Publicly Speaking

With that headline, I clearly have our tradeshow booth graphics on my mind as I sit down to write this. The headline also reminds me of that old saying “There’s a fine line between clever and stupid” and I believe I may have strayed over – but it’s what came to mind first, so I’m sticking with it.

Last Monday we launched our Celtix family of open source distributed SOA infrastructure. The past month, and in particular the past couple of weeks, have been pretty busy around here, but I think in the end it was well worth it. Monday’s launch of Celtix Enterprise, Celtix Advanced Service Engine and Celtix Advanced Messaging was a major milestone in the open source programs and initiatives IONA began more than 18 months ago. Today, we can not only say that IONA is an active participant in the open source communities developing SOA infrastructure, but also that we give customers an open source option for SOA backed by the company that has been doing distributed computing successfully for more than 15 years.

We’ve had some pretty good coverage from the launch, some of which I’ve linked to if you’d like to take a look. If you’re at all interested in open source and SOA, you should take a minute to check us out and maybe even download some code.

Now that the launch is over, I'll hopefully have a little more time to blog a little more regularly. Here's hoping.

• From InfoWorld -- Iona open source ESB melds multiple technologies




• From eWeek -- Iona Delivers on Open-Source SOA Strategy
• From ZD Net -- IONA broadens open source approach to SOA with Celtix Enterprise

There are two major trends shaping the high technology landscape in 2007. One is clearly Service-oriented Architecture, an emerging computing model that allows customers to make better use of their existing IT assets and investments to address changing business requirements, more rapidly introduce new products or services or simply lower the fixed cost of their IT operations. And while it can be difficult to separate the vendors’ hype from reality, it’s not just the vendors that are betting on SOA.

In fact, a recent Goldman Sachs research note indicated that the firm believed that SOA was going to go further mainstream in 2007, and be one of the major technology shifts that would destabilize the status quo landscape. The firm believes that, as with other shifts in computing models that have come before, this change is going to create opportunities for new companies, and force many existing companies to change their product roadmaps to cash in on the opportunity.

Interestingly, what many traditional vendors have done is merely changed their positioning – not their underlying technology – and are trying to attack new challenges with outmoded approaches that are counterintuitive to the very nature of SOA.

The other force driving significant change in the technology landscape is the continuing mainstream adoption of open source software. This is corroborated by industry analyst findings that indicate that by 2010, more than 80% of enterprise investment in infrastructure will be investments in open source derived technology. We’re all aware of the success of Linux and of open source technologies such as application servers and databases. But, this success came long after the maturity of their traditionally company developed counterparts. What we’re seeing with the convergence of open source and SOA is that the infrastructure required for companies to adopt this computing model is being developed in parallel in open source communities and vendor R&D facilities.

There is a convergence taking place that will change the fundamental nature of IT and IONA is at the center of it. Where many vendors are trying to offer warmed-over EAI or J2EE stacks as the answer to SOA, IONA has taken a differentiated approach that embraces the truly distributed nature of SOA. We’re also actively involved in the communities that are developing today’s open source alternatives for SOA infrastructure, giving customers real choice as to how best meet their SOA technology needs.

Through our approach to how customers can deploy SOA, we’re changing the game from that of “one size fits all” technology decisions to one where customers can deploy the technology they need, when they need it and easily adapt their technology choices as business requirements change. We’re offering customers a convenient way to bring open source into their SOA deployments, adding a new dimension of cost savings, flexibility and transparency.

I’ve always been a fan a Dana Gardner. I remember dealing with him (and now I’m dating myself) all the way back to his days at InfoWorld and IDG News and always remember him to be quite insightful about the trends that are driving and shaping the industry.

We’ve had the opportunity to put a couple of our folks in front of Dana to talk about open source and its potential impact on the adoption of SOA. I think the podcast from back in December came out really well and is really worth a listen, but it’s one of Dana’a more recent entries that I found quite relevant to what IONA is all about.

