Happy New Year

It is hard for me to believe that we have been planning our 2008 conference for 3 months already. I know once the new year hits, March will be around in no time.

The call for papers is going very well. If you are interested, there is still time to send them in.

The latest addition to the conference is a roundtable discussion on web frameworks put together by Manning publications. Ron Tomich of Manning wrote to me recently - "There is a great deal of interest - and debate - over all the competing web frameworks being released of late. Most agree there will be a shakeout at some point, but no one knows which will survive or otherwise. Because Manning either already has published or plans to publish titles on each of these frameworks, we have been planning to put together a roundtable discussion/podcast between all of the relevant authors to discuss and debate the merits of each framework. Given that, we would like to have roundtable event about frameworks be added to the schedule." We love the idea and have already heard from Yehuda Katz, Chad Davis, and Robert Hanson. Jeremy McAnally and Peter Armstrong, who were already presenting, will also participate.

We hope to have a tentative schedule up by mid-January.

Also, registration has opened. We only have 400 seats, so don't wait until the last minute.

Have a Happy New Year and keep checking back for more information.

Call for Papers

ETE 3 is trying a first, a call for papers. If you or anyone you know would like to present at this event, please go to http://www.phillyemergingtech.com/call.php to see how you can apply.

We know there are many good speakers and we want to hear from you.

Deadline is 1/7/08,

Save the Date

So, I have been remiss in keeping this blog updated. Truth be told, I don't like to write. But, since I am in chair of this conference, it is a task which I need to do. I will try and keep posting updates about the 2008 conference happenings.

Big announcement:

The Emerging Technologies for the Enterprise Conference will take place on March 26th and 27th, 2008 at Drexel University.

We are in a bigger space this year and are bringing a great line up to our area.

Watch this blog and the conference website, www.phillyemergingtech.com, for more information

Rod Johnson – Understanding Enterprise Java Open Source

A recap of Rod Johnson's Keynote

Although it’s still relatively new in this space, open source has developed unstoppable momentum and is having a big impact on enterprise-level Java. The question is whether it can be to work in the long-term enterprise picture.

For Rod Johnson, the father of Spring, the future viability of open source in enterprise-level Java hinges on two types of activities: consuming and sustaining. If the former becomes the predominant behavior, and many of the common myths surrounding open source are not squelched, open source could actually end up having a negative influence on the industry.

In his keynote address on Thursday, March 29, Johnson offered up two visions of the future. The more obvious vision, and one that is portrayed in many trade rags, is that of “Open Source Nirvana” – in which open source means free, reliable and easy to use enterprise software, and a continuing flow of innovation. The other vision, which he dubs “The Horror of the Open Source Zombies,” sees the open source industry never progressing or maturing. A lack of funding beyond the venture capital and hobbyist levels leads to a lack of competition in the market and, hence, a lack of innovation. Software quality degrades, and open source erodes value.

How could this happen? How did we get here? How should the market respond today to avoid such a bleak future? And what are the dangerous open source myths that must be vanquished?

According to Johnson, the evolution of enterprise Java open source is akin to the stages of life depicted in, of all things, Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life. Following the “Miracle of Birth” (useful, but not exciting) are the phases involving Growth & Learning (traction, innovation), the Teenage Years (getting attention, breaking barriers), Settling into the Job (party’s over, time to look forward). Johnson maintains that we’re just emerging from the teenage years, and to ensure long-term sustainability, we must make sure that the Teenage Years are just a phase.

Ultimately, the problem is rooted in capitalism. Today, the majority of open source projects continue to be funded by VCs, hobbyists, and large corporations. For an industry to succeed, however, it must be funded by customers. Despite popular belief, IBM, BEA, Oracle and other behemoths are not bottomless pits that can afford dabble in open source indefinitely. It’s an interesting space, and they should be there. But will they continue if there’s no profit to be made?

The flood of VC money in the market masks a flawed economic model – one that must be overhauled if open source is going to thrive. To ensure viability, we must understand the model behind open source in the enterprise and identify the misconceptions.

Myth 1: Open source is about commoditization – and the resulting products are inferior versions of “closed source” software.

Take a look at the Spring Framework, a new product category that created a new style of component model that could run in any environment. It brought Dependency Injection and AOP for enterprise services to the mainstream. Far from commodity. And that’s just one example.

Myth 2: Open source software is magically created by the community.

This one maintains that all you need is a lot of developers – much like, “If an unlimited number of monkeys bang away on an unlimited number of typewriters, eventually one of them will come up with the complete works of Shakespeare.” Sure, you might get volume, but zero innovation. Quality products require innovation, leadership and vision. The reality is that the work is not terribly exciting – and is often downright boring and unpleasant. Consider Linux. Ten years ago, it was largely the domain of hobbyists, but as it gained a foothold in the enterprise, the model behind it also changed. Today, most Linux code comes from large corporations, which are increasingly outsourcing and offshoring development efforts.

