SQLFusion blogs

Yesterday one of our customer, Del-Jen was participating on a Panel about Demystifying Open Source.

Paul, Del-jen's CTO, demonstrated very well how his use of Open Source technology saved them a lot of money in licensing cost and consulting cost.

What was surprising to me is the long term cost.
Over a period of 4 years the cost of open source software did go down. The more they use it the less it costs.
On the other end the cost of commercial software increased constantly during the same period.
The cost includes licensing and consulting.

We started working with Del-Jen 4 years ago with a MySQL training and experimentation. After a year they started implementating Open Source Fusion Enterprise in a mission critical middleware.
This custom middleware interconnect and process time-sheets, forms, documents and payroll information to its 4000 employes all over the world.

The fact that total cost of ownership (TCO) of open source software is lower then commercial software is good.
But that this cost goes down over time is very good news.

Del-Jen is a Fluor company.

A new Beta of Open Source Fusion is live at:
www.opensourcefusion.com

The beta access code for this release is: osfbeta

This new beta includes 3 new applications a wiki software (dokuwiki) a project management software (netoffice) and a CRM software (Vtiger).

Net Office screen shot:

Give us your feedback, tel us what you think.

Jeff Kaplan, Software as a service specialist, mentioned SQLFusion in a blog post trying to dispell some Saas myths.

I definitely recommend you to have a look at his post and blog: ( Click here )

To add one point to Jeff's post, I would like to mention that Open Source Fusion (SQLFusion on-demand platform) not only provides open source software as a service, but additionally it allows a company to get customized/integrated open source software if needed. That software can either be developed by the company technical team using Open Source Fusion development tools or it can be developed by SQLFusion open source specialists for this company.

In other words, Open Source Fusion offers the best of what Saas can offer, giving you the choice between the one size fits all option (picking and using one of the many existing open source software for CRM, ERP, CMS, etc.) or a customized/integrated solution that matches the specificities of a business, building upon open source software.

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Tag: Innovation | Software | Open Source | Open Source Fusion | SQLFusion | Saas

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A new beta version of Open Source Fusion will be released next week. It will include 3 more applications (CRM, Project management system and Wiki) and a simplified application selection menu. Go to http://opensourcefusion.com to start using your favorite application.

The next step - planned for the end of April - will be the release of several Open Source application development tools.

It will compose a full web based application suite with which you can build custom database driven web based applications within your web browser. It will ease the development and integration of web applications built on Open Source Fusion web based platform.

Those Open Source Fusion development tools will include:

• A WYSIWYG User Interface builder, called the Page Builder, to build database driven web pages and database forms.
• A Site Manager to create new web application projects, setup ftp and database.
• A Web Based Integrated Development Environment called the WebIDE.

Stay tuned...

...does Open Source really kill innovation?

If there is one key theme most people debate when considering Open Source as a threat, this is most likely regarding innovation.

Read for instance the very good article in the Economist published this past week - Open but not usual - which quotes Steven Weber, a political scientist at the University of California Berkely and author of "The success of Open Source" stating that "Linux is good at doing what other things already have done, but more cheaply - but can it do anything new? Wikipedia is an assembly of already-known knowldege."

The underlying idea behind such scepticism on the ability of an open source model - some sort of communal method of software development - to generate innovation, comes from the belief that innovation has value and if you have an innovative idea, you would rather pursue it for your own profit, than share it with the community and have no take in the resulting benefit. Afterall Bernard Mandeville told us centuries ago that it is better for society as a whole if we are acting as bees looking for our own profit blindlessly, didn't he?

Steven Weber is probably partly true. However it doesn't take into account the indirect impact Open Source can have on the industry as a whole. Take Firefox web browser for instance. That is true that it mostly reuses existing concepts. But the indirect - and positive effect - it has on innovation, is in pressuring Microsoft to move faster in developing and releasing a new, somewhat innovative Internet explorer 7 fearing for its rapidly eroding market share in the web browser market. Additionally, I think we can see all the extension modules being developed on top of Firefox as true example of innovation.

Another good example of how Open Source can push vendors innovation can be found in the article "Oracle: Open source keeps vendors on their toes" in Infoworld. Oracle purchased a few companies involved in producing Open Source software - Sleepycat and InnoDB - and is starting to feel some pressure from an Open Source database vendor, MySQL. It seems clear that Open Source by commoditising what already exists, push vendors to innovate so that they can keep charging businesses that are ready to pay a premium for getting the latest technology.

