Posts Tagged ‘open core’

Gartner quotes SpagoBI in the 2012 MQ for BI Platforms report

Friday, February 17th, 2012

Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence Platform, February 2012, is out.

This year major OS BI-related vendors as Actuate (BIRT), Jaspersoft, Pentaho are in; SpagoBI, the only pure OS BI product is quoted.

As the SpagoWorld initiative founder, I’m very proud to see SpagoBI suite – SpagoWorld flagship project – included in the Gartner’s report, even if it does not appear in the Magic Quadrant.

Gartner is not a recognized Open Source observer (especially from the OSS actors’ point of view) and the report refers to the whole vendors’ BI market, which are mainly proprietary. However, Gartner is a prominent IT research organization, very authoritative in the industrial market to which main BI customers refer to, looking for advocacy.

Despite this, I’m excited to know that Gartner, after a first mention of SpagoBI in the “Who’s Who in Open-Source Business Intelligence” report in 2008, has decided to include SpagoBI in its BI MQ 2012 report, somehow assuming that SpagoBI deserves the mention because it is a mature and reliable alternative to proprietary software.

Gartner says, among other things:

“SpagoBI is a 100% open-source BI platform sponsored by Engineering Group, one of Italy’s leading IT consultancies” …” SpagoBI is freely available, with no license fee. Consulting or support charges are separated from free software availability, with no user lock-in and no customer obligation to buy.” …” Clients indicate that they select SpagoBI for performance considerations, followed by license cost and implementation costs/efforts”.

[To read the full report, please contact your Gartner representative]

Why am I so excited? Because SpagoWorld initiative works and is well delivering!

First of all, assume that:

  • business intelligence is a very crowded and competitive market
  • the adoption of a pure open source strategy to address this market necessarily gives rise to an industrial comparison of any OS BI suite with other commercial products
  • a pure open source adoption is complex by itself and building a BI suite, for business purposes in the information domain, shifts this complexity to a second level.

This year major OS BI-related vendors are inside the Magic Quadrant. I’m saying “OS BI related-vendor” because the report highlights that Actuate, Jaspersoft and Pentaho follow an open-source strategy, with some differences, but after all they sell their commercial products (i.e.: proprietary products. For a deeper insight, I’ve already posted about the comparison between open core andpre open source business models).

This confirms the following statement: “SpagoBI is the only 100% open source, complete and flexible BI suite“.

Even though SpagoBI fulfils Gartner’s main criteria (“a BI platform is a software platform that delivers the 14 capabilities”, according to the Gartner’s definition), the fact that SpagoBI doesn’t sell any software license partially justifies the difficulties encountered by SpagoBI in achieving the second Gartner’s criteria, which would allow the suite to be included into the Magic Quadrant: “vendors must generate at least $15 million in BI-related software license revenue annually”.

Moreover, the understandable comparison between SpagoBI Competency Center of Engineering Group – the editor of SpagoBI suite – and other BI vendors is very challenging. Despite the fact that SpagoBI stands at the same level as major vendors thanks to its functional completeness and its innovation, the suite leads the BI analysts to face some evaluation parameters which are not the usual ones, suggesting different metrics that they probably wouldn’t have otherwise adopted because in contrast with traditional rules which BI customers are particularly fond of.

Some examples follow:

  • no licensing sales, with the consequent separation of the rights to use the software from the sale of supporting services (i.e.: both no software lock-in and no vendor lock-in), without any need to manage the purchasing costs, versus an expected confidence in the vendor’s support granted by the price paid with the licenses and maintenance purchases;
  • a complete software availability fostering wide integration, adaptation and flexibility capabilities, versus a strong control over the product by the vendor;
  • a different brand reputation of the editor based on the type of products it delivers, mainly qualified by the amount of support and professional services it sales, versus the brand reputation of the vendor mainly based on the amount of its software license-related revenues
  • a supporting business ecosystem-based model, driven by a specific working unit (Competency Center) belonging to a large systems integrator sharing its business with various local integrators, versus the traditional channel-based business model involving local OEM/VAR and resellers.

On the other hand, the previous points highlight some peculiar characteristics of SpagoBI approach to the BI market, marking a difference and pointing out many opportunities both for BI customers willing to enter in the open market era in an innovative way and for those who want or must accept – under the pressure of budget scarcity – the challenge of a new economical model, even keeping a traditional approach.

This is the challenge that SpagoBI is facing now through an ever-improving process.

I’m the witness of an increasing interest of the market in SpagoBI, aware of the fact that this market sharing will never be able to compete with major BI vendors.

Nonetheless, I’m very proud to see that someway Gartner points out to the market that SpagoBI can make this possible, confirming that SpagoWorld initiative is well delivering.

