Event

LinuxAsia 2007: Open-source event puts interoperability first

This year’s event focussed on interoperability, the commercialisation of Open Source Software (OSS) technologies and the acceptance of OSS when it comes to running mission critical applications. By Faiz Askari.

Delegates at LinuxAsia 2007

Stakeholders of the Open Source community including the industry, government and the developer community came together under one roof at the India Habitat Centre, New Delhi for LinuxAsia 2007. This year’s event emphasised the growing importance of interoperability which is now a hot topic of discussion. The event also highlighted that commercial or business interests of vendors were not necessarily contrary to the concept of ‘societal benefit’ as espoused by OSS proponents. This formed the theme of various discussions and presentations held at the CXO Summit, a special track on the second day of the LinuxAsia 2007 convention in New Delhi.

Another reason as to why interoperability has became a noticeable and interesting area of discussion at an open source gathering is because this was the first time that Microsoft took part in the event.

However, another key message from this year’s event was also the acceptance of open source as a platform for running business critical applications. The open source community has taken up this message and strategically conveyed it to the industry.

Delivering the keynote, popular Linux Guru and founder of Knoppix, Klaus Knopper said, “If you are going to buy any hardware and it doesn’t support open source, tell the vendor and return the product. Vendor companies will get the message, if enough people do that, and they will stop manufacturing what doesn’t sell.”

Sandeep Menon, regional manager of Novell said, “The LinuxAsia initiative has been gaining strength from year to year. This year, it brought into focus the ground that Linux has gained across segments. We had speakers and delegates from the

US, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Singapore, UK, Germany, Sweden, China, and many other places.” Other leaders on Open Source included the co-founder of Apache - Brian Behlendorf, Dr. Louis Suarez-Potts of OpenOffice.org, and Knopper, creator of the live distribution Knoppix. The gathering included people from government, industry and academia. There were students, industry leaders, and civil servants all brought together by a shared passion.

Innovation drives Open Source

While talking about India, innovation and the role of open source, Dr Deepak Phatak, Chair Professor at IIT Bombay, placed importance on the need for proprietary vendors to work positively with OSS technology leaders to create technology that would ultimately benefit not just the industry but also bring about interoperability.

Anthony Wasserman of Carnegie Mellon University West, another key speaker at LinuxAsia 2007, shared his experiences of best practices from around the world and said, “Most organisations have developed their IT policies and practices to reflect the use of commercial, closed source software packages. These policies must be updated to allow organisations to take advantage of both commercial and community-based open source software.”

Historically, the amount of product development and innovation that happened out of the Indian software industry has always been sparse. Menon said, “The open source community in its place preferred to pick up an established technology trend, and put some excellent skilled people onto delivering sub contracted projects, services etc. It is but to be expected that the same holds true for Open Source as well.”

Talking about interoperability

The commercial or business interests of vendors are not necessarily contrary to the concept of ‘societal benefit’ as espoused by OSS proponents. This formed the theme of the overall deliberations at the various sessions at the convention: a commonly made statement with regard to interoperability. This, however, also reflect that the community’s approach towards the market has undergone a sea change. The best part for the community is that the market has understood this change.

Along with a healthy and vigorous debate, the three-day convention showed the amount of change that has taken place in the open source community—everyone was talking about interoperability. Speakers from different segments and stakeholders of the open source community including industry, government and the developer community highlighted the many challenges in economies such as India.

Faisal Paul country manager -HPC & OSLO, Technology Solutions Group HP India said, “I think everyone has understood the success of open source. People know about it, they accept it, and now they are implementing open source in their businesses. With the implementation part coming in, open source can be said to have created a market for itself.”

IT managers have accepted the business model of open source as well. Paul added to this, “Earlier there was a myth that OSS is nothing more than freeware. Even it is correct up to an extent, the industry has accepted the paid service support model.”

While talking about participating in an open source event for the first time, Radhesh Balakrishnan, director, Competitive Strategies at Microsoft said, “We feel good that we are here. I personally have always admired open source for some specific things. For instance, they have taken good care of their community. It is time for all of us, among the stakeholders of industry, to understand the business needs of our customers and the market. We need to work for their demands and needs.”

Some members of the open-source community are sceptical about Microsoft’s efforts to bridge incompatibilities between the two sides: open source freeware and licensed software.

Balakrishnan said, “Interoperability is a demand from the customer’s side. This demand is recognised by us and by our friends in the open source camp. We would love to cater the needs of our customers. It is a fact that a customer who has invested any amount on building IT infrastructure, would love to expand on it but would not be comfortable in re-structuring the infrastructure completely, just for the sake of an additional high-end application. Customers get the maximum benefit from interoperability.”

However, emphasizing on the importance of virtualisation, security and interoperability Menon of Novell said, “Open Source is no longer the realm of geeks and enthusiasts—it has become a credible enterprise alternative with all the requisite benefits: virtualisation, security, interoperability, attractive TCO, just to name a few.” 2007 will be a watershed year for Open Source and Linux. Novell believes that the technology and business benefits that Open Source and Linux bring to an organisation are undeniable. This is borne out by the major positive developments in India, where various national and state government bodies have indicated that they understand and believe in the value of Open Source, and are highly supportive of adopting it. Their IT policies are now becoming a model for the private sector to adopt, which is a major role reversal of sorts.

