Alternative Information Technology

Open Source - Just Good Business

The Economist posted an article today entitled "Open Source Software in the Recession" that effectively presents the current state of the open source software market and some of the benefits derived. Great comments included from Red Hat, Al Fresco , and Forrester executives and analysts. One point made in the ...

Making cents when every penny counts

Just delivered a webcast for Ingres last week regarding our internal use of open source, and in particular our use of the Icebreaker BI Appliance. You can view a recording of the webcast here. I have been head of professional services, or head of IT for several software companies, and ...

Keane at the Fox

Keane is one of the few current bands I know whose sound is piano and keyboard driven, arriving on the scene in 2004 with their instant classic "Hopes and Fears". Keyboard player Tim Rice-Oxley is dynamic and assertive in concert, rocking his electric piano back and forth as he emphasizes ...

Shopping for Open Source

Forrester's Jeffrey Hammond presented "Open Source Trends in 2009" during a webinar today, and delivered the good news about Open Source that increasingly we all have been experiencing. He walked through a well placed historical perspective on the market going from "Cathedrals & Bazaars" (OSS development driven by economic Darwinism ...

Six Wives Live, Live!

Rick Wakeman has played piano and just about every acoustic, analog and digital keyboard as a prolific artist since the late 1960’s, most notably in the band “Yes”, and most frequently as a solo artist penning more than 80 albums over his long career. The first real solo release from ...

Vendor ‘Lock Down’

Just thinking today about the announcement that Oracle is purchasing Sun Microsystems. Twitter is overloaded with tweets. Bloggers are blogging. Most all of it is negative. From a CIO's perspective, this type of consolidation reduces customer choice and curtails vendor innovation. When one vendor is supplying your hardware, utility software, ...

Lily Allen’s Sophomore Tour

Went to the Lily Allen show at the Warfield this last weekend. This tour is to support her sophomore effort, "It's Not Me, It's You", which blends a variety of pop, jazz and country styles, as a follow up to her mostly ska influenced debut from 2007, "Allright, Still". We ...

Open Source and the Open Cloud Manifesto

Those of us who are interested and vested in the open source revolution will hear a very familiar rallying cry from the authors of today's published Open Cloud Manifesto. This very short 6 page document is generating a bit of buzz around town, and is so familiar because it's tenets ...

Having Fun Busting Myth’s

We have been having some fun busting myths about open source during these trying economic times. It seems that particularly in a tough market, arguments for or against particular purchases become a bit more strident. FUD launched against new ideas typically include the issue of security, reliability and vendor stability. ...

Missing in Action

Last week I went over to a small club in San Francisco to see the band Missing Persons. Was hoping an original band member, Terry Bozzio, one of the top 5 drummers in the field, would be there to play alongside his ex Dale. Though the musicians were all hired ...