Tomorrow is the fourth annual Software Freedom Day. A world wide celebration of of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS). This is the second year I have been involved and am proud to say that Zenoss is a global sponsor along with Sun, Google, and my good friends at MindTouch.

What’s really impressive is the growth of the event which this year will have over 500 teams in over 80 countries around the world. If you want to find the event going on nearest to you try the SFD wiki listing teams and events. If you are in Austin join my buddy Matt Ray on Sunday who will be hanging with Austin LUG and handing out some Zenoss schwag at Caffeine Cafe and Flipnotics.

Technorati Tags: MindTouch, Software Freedom Day, Zenoss

This week I was happy to see this white paper by Jane Curry a certified Tivoli Consultant and Instructor. Her Open Source Management Options paper compared OpenNMS, Nagios and my favorite network monitoring software, Zenoss Core. Part of the reason I love Zenoss is that I have been involved with the project for over two years and have watched our user community grow (Also and am employed by Zenoss Inc. as their VP of Community and the paycheck helps spread the love;).

The paper is a very thorough comparison of three popular open source monitoring packages. Her analysis was very gratifying since she gave Zenoss the nod. (though to be fair, she didn’t care for OpenNMS’ Java architecture due to personal choice) Otherwise it was a pretty close call:

OpenNMS and Zenoss are both extremely competent products covering automatic discovery, availability monitoring, problem management and performance management and reporting. Zenoss has some topology mapping and has better documentation but the code feels less reliable. OpenNMS currently has a rather messy architecture around events, alarms and notifications, though this is said to be under review. I also struggle to believe that you have to recycle the whole of OpenNMS if you have changed a configuration file!

Also I want to offer my congratulations to the OpenNMS guys for getting praise on their solution they’ve worked hard and have a nice product. It’s also satisfying to see a Tivoli expert acknowledge open source solutions as an alternative to well respected solutions like Tivoli.

As a follow-on John and Coté had Jane as a guest on their podcast to discuss her findings, I highly recommend the IT Management Guys podcast for a good discussion.

Technorati Tags: management, Monitoring, Nagios, Open Source, OpenNMS, Zenoss

I am not a big podcast listener but one of the ones I listen to regularly is the IT Management podcast with Redmonk’s Coté and John M. Willis. Today Zenoss’ Matt Ray and Tarus Balog from OpenNMS were guests and I thought it was a particularly good episode because of the open source angles. Here’s some cool things that I picked up from the show.

Taxonomy of Management

One of my areas of interest is the taxonomy of management partly because I am fascinated about SEO but also because I spend a lot of time discussing systems management and like to use the “best” terminology for that conversation.  It seems depending on your point of view you describe what you do in a different way.  interesting to hear the taxonomy of management software. For example, Zenoss often talks about network monitoring and systems management. OpenNMS talks about themselves network management. John Willis talks about how he used to refer to everything connected to the network was called NMS.  Tarus mentions that the term back in the dot-com days that they used the term ENMS (Enterprise Network Management System). I guess the language you use is informed by your background.

Open Source Integration

OpenNMS is doing a lot of cool things with integration among other projects. They are helping improve the Asterisk MIB, they integrate with both Concursive (a CRM/Ticketing system), and Hyperic an open source systems management application. I thought one of the funniest things is right after you hear a telephone ring Tarus shares his story about moving to Asterisk (an open source phone system). An Pavlovian response or coincidence?

If you are into systems management it’s a particularly good show and I highly recommend it.

Technorati Tags: Hyperic, network monitoring, OpenNMS, systems managment, Zenoss

Most open source luminaries are known for their code, their successful startup successes or even their outspokenness. Andre Boisvert comes to open source from a different angle. Having worked for two billionaire programmers, Larry Ellison and Jim Goodnight, Andre’s transition from proprietary software to open source software has been an interesting journey.

Andre started out his career at IBM where he spent 13 years. At Big Blue he was fast tracked through various positions in sales, marketing and R&D as part of their executive program. He then left for a turn around at Cognos (now owned by IBM). He’s been the President and COO of the world’s largest private software company, SAS Institute Inc. and has been the SVP of Marketing at Oracle. After working for some of the largest proprietary software companies, Andre now works primarily advising open source startups using his experience in order to help them better compete with some of his former employers. Though he keeps a relatively low profile in the open source community though he’s definitely a mover and a shaker.

Read the full story

Technorati Tags: Andre Boisvert, Compiere, Open Source, Palamida Commericlal, Pentaho, Zenoss

When you live in Raleigh, NC you realize any trip to the west coast isn’t direct. What’s really bad is when you I to a small city on the west coast  I have a double layover trip. This time to beautiful Bellingham, WA. Today I will be enjoying the fine amenities of the Atlanta and Salt Lake airports.  Luckily, LinuxFest NW is one of my favorite Linux festivals and Bellingham is a neat little town that lies between the mountains and the ocean about 60 miles from Vancouver, British Columbia.

If you are coming to the show stop by the Zenoss booth and say “Hello” or come to my talk on Saturday morning at 11:00 a.m on Zenoss Core.

Technorati Tags: Belllingham, LinuxFest Northwest, Travel, Washington, Zenoss