SiliconGrassland.com

This year’s Open Source Business Conference was the best I’ve seen. Shocking, considering it’s my first one. I was definitely at the bottom of the totem pole in the room – most attendees of this conference are industry leaders. OSBC was run on the highest level I’ve seen at a business conference. Kudos to Matt Asay for putting together some of the smartest minds out there.

OSBC has a CEO track – so I was in my element, soaking it all up. I met some amazing people and gained valuable insight into running DataSync more effectively. Here’s my summary of the event:

• The leaders – Red Hat, Novell, and Sun all had their CEO’s present, and all did a solid job articulating the open source vision and direction. I was most impressed with Red Hat’s new CEO, James Whitehurst, who actually came from Delta Airlines. He has an uncanny understanding of how to monetize open source effectively, while still maintaining a vibrant community.
• Microsoft – I’ve seen this tech giant show up at just about every tech conference I attend, and they always seem grossly misaligned with the idea of open source. This audience was especially hostile. The guy Microsoft had come in (Robert Youngjohns) did a great attempt at embracing the community, but the whole message didn’t make sense. I agree with Matt Asay’s conclusion on the convoluted Microsoft message.
• The sessions – I was very impressed with the sessions I attended. Save for one session, I stayed on the CEO/CMO track. The best sessions I attended were the two CEO panels. I was especially impressed with Mike Olson of Cloudera. Mike was formerly an executive at Oracle and seems to understand how to build software better than just about anyone. He also isn’t afraid to say things how they are. I respect that.
• The message – Everyone talked about the cloud. Everyone. I got sick of hearing it. The main message this year is that the cloud will enable open source to be deployed quickly and inexpensively. I’m sure DataSync will move in that direction as well. The ROI (Return On Investment)/value message also came across strong. With the economy in the dumps, open source is a really attractive option.

Going to OSBC wasn’t free (or cheap!), but it was worth every penny. I gained a ton of knowledge about how the industry works, and how DataSync can compete and win in an industry that commoditizes everything. There’s a massive opportunity for us to make an impact; I’m excited to push forward and continue to create vale in open source software.

Tags: Open Source, osbc, silicon valley

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 25th, 2009 at 6:25 pm and is filed under General Business, Open Source, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.