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Posted in Open Source Business Intelligence | 1 Comment »

Open Core and Pure Open Source

Friday, April 16th, 2010

The recent OSBC Conference in San Francisco has risen again the “never-sleeping” debate about the open core model and, generally speaking, on open source business models. It is also collected by Andrea Gioia in his OSS Discussions, available in this Blog, entitled Open Core Predecessors, The rise of Open Core and The debate on Open Core. From the last link, I’ve chosen Gartner Brian Prentice’s post Open-Core: The Emperor’s New Clothes. I don’t want to extend this debate. I just would like to underline some aspects, which I apply everyday, with some colleagues of mine, on the open source approach of the projects belonging to the Engineering Group’s SpagoWorld initiative.

Interestingly enough, Brian has made people communicate animatedly about this topic, also if Gartner is not an open source fan. Well, everybody knows that Gartner is mainly followed by important buyers, and this made it happen.

First of all, I agree with Brian when he says at the end of his article: “Be clear, there’s nothing nefarious going on with open core. It’s just that there’s just nothing particularly new or innovative going on either.“ Actually, there’s no “better” or “worse” model. There are different models and the open source takes advantage of the richness that comes from this reality, instead of basing itself on the scanty of resources. At the same time, while evaluating the various models, you must always consider the different “point of view” of the involved people, ranging from vendors, financers to users. It makes the difference!

Afterwards, Brian underlines two main aspects concerning the Open Core: the completeness that open source versions can offer, compared to critical or important features and the supporting communities.

These are important aspects that SpagoWorld considers as crucial, being based on the “pure open source” model: SpagoBI, Spagic and Spago4Q projects release only one complete, stable open source version, while the payment of a fee is applied only for support services, with no adoption of a different licence from LGPL.

As for the functional completeness, I share Brian’s opinion, who says about the Commercial Open Source “If you’re like most corporate IT customers I speak to – at least the ones considering solutions from open core providers – then chances are you’ll be starting your assessment based on their full version product rather than the free open source offering.” In relation to this, let me bring you the example of SpagoBI, the only entirely open source business intelligence suite. Users don’t have to spend time evaluating which is the most suitable version to choose. And they don’t need to migrate to an enterprise version in the future either. Moreover, the availability of a unique open source version fosters the software guided growth, not only by vendors, but also by users and by the adopting projects themselves. This allows the availability of a suite which grows over time and which faces the aspects that no other open source BI application have ever faced (ex. Location Intelligence).

At this point, the question is: are these openness, flexibility and richness really appreciated by users, analysts and by the market?

On the one hand, the enterprises ask for important references (which are not difficult to be found). On the other hand, sometimes they feel that the solutions that invest a lot of money on marketing activities are more valuable than the solutions that offer adequate requirements and sustainability. So, how is the availability of a wide range of features (here again the “pure open source” model at work) seen: as “richness” or as “complexity”?

Moreover, the analysts ask for information on revenues, whose majority consists of the sell of proprietary licenses.

What a harsh reality for “pure open source” players, too! They must be particularly patient…

Finally, as for communities, Brian says: “Even the very definition of “community” is being adapted to suit the open core narrative. What has largely interested the corporate IT world is the concept of a community as a collection of code contributors working outside a normal project/company structure. But now open core providers are extending the term community to include users and even resellers. That, of course, is what we’ve all been calling a software ecosystem for the last twenty years. Same old, same old – just co-opted terminology used to describe it“.

Yes, the software ecosystem model is not a new one. But many different software and non-only-software ecosystems working in connection or not, within a same space (i.e.: ecology of value), could be a new answer to an old request: how to bring innovation and value in the market. It depends on what innovation and value is. I’ll be back on it soon.

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Posted in Ecology of Value | No Comments »

The debate on Open Core business model

Thursday, April 8th, 2010

There has been a significant amount of interest in the Open Core business model since Andrew Lampitt articulated it and its benefits for combining open source and commercial licensing.

After a period of relative calm  the debate liven up again last month after the Open Source Business Conference when few analysts critically review the usage of Open Core business model made by many commercial open source companies.  I have collected all links to posts that I find more interesting to sum up this debate in three list on friendfeed:

  1. Open Core Predecessors: the debate on open source business models before the advent of open core
  2. The rise of Open Core: The early debate on open core business model started in August 2008 with the Andrew Lampitt’s post containing its first definition
  3. The debate on Open Core: The last weeks debate on open core model

All links in each  list are ordered by date (the first is the more recent). If you have some interesting links that I have not yet included, please send them to me. I will keep these list updated integrating them with all your suggestions. If you want to share with the SpagoWorld’s community your opinions on this topic please leave a comment down here or answear to this quick poll or  join the discussion on our linked-in group.

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Posted in Ecology of Value, OSS Discussions | No Comments »