Open Source Blog

Big win for open source BI firm Pentaho

2010-03-09T12:10:03Z

Swissport, one of the largest infrastructure companies which serves 600 airlines at over 170 airports worldwide, announced it has signed a deal with open source business intelligence player Pentaho.

The firm said Pentaho will be its standard corporate management reporting environment. Beyond reporting, Swissport will also use Pentaho BI Suite for data integration and interactive analysis.

Uwe Geercken, IT manager at Swissport, explained the decision process: "We needed fully functional reporting and data integration tools but wanted to see if an open source alternative would give us a similar experience to Oracle. After looking at what was out there, Pentaho had the complete tool set, and after further testing, our users noticed no difference in the features they need. Our business partnership with Pentaho partner, Linalis, who provided first-rate consultancy and knowledge transfer, has allowed Swissport to be self sustaining for future developments."

Airline passengers use Swissport services such as Passport Check-in, Lost and Found daily, while 600 airlines at over 170 airports worldwide use its services for aircraft pushback, cargo handling and de-icing. As the first part of a global roll-out programme, Swissport's top 100 senior executives will use Pentaho BI Suite Enterprise Edition to review operational and strategic data spanning 40 countries.

Using Pentaho Data Integration, the Swissport data warehouse will pull in operational data from several different data sources to combine and integrate financial, flight and cargo data, the companies said. Pentaho Reporting will then help management and operational teams uncover answers to questions such as "How much traffic should I expect over the holiday period?" and "Do I need to plan for more de-icing staff at this airport?" Such information is vital in a low-margin business focused on quality and tied to strict Service Level Agreements, the firms explained.

Exclusive podcast: CEO of Actuate, the open source firm behind BIRT

2010-02-12T12:00:48Z

"I like the Italian family culture... damn sometimes it comes down to arguments and fights - it can get emotional, typically it's passion." Pete Cittadini, Actuate

I had a good long chat with Pete Cittadini, CEO of open source business intelligence firm Actuate recently. The company is doing somewhere between $120m and $140m a year, having founded and still co-leading the Eclipse Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools (BIRT) open source project.

We touched on the firm's belief in the open source model and its own take on it, the firm's potential to expand beyond its North American market where 75% of its revenue is generated today, and how the company has performed against the backdrop of a recession.

I also asked about the high cost of being a public company considering its size, and whether Cittadini believes the firm can grow into one with revenues in the several-hundred-millions range.

Perhaps the most interesting comments for some listeners though will be around Cittadini's management style and the kind of culture he likes to foster at Actuate: ""I like the Italian family culture... damn sometimes it comes down to arguments and fights - it can get emotional, typically it's passion."

Listen to the podcast by clicking here. Below Pete's picture you'll find an approximate timeline of the questions if you would like to skip to a certain segment.

Pete Cittadini, CEO of Actuate: "We're grappling with [cloud] pricing."

Timeline of questions:

0:18 What attracted you to joining Actuate way back in 1995?

2:05 One of Actuate's USP is the fact it's open source. Why is that model important, and what's your particular take on the open source model?

5:19 75% of your revenue comes from North America. Does the rest of the world hold the potential for the strongest growth?

7:35 2001 was the pinnacle year for Actuate in terms of revenue. Despite revenue being down slightly in your latest quarter margins have remained strong: is that partly down to the open source model? [N.B. this podcast was recorded before the firm's latest quarterly results were published, which actually saw revenue UP 2% YOY, and UP 19% sequentially]

10:10 The macro-economic climate has clearly not helped. Are you starting to see the green shoots of recovery?

11:58 Actuate tends to get good analyst marks for ease of use. Are you seeing broad roll-outs amongst companies adopting the technology?

14:14 BIRT has a variety of deployment models. Would you say you have a cloud strategy?

15:40 Can a company with revenue in the range of $120m to $140m afford the cost of being public?

17:50 Are you optimistic you can grow into a company with revenues in the several-hundred-million range?

19:15 You've been in technology for over 20 years but started with a BA in Liberal Arts. That makes you somewhat unusual as a tech CEO. Do you think that means there are differences in the kind of culture you like to foster at Actuate?

If you missed the link to the podcast, here it is again.

Please follow me on Twitter: twitter.com/jasonstamper

Will the UK government's latest open source action plan actually get implemented?

2010-02-09T15:24:30Z

Since early 2004, it has been the government's stated policy to use open source software in the public sector wherever possible, as long as it offers the best value for money.

To date, the policy has had little impact. So will the latest tweaks to its open source Action Plan make a difference?

Software is "open source" when the source code is freely available to be viewed, shared or changed - things that you can't do with more traditional proprietary software. Crucially, open source is also the cheaper option in many cases.