In conclusion, I would argue that Open Source contributes tremendously to innovation. If only in one way, that is by pushing software vendors to move away from offering "plain vanilla" type of software and bring in new features, new technologies faster and better. The on-going catching-up game between what Open Source can develop and what a professional vendor develops is key to innovation for the overall software industry, including the growing software as a service industry.

I believe that Open Source can innovate itself as well. I mentioned earlier the example of extensions in Firefox, which I haven't seen matched in any other browser. But I would also like to come back to the idea that Open Source is a some sort of a "communal method of developement". That reminds me very much of Kibbutz in Israel, those communes where anybody can come and stay as long as they work for the Kibbutz, no matter what are their skills. Kibbutz 40 years ago where solely farms. Today, many Kibbutz have become places where many new technology are sprouting. I wouldn't be surprised if in the same way, Open Source could become a crucible for software innovation.

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Tag: Innovation | Software | Open Source | Open Source Fusion | SQLFusion | Saas

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Firefox Protection ad

Drupal has annonced 4 security vulnerabilities last week affecting every version of Drupal.
New Open Source Fusion patched packages are available from our package repositories and from http://www.opensourcefusion.com

Drupal is one of the most popular content management system (CMS).

We have also created a new b2evolution package based on the Phoenix Alpha version.
This new version contains a much improved antispam filter and allows local media files uploads for images and movies. This new version also introduces nice statistics graphs in flash (using http://www.maani.us/charts/index.php)
This is an alpha version, which means it contains bugs and should be used by experienced users.

It's available from our package repositories for Open Source Fusion Community and Enterprise.

David A. Utter mentioned SQLFusion and Open Source Fusion in an article about Open Source ERPs.

Here is an excerpt of his article:

"Lawndale, CA-based SQLFusion was the first West Coast Certified MySQL Support Partner, and is steeped in open source.[...]the company's OpenSourceFusion project, aimed at those SMBs.

Currently they have made four tools available at OpenSourceFusion, with the idea of permitting users to mashup a selection of applications to suit their needs. Frappier mentioned CK-ERP, an open source ERP system, as being among the applications they will make available through OpenSourceFusion in the coming months.

"The value we bring is not just in providing an open source self-service system for existing applications. We help users combine multiple open source applications in a custom one matching their business need, such as custom ERP systems, using our open source integration tools,"...

You can read the full article if you click here

Technorati: Open Source Fusion - SQLFusion

One of the most exciting thing in life - in my opinion - is to learn everyday. I asked a few times Philippe about the origins of the Open Source and what drawn him towards it and I was startled by his answer.

He explained to me that Open Source is about Open Knowledge. Years ago, to deal with a server, you needed to be certified in using UNIX. UNIX stations where expensive and rare to find. The documentation was expensive as well: in short knowledge was shared only by a few priviledged people. Then Linux came up and other open source projects, allowing anybody willing to learn about how to use a computer, a server and be programming to do so. Knowledge was finally easily accessible in the programming world.

I heard about another initiave yesterday while meeting with my former teacher in Operation management and learnt about another great initiative to democratize knowledge. The MIT is making available its courses online for free. For French not to be jealous, there is also access to audio record of university courses on the web. Now, those who are curious enough to learn and grow, are no longer blocked by entrance exam they pass or fail, their national origin, or their ability to fund their education: all they need is an access to the web and loads of curiosity.

We are witnessing that knowledge is shared by more and more people. Knowledge becomes accessible to whoever has the desire to learn. That's quite an exciting perspective that knowledge is no longer the priviledge of a few, isn't it?

Zoli has an interesting post on the debate regarding SaaS vs Open Source.

It is clear to me that both works very well together.

Take the best of both world for the best return on investment.

I noticed that there is a new generation of Open Source software including ZenPhoto, Plogger, Lussumo Vanilla, Wordpress, Monket calendar, Photostack, Roundcube which follows a lot Defensive Design recipes.

Those applications take full advantage of Ajax to improve the user experience. Intuitive and simple seems to be the new rules in software development.

I am very impressed by what 37 signals do. Their influence is now everywhere in web based software. Directly or indirectly.

So thank you for taking software a step forward.

Reuters had interesting statistics to share with us earlier this morning: "complexity causes 50% of product returns". The article was mentioning a research from Elke den Ouden, from Netherland on consumer electronics.

The most interesting part of this study is the fact that a person will spend up to 20 minutes trying to understand how a device works before giving up. The other interesting part of the study is the reaction from product developers and product managers who found themselves quite astonished by the difficulties encountered by users with their devices.

