While the World Slept...

Ever have one of those defining moments when you realized that you were a part of something special?  Well, it's 1:46am here in San Francisco and I am sitting in my hotel room testing our new website.  And at the same time, there are a dozen folks in the office in Edison, NJ doing the same thing.  They are working through the night and all of them worked ALL WEEKEND to make this happen.  Are they all marketing folks?  Of course not.  This is not their job.  They do other things like, sales, sales engineering, development.  The co-founders are involved testing too.  And, its not just here.  All around the world, every office is involved in testing the site that just went live.

No, this is not their job.  But, this is OUR company and everyone here jumps in to help the other.  We all have the same goal and we are all rowing in the same direction.  It really is something to see. 

Take a look around your office today.  Would it be the same in your company?  I can't say that it would have been this way in any other company I worked for.

When you spend forty, sixty, eighty hours a week working, you need the reassurance that this is more than just a job or a career.  If you don't, I encourage you to find your own EnterpriseDB.

Where the hell have you been, Derek?

Well, I have not blogged since March 1.  Why?  Check back in just a few hours.

What's your start page?

What do you use as your start page when you fire up a browser?  I think there are four answers:

1. Default.  Whatever the browser came with.  Are you like my wife?  She still uses IE and never bothered to change the start page.  She uses MSN.  Yes, she is a lemming when it comes to PCs (as I expect most are.)
2. Blank Page.  You use the net to research something and be done.  You don't care about the news, sports updates or anything else.  Give me a black slate and I will choose what to look at.  (I suspect there are only a few of these folks out there.)
3. Corporate Intranet.  You work for one of those companies that sets the page for you.  Unisys was like this.  The corporate-standard start page for the corporate-standard Microsoft browser was the Unisys intranet.  Now, it was better than most intranets, but I don't care to be so internally focused.  Fortunately, they do let you change it.  Anyone who can change the page but haven't?  Please refer to number 1 above.
4. My Page.  If you are like me, you have set your home page to a start page that collects and digests all the information you need in one spot.  MyYahoo! is a prime example and has been my staple start page for almost 8 years.  I think a lot of people fit in this category.

But, I am changing...  Over the last 8 months I have been playing with Netvibes and I really like it.  For some reason, I still keep MyYahoo! as my start page, but I use Netvibes much more regularly.   It is a wonderful too for both work and play.  I have multiple tabbed pages.  One is for news (local, national, international).  I also have weather on there.  The next page is all about analysts.  If I am a subscriber and they have an RSS feed, its on there.  Next, a stock tab.  This is less about my portfolio and more about the stocks that I am tracking that are related to work.  I also have a tab of blogs.  This includes industry blogs and individual blogs from folks that matter in the world of open source or Postgres.  This page also has a blog search module that searches nine different blog aggregators or search engines.  This is the most valuable tool on the whole page.  The last work related tab is all about Oracle.  This is a great tab and was actually created by someone else and made public to all as a "Universe" in Netvibes.  What a cool concept.

I encourage you to check it out.  And, if you have a suggestion for another web 2.0 start page, let me know!

Postgres: More active than MySQL

MarkMail, a mailing list archive service, found that Postgres gets far more traffic in its mailing lists than MySQL.  Since, January 2000, MySQL has 340,000 messages with about 3000 new messages per month.  Meanwhile, Postgres has 583,000 messages in that same period and 7,000 new messages each month!  You can read all of the details and see the charts here:  http://markmail.blogspot.com/2008/02/postgresql-more-traffic-than-mysql-and.html

JBoss World coming to a close

Well, JBoss World is coming to a close here in sunny Orlando.  What a fantastic show for us.  After all, why wouldn't it be?  These is a user conference, not a exhibition like LinuxWorld.  So, all of the people here already use JBoss in some form and already fully understand the benefits of open source.  There is no education needed on that front. 

THEY GET IT.

And they are primarily architects and developers, so, while they may not make the database purchasing decision, they definitely influence it.

An interesting aside, Mark Fleury was here.   I was wondering if he would show up and we got a chance to talk for a little while.  I know there was some bad blood when he left Red Hat after the acquisition, but this is still his baby after all.  I can't imagine what it must be like to watch a company that you built from the ground up continue on without you...  I think Mark is feeling it too.  Its like raising your own child and then giving him/her up for adoption when they turn 5 or 6.

Anyway, it was good to see Mark.  I miss his in-your-face, tell-it-like-it-is attitude.  If you want to get a flavor for what Mark is really about, read his blog.  He shares it with his wife Nathalie and it is a fun and educational read.  Maison Fleury

JBoss World

Just wanted to post a quick update since it has been awhile. (So much for those New Year's Resolutions.)

We had a very successful and productive sales kickoff this week and 2008 is shaping up to be a fantastic year!

And, I wanted to update you all to let you know that I will be at JBoss World this week in Orlando. EnterpriseDB is sponsoring the event and has a small booth. (If you are going, come over and say hi!) and check out the killer booth graphic we have for this show. It should turn some heads and raise some eyebrows!

Is your head in the Clouds?

Cloud computing is all the buzz these days.  Amazon, who'd a thunk it, is leading the charge with their Elastic Compute Cloud(EC2) and Simple Storage Service (S3).

So, what is all the buzz about?  Cloud computing is the next generation of the ASP or hosted model.  It is not unlike a SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) model either. 

Essentially, you can load up your application to someone else's server and pay them for storage and bandwidth and utilization.  Sounds kinda like a web host, eh?  That's a good analogy.

