Use the Source
Use the Source
September 1, 2005: Open source software developers have been putting up a real fight to break the stranglehold of patented and proprietary-based software over the last few years to the point where their ideas are penetrating the interest of mainstream businesses. Rodney Appleyard reports on five Australian companies that have carved significant in-roads within the open source community through developing innovative business technology
Following the recent decision of IBM to encourage its employees to switch browsers from I.E. (Microsoft Internet Explorer) to Firefox; the decision of Greenpeace to turn to open source desktops because of the expense of licence fees; and the migration of thousands of local governments PCs in Vienna, Austria, to Linux operating systems, open source software is creeping into the minds of many IT managers around the world.
In Australia, open source is emerging as an important driver of new business, following the recent trend of outsourcing work to India, China and other nations over the last few years. Many believe that our future innovation and creativity in the IT industry will rely on open source, and this is why the momentum needs to be grabbed so that open source development can reach its true potential, both in Australia and elsewhere.
The local luminaries
One of the biggest advocators of open source virtues in Australia is Cybersource. Despite the in-roads made by global companies, such as Red Hat, Novell, IBM and HP, Cybersource represents the cavalier spirit of smaller Australian-based open source companies that have found success already in this country.
Cybersource has been a Linux and open source specialist service provider for the last 13 years. This work includes providing system administration services for Linux and BSD Unix; integrating Windows with other systems; migrating data from Windows to Linux; web application development; system security; Linux training and product solutions.
Con Zymaris, the CEO of Cybersource, says that open source gives companies in Australia a chance to build and create new products through the exchange of knowledge between different open source code creators.
“So much is saved on Research & Development for small hopeful companies because all of the information is already out there, free for them to use without paying licence fees.
“We need more companies to use open source to create unique products, especially at this time when so much of our money is being spent on people in other countries to develop software. We have a huge ICT deficit in this country at this moment because we send millions of dollars offshore every year, and we drastically need to reverse this trend.
“With open source, we can offer much more support and flexibility than what is available with Microsoft. And if somebody is not happy with our services, they have the opportunity to just switch to another open source service, because the code is based on the same standards from vendor to vendor. Each vendor just has a different way of providing the service. But with Microsoft, you only get one choice, which is their choice.”
Snap to it
Rick Stevenson is the general manager of SnapGear, a division of CyberGuard, which develops and manufactures industry certified Internet security solutions that provide access and transaction security for small, medium and large enterprises. He says that one of the key advantages that his company has experienced from using open source software is the ability to customise products to meet the exact needs of customers.
Stevenson was part of SnapGear when it started inside an industrial shed in a suburb near Brisbane called Mount Ommaney, with $200,000 dollars of investment. It now has over 85 employees who own a part of the $16million the company made when it was sold to U.S. based company CyberGuard.
SnapGear’s products include plug-and-play appliances, managed VPN services and comprehensive purpose-built systems. Its customers vary from SOHO operations to international telecommunications companies.
Stevenson says that he has only been able to develop the company so quickly with a small team because of open source.
“We do not have the resources like the big U.S. companies, so it has been invaluable being able to develop code that is already out there. We need open source in this country because we lack these resources. Without it, software development would be severely hampered and it would have taken much more time and money to develop and produce our products.
“We are now very confident that our products are robust, secure, highly functional, and they can be tweaked and changed to meet the exact needs of the customer.”
Like a rolling stone
FastMail.FM is an example of how an Australian-based open source company can pick a simple idea and experience runaway success in a short space of time. Jeremy Howard, the CEO of FastMail.FM, decided to create a new email system because he was not happy with the one he was using.
He did not plan to make it into a big thing at the time, but his new product grew naturally by word of mouth, and now he has half a million customers around the world. It is based purely on open source code, and he claims that it has many more functions than Microsoft Outlook.
“We provide IMAP synchronisation, which means that all of somebody’s email addresses will show up on our system as if they are from one email address, be it Hotmail, a work email or Outlook Express, for example.
“Our email system is also much faster and reliable than many others because it does not use any graphics. Folders can be shared with other users so that you can have access to somebody else’s emails too if they let you, and no message is ever permanently deleted. For instance, if you accidentally delete an email, we have online restores in place for backup purposes, so that the email can be retrieved almost instantly.
“We have made sure it is very useful for people who do not have broadband and have to use slow connections. FastMail.FM makes life much easier for them.”