This issue - I bet - could be witnessed not only in the consumer electronics world, but also in the software world. Indeed I have seen many people struggling with software - from Windows, to Word and Excel - and most didn't even have a choice to return those software (we are not employable today, if we don't know how to use Word and Excel).

This study concluded that better product definition is key to solving complexity. Some companies are great examples of what should be done to make software easier from Apple (Mac OSX, Ipod software, etc.) to 37signals (Basecamp, etc.). You'll notice that none of those two examples are providing Open Source software. Nonetheless, I believe that Open Source can help tremendously the software industry in simplifying software through the intense exchange between developers and users.

I believe that product complexity is a stigma of the lack of interaction between a technician / inventor and end-users. In many ways Open Source communities have this problem, since this is mostly developers who get involved in an Open Source project rather than end-users. But I hope that as Open Source software - with Linux (KDE), Firefox, Wordpress, SugarCRM opening the way - is reaching more and more non-technical users, those users will add their piece to Open Source software development by leaving valuable feedback in terms of usability. As result it will help Open Source developers improve users experience with software rather than add endlessly cool features - and hopefully provide better and more usable software than closed source software.

And to give a bit more substance to that idea, you should take a look at Neil McAllister excellent article: "Community development breathes new life into old gadgets" in Infoworld. Open Source helping software and gadgets become simpler, it is already happening.

It is released !!!

We have opened Open Source Fusion web site to the public, while we are in the Beta development phase of the project.

This new version is starting with 4 applications: the Ajax PageBuilder, Wordpress, SiteBaker and Drupal.

We will be adding more applications every week.

We want to make Open Source Software easily accessible to end users and businesses through Open Source Fusion.

There are thousands of high quality applications available for free in the Open Source. They range from web site content management systems to full blown ERPs. You can definitely find the software you need among them.

Before Open Source Fusion, those Open Source applications were difficult to find for those who need them most to run their business. It was difficult to choose the right one in the set of thousands of applications available. Finally, they required technical knowledge to be installed and setup.

Open Source Fusion is a catalog of selected and tested Open Source applications. They come with a comprehensive documentation and full support. They are made ready to use for those of you who don't have technical knowledge.

Please give it a try, tell us what you think and give us feedback on how we can improve it.

Philippe

After Office Live it is Google's turn to offer a web site creation technology.

We anticipated the democratization of web site creation tools a couple of years ago and we invented a nice technology, called the Page Builder.

It is the first Ajax web site builder around.

It is currently sold to web hosting companies as a Do It Your Self web site solution under the Drag and Drop Site Creator brand. http://www.dragdropsitecreator.com/

Page Builder is already 70% open source. We are improving our documentation and preparing a full open source release very soon.

So please stay tuned...

We now have a lot of experience in site creation technology and I am waiting for my Beta access to Google Page Creator to see what they have and give you my 2 cts on it.

I do not see Google Page Creator or Office Live as a threat for our site creator, we are open source and we support / package / license to any web host or community builder who wants to offer site building features to their users.

This is definitely exciting.

A software solution developed by SQLFusion, the first AJAX based online site building software, branded "Drag drop Site Builder" offered to web hosting companies is getting media coverage in the WHIR (Web Host Industry Review), the Web hosting's premiere daily news provider, a reference for the web hosting industry.

Here is a excerpt of the article:

"SQLFusion's product, Drag Drop Site Creator (dragdropsitecreator.com), uses PHP and Ajax technology to display page and database components in a Web browser for creation and modification." (click here for the full article)

I was reading a few articles lately which gave me some inspiration for this post. They all come to a conclusion which seems to be pure common sense, but which is way more difficult to apply than we might think.

Whatever we create a software, a painting, a book,etc. this is aimed at one thing: satisfy somebody else. With that said, the best would be to listen the person who will enjoy our product and try to match all this person says she wants to read, see or do.

But if you are the creator and you try to bring novelty, most of the time you first need to come up with something and only after that can you ask "how can I improve my work?". Where it is feasible for a book - that's why writers love their editors don't they ;) - and eventually possible for a painter - see how many versions of a painting exists behind "chefs d'oeuvre" when you look at it with X-rays - the task looks much more difficult with a software. See for instance this excerpt of Marc Benioff interview by Phil Wainewright of ZDnet:

"Once we had the API really working well, then customers really started to hammer me on customization. They would say, 'Why can't I change this tab name, why can't I change this field name, I want to be able to do this, and I want to be able to that.' Well, [we would say] the problem is that the tab name is through the whole documentation. It's in the singular, it's in the plural. It's not just in one language, it's in twelve. And then customers would say, 'Yeah. So what?'

