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Interoperability in Open Source
Posted by Michael Harvey on December 19, 2007, 6:45 PM EST
Last week was an exceptionally busy week for Concursive: launching our new website, announcing our name change, and releasing our new Concourse Suite 5.0. And during this hectic week, there was even more news that I wanted to take a moment to address.
Our friends at the Open Solutions Alliance
released the results of the surveys they have been collecting, evaluating customers’ views on Open Source software. Overall, the data seems to be pretty positive, highlighting the cost effectiveness and simple customization of Open Source solutions. Conversely, the OSA found that the point of contention for customers is the potential interoperability issues with Open Source applications.
Although interoperability with Open Source applications could be a genuine concern for customers, I think OSA President Dominic Sartorio’s quote sums up our stance on this:
“These findings represent a clear opportunity for the OSA to out-Microsoft Microsoft by offering a fully interoperable suite of business tools,” … “If we can help our members’ solutions work well together it makes it easier for our channel partners to sell open-source software and it will translate into more revenue for vendors and even more options for customers.”
That’s exactly how we see this at Concursive. Interoperability has always been a large focus for us, because we have moved from creating traditional CRM software to highly scalable integrated applications for extended enterprises. I look forward to seeing how the rest of the open source market develops and reacts to this news.
Like Dominic said, this is a perfect opportunity for us and other Open Source vendors to distinguish ourselves by answering the customers’ needs of improved interoperability. Impress them now and gain their support for the future.
