in the end, what’s the key point? Is it doing open source no matter what for the sake of hype or is it solving problems by delivering great software and/or services to customers?

I wish people of the Commercial Open Source arena would focus more on the later...; cause it does not diminish their contribution to open source overall nor does it diminish their company’s greatness and value. For the best of the open source industry. These times are about transparency and openness after all...

What do you think? I have spent 10 years in the open source software industry, building a company, living through short-term hypes and various business models. And I'm still learning. :-) Would be really happy to discuss more about all this.

Cheers,

EB.

CMS Vendor Meme - Nuxeo's turn

We’ve been challengeded by Day Software for a CMS meme, inspired by Kas Thomas’s A reality checklist for vendors.

Since it’s kind of fun and we’re not shy, let’s take the challenge, even if we really don’t focus on WCM! ;-)

1. Our software comes with an installer program?

Yes. We have a native installer for Windows and a multi-platform installer for Linux and Mac.

Note: 3/3

2. Installing or uninstalling our software does not require a reboot of your machine.

Of course.

Note: 3/3

3. You can choose your locale and language at install time, and never have to see English again after that.

You choose your language at login time, and your done. If your browser is properly configured, it’s automatically detected.

Note: 3/3

4. Eval versions of the latest edition(s) of our software are always available for download from the company website.

Full versions are always available from our website. Oh, and with the source code. And the development is open too! ;-)

Note: 3/3

5. Our WCM software comes with a fully templated “sample web site” and sample workflows, which work out-of-the-box.

Yes to both (as of version 5.2). We have two technology options for sample websites (WebEngine and WebWorkspaces) and we supply two sample workflows for document management. The level that one would describe as “fully templated web site” is arguable but these samples are pretty basic. And you also get a fully ready system for collaboration & document management.

Note: 3/3

6. We ship a tutorial.

We have a user guide that walks you through the software using most of the features. We also have a book in progress - you can read and comment on the draft online- that teaches you how to develop for the platform. And a big “reference guide” for experimented developers.

Note: 2/3

7. You can raise a support issue via a button, link, or menu command in our administrative interface.

Yes, for supported customers. We also have an issue tracker available to anyone. You can raise issues on the forums or on email lists as well.

Note: 3/3

8. All help files and documentation for the product are laid down as part of the install.

No. They are available and downloadable via the web site. Does that work?

Note: 2/3

9. We run our entire company website using the latest version of our own WCM products.

It’s an older version for some parts of our website. We do use our software for our document management system and our content infrastructure.

But remember: we don’t do “corporate” WCM (yet, at least).

Note: 2/3

10. Our salespeople understand how our products work.

Yes. They work with the technical staff directly for training, pre-sales, and support. Plus, they install and demo the software by themselves! And they use it to manage their documents and proposals, so they're eating our dogfood too... ;-)

Note: 3/3

11. Our software does what we say it does.

Yes, and you can verify it yourself anytime you want. It’s open.

Note: 3/3

12. We don’t charge extra for our SDK.

No. But you can mail us a thank-you note or buy us a beer. :-)

Note: 3/3

13. Our licensing model is simple enough for a 5-year-old to understand.

Yes: Zero cost (LGPL). You pay for support and packaged services.

Note: 3/3

14. We have one price sheet for all customers.

Yes. And it’s easy to verify: http://www.nuxeo.com/en/services/support/operations/.

Note: 3/3

15. Our top executives are on Skype, Twitter, or some similar channel, and: Feel free to contact them directly at any time.

• Florent Guillaume, Head of R&D: @efge - blog - linkedin

• Anne de Forsan, Marketing & Communication: @adeforsan - blog - linkedin

• Stefane Fermigier, Founder and Chairman: @sfermigier - blog - linkedin

• me, CEO: @ebarroca - blog - linkedin

• and the company! @nuxeo - blog - linkedin ;-)

Plus, a lot of others, of course.

And we blog, too ! ;-)

Note: 3/3

Conclusion

Final Score: 41/45.

Not too bad, and we’re not even focused on WCM. And I don’t tag, since I can’t find any serious player that hasn’t been tagged already…

Would be happy to play to a ECM, DM or collaboration meme, now… Someone interested?

meme ID: 9c56d0fcf93175d70e1c9b9d188167cf