Indeed, "yeah, so what". People who use our software are king and always right. This is what we found out while developing Drag drop site creator, and now Open Source Fusion. We might have some good guesses while developing our software at first, but most of the improvements we bring are results of our customers and software user feedback. We make a rule not only to listen to them but implement systematically their suggestions. And the most exciting is that it works. Ultimately all the hard work spent listening to advises, suggestions and feedback of any kind pays off. Support costs go down, customer satisfaction goes up and you build up the quality of your software.

In conclusion, because this process is at the core of any Open Source project, I believe that Open Source has the key element for delivering higher quality software in the long run.

So who would dare to say that Open Source cannot bring the best quality software in those conditions? :)

I have spent 10 years following the open source and I am impressed by its ongoing evolution.

I remember that not long ago I had to wait quite while for KDE 1.0 to be released. Today I can hardly keep up with each new release of Ubuntu.

Open Source software was meant to be for developpers, geeks. Today open source software is synonymous with nice looking browsers, window based deskops and even enterprise applications.

In the last 6 months I have been working on Open Source Fusion project, where we select and make available open source applications for business.

In each web application category we want to offer and support at least 3 web applications. 2 years ago, when I searched for accounting, customer relationship management and accounting software I could hardly find any. Most applications in those categories were early projects, immature applications, not completely open source or unstable. Only a handful of applications were usable at the time.

Today, I cannot keep up with all the applications which are available. It is as if every day more application appears in the open source eco system than what I could track.

The growth rate is quite overwhelming. Open source software quality, size of the supporting community, usability and features are increasing at an amazing speed.

I am quite impressed. I have always thought it would happen one day, but who would not be impressed while facing a new "Cathedrale".

Indeed, today, I am seeing a "Cathedrale". The "Bazaard" is part of the past.

It is hard to understand how this can be possible. There are no more than 500,000 developers in the US today and the number didn't increase for the last 5 years. So where all this tremendous energy comes from?

I've seen something similar with blogs. The number of blogs has exploded in the past 3 years.

One of the answer could be - if put metaphorically - that there is an increasing "concentration of energies". Here is what I mean with this: the Internet has gathered and optimized the energy of millions of wanabe developers and journalists generating an unprecedented power of production. It is like those solar power plants that use milions of mirrors to reflect the sun light in one point to concentrate the energy offered by each ray.

Using this metaphor, a software developer contributing to an open source project, someone writing her blog and contributing content, a shopper writing a review on an e-commerce site or a business posting his products on e-bay: each of them is a ray of light. Altogether they form a tremendous creative power.

This result is a power of production never seen before.
We will see much more application, more diversity, the long tail of software will become a reality and the size and complexity of software is significantly increasing.

From the Bazaar will emerge Cathedrals of sizes never seen before.

I received earlier today a message from my oncle, on which several people were copied. It informed me that if I receive a call from "A C E" my SIM phone card would be wiped out and that if I got a phone message telling me to call back the phone number "06 07 74 52 41" (my uncle is French :) ) my phone bill would jump to the roof. Furthermore he asserted that one of his good friend (that he named in his e-mail) assured him after contacting Nokia, Erikson, Sagem, Motorola and so on that the rumor is true...

Such a warning could seem quite scary...I decided I would never pick up my cell again!

BUT... WAIT A MINUTE...

Careful as I always am, I decided to do a bit of research to double check the facts. I diligently went to google, searched for "ACE hoax" and found the following article: Mobile phone hoax or this one Virus Information ACE - Mobile Phone Hoax for instance (Notice the "Type: Hoax" written in those reports).

Confident that my search would unveil other comforting news, I decided to search in Google again "06 07 74 52 41" and found the following articles: Piratage portables,
Type: Rumeur,Statut: Faux

As a conclusion, I will probably repeat what many have already said before me, but can always serve those who are not yet familiar with what the web can bring us in terms of misinformation. We don't need to go as far as Descartes and consider everything around us is potential illusion - even if so it might be true, quite frankly :) - but if we all complete some fact checking, that can spare us some worries... as well as spam, spyware or virus spreading. And the best tools for fact checking are search engines (Google, Yahoo!, MSN search... ordered according to my personal preference) and sites like Hoaxbuster.com

For those who would like to go even more in depth, there is also this interesting article: Better Read That Again: Web Hoaxes and Misinformation

Finally, for those of you who are ready to make the big jump and figure out what is or is not illusion as Descartes did, all you have to say is "Tabula rasa"...