So how good is the government's record on using open source so far?

In its latest Action Plan, it gives three key examples of how it has increased its use of open source. First, it says that over 25 per cent of secondary schools use the Linux operating system on at least one computer: small beer, given that the government first published its policy on open source in 2004.

Second, the series of NHS databases known as "Spine" use an open source operating system; and thirdly, Birmingham City Council has been rolling out open source software across their library services since 2005.

These last two instances would be more compelling if they didn't also serve to show just how few projects there have been to date.

So will the latest tweaks to that Action Plan make a difference, and what do open source vendors Alfresco and Ingres have to say about it? Click here to read the extended entry of this blog.

CBR Podcast: Novell CEO on his bold new strategy

2010-02-04T12:34:32Z

I caught up with the president and CEO of Novell, Ron Hovsepian recently, to find out more about the company's recently announced Intelligent Workload Management strategy.

Of course, I also took the opportunity to ask whether he still believes that the firm's controversial agreement with Microsoft on Windows-Linux interoperability and virtualisation was in the firm's best interests, considering how the open source community reacted to the deal for the most part (angrily).

And needless to say I asked for his thoughts on the firm's latest results.

Anyway to listen to the podcast click the link below (there's an approximate timeline of the questions below if you want to skip to a particular segment):

Ron Hovsepian Novell CEO Podcast.wma

Ron Hovsepian, president and CEO of Novell.

0.22: Can you tell me what you are most proud of at Novell during your tensure as President and CEO thus far?

1.55: One of the more controversial decisions since you've been CEO was to sign that interoperability agreement with Microsoft. Knowing what you know now about the open source commmunity's reaction, was that the right move for Novell?

4.12: How pleased are you with Linux platform revenue, and is it doing enough to make up for [any declines] in Novell's more mature product categories?

5.25: You acquired PlateSpin and Managed Objects... can you explain what your recently announced Intelligent Workload Management strategy is all about?

9.15: Can you put some more detail around specific products in those four key areas: Build, Manage, Secure and Measure?

16.45: Is the sales decline in Novell's most recent quarter (Q4 revenue 09 was $216m, down from $245m in Q4 '08) purely down to the economic environment, or are there areas you have identified where you need to improve your execution?

19.00: Novell has plenty of cash in the bank; how keenly will you look at acquisitions in 2010?

20.30: The average tenure of a CEO is about 5 years; do you feel that you have plenty more you can do at Novell, to regain some of that growth?

Apple launches its latest gizmo: the eyePad

2010-02-03T17:58:35Z

With thanks to Nick Kuijpers on Flickr.

Can the iPad double as a phone?

2010-01-29T16:52:32Z

Sandra was chuffed to find that she could make calls on her new iPad...

Picture source: zo diggity on Flickr.

Open source BI

2010-01-18T10:23:06Z

CBR is currently researching open source business intelligence. If you have any experience of using open source business intelligence technologies, we would be grateful if you would email jason dot stamper @industryreview.com, with your views on the implementation. Was it successful, what did you use it for, would you use open source BI again? How does it compare to proprietary offerings, if you have used any of those?

Your comments will remain anonymous and neither your name nor company name will be mentioned in our article.

Thanks, the CBR team.

MySQL co-founder doubts Oracle support

2010-01-18T10:02:49Z

With an EU decision on Oracle's potential $5.6bn acquisition of Sun Microsystems expected later this month, MySQL's co-founder David Axmark has told CBR that he believes there is 'no real reason' for Oracle to support the open source database application.

"I do believe that Oracle has no real reason to support MySQL. I don't think the competition between them was enormous, but it is growing and has been growing for a number of years. I don't think it's healthy for Oracle to continue to grow it," he said.

Speaking to CBR after giving a lecture at the London Business School's Entrepreneurship Leader Series, Axmark added, however, that it is unlikely Oracle will kill off the database and that current MySQL customers should not be too badly affected by the takeover.

"I doubt they'd 'kill' anything," he said. "Will they aggressively sell to companies that Oracle can sell to? Never. Will it hurt the current MySQL customers? Probably not. There's no money to be made for them there. Upselling current MySQL customers to Oracle would be tiny money. Stopping Oracle customers from downgrading to any open source database will be lots of money."

Axmark also believes that aiming MySQL at a market where Oracle's existing database applications do not operate will mean that the two can coexist. "If I was Oracle, I would aim MySQL even more at the web sector, where Oracle doesn't really have anything. So more development, more uses and they don't really lose any revenue. I wouldn't aim it at the enterprise sector where Oracle already is," he told CBR.