Myth 3: Developers code for fun.

Bottom line: enterprise software development is not a part-time job. Quality software for mission-critical apps comes from high quality coders. These coders are people – with lives, families and ambitions. They are also in demand, which means they can pick and choose their jobs. No one commits indefinitely for the pure satisfaction of coding.

Myth 4: Open source software is free.

Face it, nothing is free at the enterprise level. Market forces still apply. Viable projects must be supported by viable businesses with solid commercial underpinnings.

The key to the success and long-term viability of open source in enterprise Java is in the rewarding of intellectual property creation. Open source does not suspend the laws of capitalism. Bubbles come and go, but market forces always reassert themselves. So why would intellectual property creation go unrewarded in open source?

Johnson identifies three types of behavior that effective separate IP creation and monetization, which include:

• Self Service – Customers who support themselves get inferior service, and are ultimately hurting the long-term potential of open source.
• Exploitation – Companies bundle open source into projects without giving anything back – often competing with the creators of the IP they consume. “Copyleft” licensing – forcing those who make modifications to contribute them back – isn’t the right approach for most open source. The right approach involves partnerships and education.
• Aggregation – Aggregators support multiple projects, but do not lead, contribute or sustain. They have no involvement in the open source communities, and are not involved with the leadership or roadmap of products they use. The aggregation model is based on the assumptions that open source is generated by hobbyists who don’t care about money, that open source is about integration and not IP creation, and that the creation of IP isn’t very difficult. Aggregation may work in commodity open source, but not for the type of highly innovative products found in the enterprise.

So how do we use the evolution of the market to help with long-term viability? Johnson encourages all to analyze activities surrounding open source in terms of consuming and sustaining. Sustaining activities include contributing documentation and patches, reporting issues, helping users in forums, evangelizing.

It also includes paying.

“Find companies that are driving your preferred products forward, and purchase support or training,” says Johnson. “Customers pay. Contribute or pay – but don’t think you can consume forever without giving back.”

Thank You

I am now in recovery mode after a really exhilarating and exhausting week. I would like to thank everyone for attending this year's conference. I have been receiving great feedback about the speakers, presentations, and the contacts they were able to make. I would again like to thank all of the speakers for their time

Continue to check back on the site for more information about talk recaps. We will also be posting the presentations during the next week. We are experimenting with some video and audio and hope to podcast some of the content. Feel free to pass along this link to others who were unable to join us or if you have your own blog, please add this link to your site spread the wealth.

Again, if you are interested in helping plan next year's conference, contact me at twr@chariotsolutions.com.

Open Source in Corporate Environments - Gianugo Rabellino

Gianugo Rabellino clearly traveled the farthest (from Italy) to present at the Philly Emerging Technologies conference. And when he got here he was faced with the realization that his presentation topic – open source in corporate environments – was being covered in one way or another by at least two other presenters. Fortunately, Rabellino (like software is supposed to be) proved adaptable.

Rabellino’s presentation deck won’t be of much use because he thoroughly avoided text in favor of images to illustrate his points. But here’s a quick look at a couple of highlights.

First, like Dodds before him, Rabellino emphasized open source as something more than technology. But then looking at open source as a broader approach, Rabellino went further and separated the category into two subsets. One subset that uses open source for distribution, but not in the development process. (SugarCRM is an example) And one subset that is fully open source and built around an engaged technical community (like Apache Software Foundation). Both are valid approaches, but their differences need to be understood.

Second, Rabellino introduced a perspective on enterprise open source that centered on its empowerment benefits. Instead of facing vendor lock-in (buying a large software package and getting officially locked in to a vendor for years), companies can keep their options open with open source solutions.

I wish it were possible to translate Rabellino’s dynamic and conversational tone into text, but there is only so much that can be conveyed in a blog post. Maybe the images from the slide deck will help. Be sure to check back.

The Growth of Enterprise Adoption - Phillip Dodds

"By 2008, OSS solutions will directly compete with closed-source products in all software infrastructure markets." –Gartner

Phillip Dodds started with this quote from Gartner to illustrate just how far open source has come in the enterprise. Open source may have snuck into the enterprise environment, but it’s an established player now, and one that IT managers must recognize and fully understand.

Dodds made the point early on that open source is not just about software, but a wholly different development approach. Open source is a distributed, community-based model. There are many benefits, but also many challenges when implemented across a large organization.

Benefits include extensibility, less restrictive licensing, open standards and community support. Challenges (the issues that keep IT managers up at night) include governance (issues with licensing models), delivery mechanisms for software updates/new releases, management of intellectual property (what belongs to the business vs. the development community), and indemnification.

Above all else, moving toward an open source approach means exposing and managing interdependencies, which can be an uncomfortable position for some enterprises.

