WebKnowHow Thursday, February 15, 2007; 08:32 AM
Ten leading companies announced the
formation of the Open Solutions Alliance (OSA), a nonprofit,
vendor-neutral consortium dedicated to driving adoption of
comprehensive open source business solutions. Among its activities, the
OSA will work with open source ISVs, systems integrators, and the
broader open source community to improve interoperability among
software products, resulting in integrated and rapidly deployable
solutions for business users.
Founding members of the OSA
include Adaptive Planning, Centric CRM, CollabNet, EnterpriseDB,
Hyperic, JasperSoft, Openbravo, SourceForge.net®, SpikeSource and
Talend. All companies interested in joining the OSA are invited to
contact [email protected] or visit www.OpenSolutionsAlliance.org.
“More
and more companies, from small businesses to global enterprises, are
turning to open source software stacks for flexible, affordable
solutions to their business challenges,” said Barry Klawans, OSA
spokesperson and chief technology officer at JasperSoft, a market
leader in open source business intelligence. “We’re inviting all
companies developing and using open source software to work together
and ensure the availability of turnkey, enterprise-ready solution
suites faster and at a fraction of the cost of traditional proprietary
alternatives.”
Initially, the OSA will focus its efforts on
defining and promoting tools, frameworks and best practices that
facilitate easy deployment and interoperability between applications.
It will also build “meta-communities” by partnering on projects that
involve a variety of companies, communities and individuals to drive
innovation and collaboration. Finally, the OSA will coordinate joint
marketing campaigns to raise the awareness of business-hardened, open
source applications and solution suites.
"CollabNet is excited
to be joining the OSA," said Brian Behlendorf, CTO of CollabNet and
co-founder of the Apache Software Foundation. "Open Source has long
been a no-brainer for infrastructural software and developer toolkits,
and in the last few years we've seen it take the enterprise software
world by storm. Yet, enterprises today don't use separate applications
in isolation - they expect their applications to work together, both
under the covers and with a consistent user experience. The building
blocks to do this exist, and OSA will help its members and the public
chart the path to getting there." Open source software and products
that incorporate open source software are an established part of
today’s software market, giving customers more choice and flexibility
than ever before. Open source software has a proven track record of
success that includes the Linux operating system and the Apache Web
server. Increasingly, companies are benefiting from open source above
the operating system and middleware layers of the software stack, which
is reflected in recent JMP Securities research predicting that the
total open source software market will grow to $3 billion by 2009.
Analysts
are also predicting that a wider portfolio of open source applications
will become available this year, prompting companies migrating from
proprietary software stacks to ask commercial open source software
providers to offer the same levels of interoperability. While other
consortia have focused on a specific technology or project, the OSA ‘s
collective effort to provide interoperability among open source
business-class software products is essential to ensuring the
availability of open source suites to meet customer requirements and
compete with proprietary alternatives.
"Enterprises want to
focus their time and energy on solving business problems for their
customers and for themselves, rather than on interoperability and
integration issues," said Dave Gynn, director of Enterprise Tools and
Frameworks at Optaros, an international consulting and systems
integration firm. "The OSA will be a great champion for addressing
interoperability issues and lowering other barriers to open source
software adoption. This will allow enterprises to remain focused on
meeting their business objectives."
About the Open Solutions Alliance The
Open Solutions Alliance ( OSA ) is a nonprofit, vendor-neutral
consortium dedicated to driving the adoption of comprehensive open
source business solutions. Founded in 2007, it is supported by leading
open source companies from around the world who are dedicated to
improving interoperability among software products, resulting in
integrated and rapidly deployable solutions for business users. Through
cooperative action and advocacy, the OSA will help facilitate
interoperability, reduce barriers to adoption and raise the awareness
of the benefits of open source software in business. For more
information, visit www.OpenSolutionsAlliance.org.
|