Dana gathered a number of industry analysts – including Steve Garone, Tony Baer, Joe McKendrick and Jim Kobielus (in no particular order) – to talk about the Soul of SOA. The conversation, to my mind at least, naturally came around to what value does (or can) SOA bring to an organization. Each analyst has some pretty interesting views on the value of SOA and how you can measure things like ROI.

I don’t want to simply cut and paste quotes from Dana’s transcript of the conversation, because I believe they’re better, and more impactful, taken in context of the conversation. But after you spend some time with Dana and his cohorts, I’d welcome you to take a closer look at IONA and our distributed SOA infrastructure solutions including Artix and our open source offerings in the Celtix family. The kind of value these analysts are talking about is the kind of value IONA delivers to its customers every day.

There’s a fantastic article in this week’s issue of InformationWeek written by Charlie Babcock – somebody who seems to be able to cover nearly any high tech subject without skipping a beat. You just need to take a quick look at his bio page to see the diversity of what he reports on for the publication.

In “How To Tell The Open Source Winners From The Losers”, Charlie tackles the issue of open source from a business perspective and does a very good job of providing corporate users with a set of criteria they should evaluate to make sure an open source technology is right for them. He also looks at why some open source projects are so successful and why so many languish. It’s a great read and very insightful, and will likely open some eyes and change some perceptions about open source.

I’d also like to think that the next time Charlie or InformationWeek visits this subject, readers will see Celtix Enterprise (IONA’s open source ESB distribution) or the CXF project at Apache (the project on which Celtix Enterprise is based) on the list of potential winners in the battle for the hearts and minds of developers and users. Seeing that Celtix was just announced in December of ’06 and that CXF has only been in the Apache community since August of ’06, it’s really hard to see this as snub.

That being said, we’re starting to see a lot of interest in the project and in our distribution as more folks out there realize that the open source community, and the technologies that are being developed there, may be an extremely efficient and cost-effective way to begin their SOA deployments.

I get a lot of industry news across my desk on a daily and weekly basis. Some I read immediately, some I delete after looking at the headline and some I put aside for later when I have some time to really look at them. It’s usually the longer features that get the “put aside for later” treatment.

I just got around to looking at Eric Lai’s February 15 Computerworld article, “Has open-source lost its halo.” It’s an interesting article, but I have to say that I’m not a fan of the overly sensationalistic headline, which unfortunately helps to reinforce the flawed argument that there are “good” and “bad” companies involved in open source -- and that the "bad" companies are those that are involved in open source for some kind of commercial gain.

There are a lot of reasons that both companies and individuals get involved in the open source community. And the reasons, whatever they are, are really not as important as how folks behave as part of the community. If IBM, or Oracle, or Terracotta, or IONA want to be involved in the open source community and are willing to play by the rules of open source, fantastic. If involvement in the open source community creates competitive advantage, why is that a problem? And how is this any different than an open source contributor that builds a consulting business around that project? Is he or she an angel or a devil?

Anybody that's paid any attention to IONA over the past 12-18 months has heard us say, in one form or another, that the company is well positioned at the forefront of two of the trends driving the IT industry -- open source and SOA. We've also stressed that much of the innovation that will advance SOA is taking place in open source communities such as Apache and others. This is key to why IONA is involved in open source, including our Celtix offering and the recent acquisition of LogicBlaze.

Granted, nearly every PR person I know will admit to having drunk the Kool-Aid at some point in their career. It's almost a prerequisite. That's why it's so satisfying when the stuff you've been selling has significantly more than a grain of truth to it. Recently, Joe McKendrick, who blogs over at ZDNet, called attention to a survey conducted by Forrester Research and underwritten by Unisys. The interview is based on interviews with more than 500 IT decision makers and the results bear out what we've been saying for quite a while. In fact,

57 percent of the respondents characterized open source as important or very important for facilitating the migration to a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). SOA can permit those enterprises both to deploy new generations of applications more efficiently and integrate new services with those provided by legacy applications, helping to preserve the value of their long-term investment in IT. According to Forrester, open source software's support for open standards noted as a key attribute by 78 percent of the respondents was a major factor driving their view of its value for SOA next-generation enterprise architectures.