Aside from BPM, there are few subjects that generate as much angst, confusion, debate, and posturing in the enterprise as the role of open source solutions. Yesterday, a consulting and systems integration company introduced something that could help with both BPM and open source initiatives.
The company is Optaros, Inc. What the company announced yesterday is what it claims is the IT industry's first independent, annotated catalogue of enterprise open source solutions. The catalogue offers reviews of 262 open source projects, out of the more than 140,000 known to Optaros. The reviews include Optaros' commentary on each solution's community support, functionality, and maturity, as well as predictions of future progress and assessment of overall enterprise readiness.
The Optaros Open Source Catalogue comments on whether the solution is enjoying are grouped into categories -- Application Development and Infrastructure, Business Applications, Infrastructure Solutions, and Operating Systems and Infrastructure. "Business Process and Workflow Management" is included in the Application Development category, while "Analytics, Reporting, and Data Warehousing," "CRM, ERP, and E-Commerce," and "Knowledge Management and eLearning" are all included under Business Applications. I might have grouped them differently, or "called out" BPM as its own Business Applications sub-category, but this a minor quibble, compared with the value of the entire document.
And what is that value? If you are pursuing or considering any open source initiatives, this catalogue can help you to overcome ignorance, resistance, and skepticism about enterprise-ready open source solutions -- your own and/or that of others. The Optaros catalogue can help you craft a short list of candidate solutions, and provide additional information about those you are considering.
If you are pursuing or considering any BPM initiatives, this catalogue can also help you. While it does not discuss in detail the open source BPM suite from Intalio, it does discuss that company's free BPMN Designer tool. This lets users design processes compliant with the Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) industry standard, then execute these in the broadly adopted Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) specification, on any of a variety of application servers, according to Intalio.
The Optaros catalogue also makes no mention of Sun Microsystems, Inc. Those of you busy with other things may not recall that Sun acquired a company called SeeBeyond Technologies in 2005. Sun has integrated SeeBeyond's business integration and composite applications technologies into Sun's Java Composite Application Platform Suite (CAPS), resulting in what Sun says Java CAPS is a powerful platform for both BPM and SOA efforts -- and is available under traditional commercial license or as open source technology.
But the point here isn't what's not in the Optaros catalogue, but that it exists at all. If you are considering integration of open source technologies into your BPM efforts -- or open source BPM solutions themselves, The Optaros catalogue (as well as this blog entry!) should provide a significant kick-start to your considerations. And if you're not considering open source solutions, for your BPM initiatives and more broadly, you should be. I'll make this argument more stridently in future outings -- don't say you weren't warned!
For those who are considering or pursuing open source deployments, the catalogue can also provide useful, independent responses to those who maintain there are no truly enterprise-class open source solutions worth serious consideration. And yes, those people are out there, likely even within your own organization. Unfortunately, some of them may sign your paycheck and/or authorize your budget, so ignoring them is not an option. Helping to educate and enlighten them is, however.
The Optaros Open Source Catalogue 2007 is available as a free download from the Optaros Web site. In addition, I wrote an RFG Research Note in October 2006 called "Open Source Solutions in the Enterprise: Best Practices" which you should also find helpful. If you've got a user ID and password for the RFG Web site, you can read the Note by clicking on its title above. If not, write to me with your name, title, organization, and perhaps a few words on BPM and/or open source at your enterprise, and I'll be glad to e-mail you a copy of the Note in return.
Michael Dortch has been an analyst, 'information entrepreneur,' speaker, and writer about IT and 'the real world" for the past 30 years. After almost 10 years at the Robert Frances Group (RFG), Michael begins a new position with Aberdeen Group in September.
Dennis Byron is an analyst with ebizQ, focusing on Open Source Software as well as Business Process Management technologies.