Often in the private sector, IT decision makers are hard-pressed to embrace Open Source due to the fear, uncertainty and doubt that exists in the marketplace. Sometimes, it’s natural that they go for the safe route, with companies and brands that they’re comfortable with. At other times, pioneering CIO’s and IT managers are willing to don the mantle of change, and assume both the risk and rewards that go with being front runners.

Giving choice to business

John Smedley, senior architect Ingris Europe, a speaker at the event, said, “Open source is no longer limited to Linux. Linux is still there at the top but the new development for open source is the fact that it has been accepted in mission critical applications such as databases, ERP, CRM and messaging. Open source has emerged as a great option for customers with a plethora of mission critical applications.”

Faisal Paul of HP said, “From a platform like this, we can address the industry and make them aware of the cutting edge work that is being done on open source platforms. The technology we are showcasing is HP’s exclusive solution for the oil and gas and the engineering industries. This is a Linux-based visualisation solution. It’s a great example of today’s open source technology and it belongs to high end computing. The interoperability factor is taken care of in this.”

Regarding another mission critical application, messaging, Hans Brouwer, vice president International sales at Scalix Corporation said, “The industry understands the potential of open source. Earlier, they showed interest and wanted to know more about it. Now they are talking about implementing these cutting edge applications. Messaging applications are great examples of how open source technology is penetrating the market.”

A drought of skill-sets

Among the well known experts of open source and a keynote speaker at the event, Brian Behlendorf, co-Founder of Apache and CTO of CollabNet, delivered a keynote address that set the tone of the event. Behlendorf praised Indian developers by saying, “An individual developer in a country like India can become the next big thing and create a software giant to rival the best in the world.” While making this statement with regard to the potential of open source as a technology and the talent behind its development, examples of Wikipedia and Google were brought up.

At the event, the subject of nurturing talent from the open source world for the industry is a must from today’s perspective. Advocates of open source believe that, it is great news that the industry is looking for more talent that is skilled in open source technology. The large pool of software professionals in India could be leveraged to improve OSS solutions and deployment in the critical areas which affect common life of citizens.

Menon of Novell said, “The rapid explosion of Linux is outstripping our ability to deliver trained manpower. However, I see this as an opportunity, rather than a challenge. To me, it’s a clear signal that the Linux model is working and healthy. The Linux revenue model for many companies is based on being able to provide these selfsame support services.” In the past, organisations got the Linux software for next to nothing, and could not understand why they were being asked to pay for support. Now this has been accepted and people are seeking paid services. So it’s a good sign. Menon says, “I feel confident that our technical community and organisations are good at spotting such waves and responding effectively to them. So while there may be a bit of a lag, you will soon see a plethora of service companies taking advantage of this opportunity.”

Novell does a lot of work with engineering colleges and training institutions. Its engineers travel from campus to campus, running open source seminars and conducting training programmes. It encourages colleges to set up Linux labs and start NCLP (Novel Certified Linux Professional) courses for their students. The company is looking to build its NCLP training & certification business strongly this year.”

Shubham Nagar, head consulting at InfoAxon Technologies gave his comments of the impact of this event by saying, “The industry is watching us carefully. The role of open source is becoming valuable for customers. I think the core challenge is still related to the generation of skilled manpower to take care of open source expansion in the industry.”

To be tackled

Twenty key challenges identified were in areas related to technology, standards and regulation, finance management, infrastructure and usage. Among the challenges were interoperability of devices and networks, building devices that are robust and designed for rural conditions, managing change and obsolescence of technologies, security issues, aligning government regulations with new technologies, standards for multilingual storage of content, lack of realistic financial models for project management, low penetration geographically, low penetration demographically, power supply, cost of ICT, high bandwidth and transmission costs, exclusion of segments of the population, lack of education and skills, and user acceptance and ‘Cost for Use’.

Cdr. Deepak Uppal (retd), principal consultant at PricewaterhouseCoopers remarked, “Overall, we have identified 20 challenge areas for ICT using Open Source technologies. But what is more important is to challenge the OSS community to produce solutions that can help bridge the gaps in physical infrastructure.” He also stated that those regions that have not managed to better their physical infrastructure, such as Ladakh or the North-East, had to be brought on par with urbanised regions using ICT solutions.

With all the views and news, it can be said that the open source space has proven itself to be a hotbed of innovation. Interoperability can also be considered as an extension of innovation. Sometimes we tend to forget how young this technology actually is, because of the pervasive way in which it has grown and positioned itself in our minds.

“The amount of progress in OSS that has been made in the relatively short space of the last few years, far outstrips the developments that any other technology has been able to build, even over decades,” said Menon of Novell.

From an Indian perspective it is true that Open source community has the potential to generate greater activity, than what stakeholders of this community are currently seeing.