Howard says that because it is built on open source, they are able to identify any problems much more easily and fix them quickly too, because the code is always transparent. He adds that it is very secure because it is possible to audit the code and expose bugs when they enter the system.
But he also believes that there could be a better attitude towards open source in Australia.
“You get the feeling sometimes that people perceive open source developers as not really being serious or professional because ‘if it’s free then it can’t be that good’. However, the reality is that most software engineers in the world choose to keep their code open so they can share ideas and work with the best developers in the world. There could be much more use of open source in Government and educational institutions, where Microsoft is a pre-dominant force. It seems a waste of public funds to me to use budgets to pay for Microsoft licences when there are much better systems out there that are free.”
A Joy to work with
Bruce Joy is the CEO of Everyday Interactive Networks, which provides support for open source content management systems for websites. His company is in the process of creating a new open source product that will allow computers to respond to emotions and moods. Joy says that if something has not been created yet in the world of open source, then it soon will be.
“Open source is yet to show its full power and it will change the way that many of us will do business in the future, because we are all looking for synergistic business relationships.
“This is why so many companies are willing to work together. They can support each other. Open source allows a business to go to the next stage because it does not cost that much to invent something new. The ability for customers to customise programmes makes it extremely appealing for them.”
Not all about software
Bob Waldie, the CEO of OpenGear, is excited about extending open source into the hardware market.
OpenGear's current mission is to be the leader in cost-effective, non-intrusive, distributed remote server control solutions by using open source to make remote server control affordable not only for large enterprises but also for campuses, schools, libraries and other smaller replicated installations.
With remote server control capabilities, a management PC can assume complete hardware control of human interface devices (HID), such as keyboard, mouse, video, and power recycling, on a remote system across a local network or across the Internet.The purpose of this is to check that all of the systems are working to optimum performance from a far away location.
Waldie says that open source frees up exciting boundaries that need to be exploited by Australians.
“Open source is the wave to ride on at the moment. We used to think it was just about Linux and Unix, but now we are beginning to see its advantages grow into the application domain too. For instance, Firefox has been a good example of this. We can now go beyond the operating systems, and our company is looking especially into the possibility of expanding into hardware as our next place to go.
“In Australia, we have a very strong intellectual position with open source. There is so much knowledge and expertise within our universities. I think we will do well through exploring new inventions in the future, because of our natural way as Australians to take risks and push boundaries. It’s part of our national ethos.
“We’re not about getting greedy, but we are naturally adventurous and the opportunity of open source is synergistic with these Australian attributes. I believe that we are at the beginning of a major change in the way we value commercial transactions. We want to pay for things because they are good now, not because they have a copyright. Open source is pushing forward this evolution in thinking.”
Still early days
Phil Sargeant, the research vice president of storage for Gartner, says that although open source is breaking new ground into the mainstream arena, with the likes of Apache, Tomcat, Jboss java and Samba in wide use, it is still a niche arena.
“The business model makes it difficult for companies to make money, but open source provides a mechanism for getting the product out there in the first place. But it has to be top quality software, and it has to be able to support mission critical business operations.
“Microsoft is showing its teeth with Linux, so this proves that open source can make an impact, but not all open source products are at this level yet. MySQL is also providing a challenge to Microsoft’s SQL.
"The great thing about open source though is the cross-pollination of ideas, which leads to innovation. However, the jury is still out on security values. It’s easy to attack Microsoft, because it is widely used everywhere, whereas not all open source systems have reached this scale of use yet, so they have not been properly tested to the extent of Microsoft. There is also more reason for Microsoft to be the target of malicious software.”
Sargeant also explains that on the downside, open source has not got much chance of widespread success in Australia, as compared to the U.S. and China, because of the relatively small size of the population. But this is exactly why Australian based companies such as OpenGear and SnapGear have sold their companies to bigger American companies. FastMail.FM also has 90 percent of its customers based in the U.S. This means that their product can make the profits they need to succeed, whilst still controlling the creativity and inventiveness in Australia.
It seems that overall there is a lot of opportunity being taken by Australian companies to exploit the opportunities of open source. It also seems that more companies are likely to follow suit if customers choose to show even more of a preference for these offerings over proprietary products. To paraphrase a line from the movie Field Of Dreams, the question is: If they build it, will you come?
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