Dodds’ full presentation will be available on this site soon, but here are his “Guidelines for Success” in the meantime:

• Look beyond OSS code: understand licensing implications; monitor community statistics and health; evaluate community infrastructure
• Evaluate vendor offerings: review available distributions; understand support- subscriptions/SLAs; determine if open-source add-ons can help
• Manage OSS consumption: build a repository; integrate legal activities; enforce control over your component usage
• Understand and leverage the OSS process model: distributed development; modular; reusable components; incremental development based on rapid iterations

Rails 101 - Brian McCallister

Sessions run concurrently at the Philly Emerging Technologies conference, which means it’s impossible to cover everything at once. After the keynote, I sat in on Brian McCallister’s “Rails 101” session. There was an overflow audience and people literally stood in the back for lack of chairs. This tells me that not only is there a lot of interest in Ruby on Rails in general (pretty well established), there’s a lot of interest in Rails in Greater Philly – an often-overlooked center of technology.

Since this was a 101 course, there was a lot of putting Rails in the context of other languages. Many folks out of the audience had primarily Java experience, and Brian accounted for that with comparisons where possible and appropriate.

Some basic on Rails: It’s an application framework written wholly in Ruby. The people who wrote it did a lot of work in Java, which is evident in the design aspects, and some of Rails (Web aspects) also looks like php.

According to Brian, there are a few principles behind Rails:

• Write less code – the more code you have, the more opportunities for mistakes
• Convention over configuration – write code based on common conventions
• Opinionated – the writers of Rails assume that people are going to write code in an obvious way. You can do it differently, but Rails was developed assuming you won’t and makes the “obvious way” the default/easy way.

The full session was highly interactive, with detailed Q&A throughout. (Sample: Q- The infrastructure I work with does not include Ruby. Could I leverage JRuby? Yes! The recent release of JRuby almost entirely supports Rails.)

Want to know more? The presentation will be available on this site shortly. Please note, I am not a developer, but if you have specific technical questions, add a comment to this post or send an email to Chariot. We’ll hook you up with a Rails expert.

Welcome to the Conference, Day 1

The Philly Emerging Technologies Conference kicked off this morning with a presentation from John Carrow, former CIO of Unisys. As a technology leader who’s been in the business for decades, Carrow brought perspective on how the big issues facing enterprise IT workers have changed pretty drastically in the last few years. From cost containment, the focus has shifted (thankfully) to top-line growth and innovation. Why? For several reasons. One, the speed of business has increased in the IM/SMS generation. Two, technology has improved so the focus isn’t on issues like having enough storage or bandwidth. Three, business is now global, which means a greater competitive playing field.

Carrow also talked about key aspects underlying emerging enterprise technologies:

• The drive toward real-time infrastructure – an infrastructure that is adaptable within minutes and seconds rather than weeks and days
  
• Application modernization – open source is a market-changer, primarily in its innovative and distributed processes
• Collaboration and communications – communication is person-centric now, which creates easier information access from human resources

The day ahead looks promising. Stay tuned for more event coverage, including interviews with speakers and hopefully discussion with attendees.

Conference Update

The conference is very lucky to have added David Brussin, of Turntide. He is a great addition to the management track, with a strong commitment to helping startups take advantage of open source in their IT environments. Check out his blog at whatcomesnext.brussin.com.

If you haven't been to the site lately, check out the new abstracts. We have a few more spots that will be filled in the next week.

Also, read Anthony Gold's blog about the conference anthonygold.blogspot.com.
I really appreciate the comment posted. With a thriving user group and development community, Philadelphia needs to showcase our knowledge.

Registrations opened, speakers added

Registration for our event has opened. Just a reminder we only can fit 300 people per day due to room size, so we are limited in the number of attendees.

We have added Steve Vinoski of IONA and Ross Altman of Sun (ex-CIO of See Beyond). There will be another Ruby on Rails talk as well. If you check out the schedule, you will be able to see the session plans. More should be up as the speakers are handing in their talks to us on a daily basis.

If you have any ideas for sessions, please contact me at twr@chariotsolutions.com.

Also, if you are staying for both days, don't forget we have a block of rooms saved at the Sheraton with a conference rate of $169 a night. We are talking to some of the area restaurants for discounts for our attendees.

Rod Johnson and other additions

I just found out Rod Johnson will be giving a technical in addition to his keynote on our second day of the conference.

We'll be updating the conference schedule with changes in the next few days. Stay tuned.

Welcome to the Emerging Technologies for the Enterprise

Welcome to the Emerging Technologies for the Enterprise (ETE) conference site. This year's conference is shaping up to be another informative event. Where else to hold the event, but Philadelphia, where companies are using open source and emerging techs to run trading systems using Spring and Hibernate to broadcast applications written in Ruby on Rails.

After last year, I thought I would try and document this year's event.

I'll keep updating the site as speakers and talks are added. This blog will also have some guests who will give you some insight about their talks.