Cloud computing

March 2009 from CAmagazine and written by Fred Blauer – “…The traditional software model involves developing source code (program instructions) that is protected by a legal patent (intellectual property) so that no one can use, copy or modify it without purchasing or licensing it from the author. Now there is a shift from proprietary software to open software (which allows you to freely use, copy and modify) and standardized software (which runs on any platform)…”

180 View – There are many open source success stories such as Linux and MySQL, but is it appropriate to run a business? There are a few ERP open source solutions such as xTuple. There are also a number of vertical (industry specific solutions) such as OSCAR-McMaster: An Electronic Medical Record (EMR) system. Although we have concerns about open source to run a business, it's clearly gaining traction. As Fred says in his article, "As new systems mature, this (open source) will become a viable alternative to proprietary software solutions for the business mainstream."

Open Source

October 31, 2008 from Royal Pingdom – “There is a lot of money being made in Open Source, although the profitable companies are not always the ones you would expect.

While many companies don’t disclose detailed financial information we have dug around to find numbers for some well-known open source companies and projects to see how they are doing financially...”

180 View (written by Fred Blauer) – This is a good summary of some of the companies that have made a commitment to open source technology, and some of the associated business models. Time will tell how successful they will be and how much pressure this would place on traditional proprietary software vendors. Not mentioned are some of the open source ERP vendors such as Open Bravo which recently received $12 million in venture capital, and Xtuple who has had a successful launch of their open source Postbooks product. Both are showing a lot of activity and heavy downloads on Sourceforge (the leading repository for open source code).