Today, EnterpriseDB announced that we will be offering EnterpriseDB Advanced Server Cloud Edition.  Though it is currently a BETA program, the potential is huge.  Load up Advanced Server in the cloud and scale out/up as necessary without having to worry about maintaining the infrastructure and, even better, pay for usage only in small increments of time.  Instead of having to purchase a large server that is mostly overkill, but sufficient for the peaks in your business, you can run it all on the cloud without a worry.

Sounds like the future is just around the corner!!! 

IT Innovation in a Recession

With all the talk of a recession going around these days, I can't help but think about the post Y2K days when the bottom fell out of the tech market.  At the time, I ran a fairly successful ERP consulting practice.  My clients included:  Colgate Palmolive, Avery Dennison, Johnson and Johnson, Guidant, Arrow International, etc.

Business was booming through the first part of 2000.  It was a windfall of cash for my company and luckily, I squirreled some of it away for a rainy day.  I just knew it wouldn't last.  Why?  Well, the Y2K scare was over.  All of the software updates were done.  And, to make matters worse, all of the hardware purchases were complete.  Many of the applications that had issues were written in COBOL and, yikes, FORTRAN.  These machines were old and outdated and entire application suites had to be rewritten and upgraded to new operating systems and hardware.  So, the software was fixed and new hardware was purchased (at considerable expense to major companies.)

At this point, IT budgets froze.  They had spent their money and wanted to wait for some of it to pay off.  Then, the bubble burst on the dot coms and IT budgets got cut.

I remember having multiple 6-figure deals just going on hold until further notice.  They finally started picking up again in late 2002, but the damage to the tech industry was pervasive.

Now, here we are in 2008 and a recession is looming.  (I am not buying it, for the record.)  IT budgets are in jeopardy again.  When IT budgets get cut, innovation ceases and preservation is the name of the game.

But, that doesn't have to be the case anymore.  Evaluate your current IT budget.  Look at the planned expenditures, especially the largest software components.  Are they open source or proprietary?  If they are proprietary they are most likely capital expenditures and more likely to get cut.  If there was ever a case for open source, a recession makes that case even more clear.

Open Source software components are "good enough" if not better than proprietary solutions in almost every case.  Yes, your CTO knows and trusts X company (in our case, Oracle).  But, your gonna cut that whole project anyway because (Oracle) is too expensive in a recession.  Teach him about Postgres and EnterpriseDB Advanced Server.  Let him know how SugarCRM, Alfresco, Jasper, JBoss, etc.  Make them understand that they have been running and depending on the LAMP stack for years and that Firefox is actually open source.

If they don't trust you, get OpenLogic in there or SpikeSource or Optaros.  The cost of the open source software, plus the piece of mind of a third party like I mentioned above, will still be dwarfed in comparison to the cost of the proprietary solution you are replacing.

You CAN innovate in a recession and it might just be the competitive advantage you need....

Bill Gates at CES 2008, WSYP, Microsoft Marketing

I know this is a little old now, but in case you haven't seen it, Bill Gates gave his final keynote at CES a couple weeks ago.  For those you who have attended before, you know that his keynotes have been hit or miss.   The highlights included the launch of the XBox while the low-lights included a few BSOD (Blue Screens of Death) and who could forget Microsoft BOB.

This year, though, he may have sealed his legacy, not as a technology pioneer, but as a comedian.  This video is hilarious.  (Not hysterical.  Ask Paul Corson from QAD.  He was an English major and that was one of his pet peeves.)

The video looks forward to his last day at Microsoft and what it will be like.  It includes cameos by a whole bunch of folks including:  Brian Williams, Matthew McConaughey, Hillary Clinton, Jay-Z, and others.  Enjoy!

 

Bill Gates at 2008 CES

And while you are at it, check out these two videos that need to be resurrected and passed around.  This first one shows you just how marketing can eff up a product!!!

Microsoft Re-Packages the iPod

 

And this one shows you that Microsoft really does have a sense of humor...  The Microsoft WSYP Program (We Share Your Pain)

Microsoft WSYP Program

For those of you wondering what is up, I learned how to embed video!!!   And I have been thinking a lot about viral marketing.  These are all great examples of viral marketing!!!  More on that in the future.

Postgres is not for sale

Rather than try to summarize Greg Sabino Mullane's excellent blog post from yesterday, I am going to give you a link to the original post and copy the post right here.  Greg really nails it on the head.  He provides his commentary on the MySQL deal itself further down in the post, which I did not copy.  Check it out.

In light of the recent MySQL sellout, I'd like to once again answer the question that pops up occasionally: "Who will purchase Postgres?" Sure, it brings a smile to those of us immersed in the open source world, but it bears a serious answer: Postgres cannot be bought. While from a distance, MySQL and PostgreSQL look the same ("open-source databases"), they are very different beasts, both in technical and non-technical ways. In a nutshell, the difference can be expressed as:

MySQL is an open-source PRODUCT.

Postgres is an open-source PROJECT.

Only two letters of difference between 'product' and 'project', but a very important distinction. MySQL is run by a for-profit corporation (MySQL AB), which owns the code, employs practically all the developers, dictates what direction the software goes in, and has the right to change (indeed, has changed) the licensing terms for use of the software (and documentation).

By contrast, Postgres is not owned by any one company, is controlled by the community, has no licensing issues, and has its main developers spread across a wide spectrum of companies, both public and private. Can a software product succeed using such a system? Well, the other letters in the original LAMP (Linux, Apache, and Perl) have similar models, and they seem to be doing just fine. Like Postgres, there is no way to "buy" any of those projects either.

Of course, EnterpriseDB is a company.  And, we have an excellent database built on the Postgres foundation.  And, I may get in trouble for this, but I am willing to entertain all offers for EnterpriseDB starting at $5 billion US.

As noted at the bottom of the blog:  The comments expressed by me in this blog are my own and may not represent the opinions of EnterpriseDB.