Download - The Global Startup Kim Polese
The Global Startup
Kim PoleseCEO, SpikeSource
Strange things are happening in IT
Brazil throws out Microsoft.
So do regions of Spain, Germany, Belgium.
China does its own Linux distro.
Customers want out of big vendor agreements.
U.S. DoD pushes for open source procurements
… And in the Global Economy
Companies Outsourcing Core Functionsproduct development, manufacturing, distribution, support
Countries Competing via Talent ArbitrageIndia, China, Eastern Europe, Brazil …
The Virtual Company Now Becoming the Norm
There’s a term for a market ecology like this one
Mature.
Filled with commodities.
Yesterday, in physical goods.
Today, in the form of software, and skills.
What’s Changed:the Demand side is Supplying itself.
This is much more than a shift in the balance of power.
It’s how power now belongs to everybody.
The big market power is now in The Long Tail.
With software, and skills, most solutions no longer come from big vendors.
They don’t even come from the usual suspects.
As Tom Friedman says,it’s a flat new world.
“Globalization 1.0” empowered countries (1492-1800).
“Globalization 2.0” empowered companies (1800-2000).
“Globalization 3.0” empowers individuals and small groups (2000-now).
We’re shrinking the world and empowering individuals.
Credit where due:Top-down worked for a long time
Power was concentrated at the top
Communications flowed from the top-down
So did ideas, strategies, products
It worked through the entire Industrial Age
Top-down software, and business, was natural in its time
Monolithic vendors made monolithic systems
The world was smaller, simpler
Data was concentrated, isolated
Systems, and Companies were vertically integrated
But then the Net came along
A whole new software and business habitat.
End-to-end communications.
Zero-friction sharing and collaboration.
Soon the ecosystem filledwith a whole new breed of software, and
new pockets of expertise
TestingTechnical Support
Q/A
Wireless
Chip Design
JIT Manufacturi
ng
HR Admin Call Centers
Knowledge Outsourcing
Legal Expertise
… And New Ways of Doing Business
Core vs. Context
Seamless Communication Interfaces
Hubs of Excellence
The Net and Open Source were both built on principles that forever changed “business as
usual”
Nobody owns itEverybody can use it
Anybody can improve it
Open Source is a Global Phenomenon
France, 5%
Poland, 6%
Brazil, 7%
Germany, 8%
Other, 38%
US, 18%
Spain, 5%
Italy,4%
UK, 4%
Canada, 3%
Netherlands3%
*Source: Linux Counter Open Source Project – 145,313 self-profiled Linux users
http://counter.li.org/reports/
** Source: Infonomics 2002 FLOSS Survey of Developershttp://www.infonomics.nl/FLOSS/report/Final4.htm
Countries that have OSS Preference PoliciesBahrain, Belgium, China and Hong Kong, Costa Rica, France, Germany, Iceland,
Israel, Italy, Malaysia, Poland, Portugal, Philippines and South Africa.
Legislation pending:Argentina, Brazil, Bulgaria, Chile, Colombia, France, Italy and Peru.
Linux Usage*
An interesting thing happens when anybody can improve software
It gets better. Naturally.Debugging by over 800,000 developers all over the world.
Improvements from anywhere, in minutes instead of years.
Open source products are naturallyopen to working with other open source
products.
They’re all modular. Like 2 x 4s and roof shingles.
Yet each product grows out of its own development community.
And it’s not the job of each community to make sure its products work with the products of every other community.
Which means…
X
You don’t always know what works with what.
When one version of one product changes, what happens to all the dependencies?
Does one dependent app get hosed by a patch that fixes another dependent app?
DIY testing is an open source tradition.But in large IT shops, it can get mighty time-consuming.
??
?
?
X
CIOs: I need to “just get open source products to work together.”
“We save 30% in vendor cost and waste 20% in component testing.” Dependency issues multiply with every addition, every change.
Startups can’t afford the overhead.Fortune 50 companies don’t want the expense of having teams of
people coping, rather than producing.
That’s why Ray Lane and Murugan Pal founded SpikeSource
SpikeSource: Tested, Certified Open Source Software
Founded by Murugan Pal and Ray Lane in Spring 2003
18+ months of development to create a fully-automated test bed for open source component interoperability testing
Commercial Launch in April 2005
Global Startup from Day One
SpikeSourceMaking Open Source Safe for the Enterprise™
Supports the Components
Required for Your Application
SpikeSource Core Stacks Include:63 Components
6 Platforms6 Languages
SpikeSource offers the most comprehensive and automated solution for testing, integrating, certifying, updating, and supporting open source software.
Addresses the Complete
Support Lifecycle
Fully-Automated Test Bed Provides:22,000 tests nightly across
272 parameters189 configuration files
IncreaseProductivity
Comprehensive open source
information services
Custom or 7 pre-configured LAMP/J stacks
Network / client installation
in 15 minutes
DecreaseCost & Risk
Track and manage open source assets
Updates:12 hour patch to test to
deploy
24 hour cost-effective, flexible support options
Why Go Global from Day One?
Cost ManagementCost reduction on average 1/3 to 1/10th
Global Time Zone Support Coverage24 X 7 development schedule key for competitive parity
Skills utilization“Hubs of excellence” integrated together by global economy and IT
Selling into Local MarketsNew billion-dollar market opportunities opening up …
SpikeSource Offshoring – Selection Process
Feb 2004: Extensive RFP Process Deliverable Requirements
Creative Thinking
Key Criteria:People Quality
Executive Vision for Open SourceCustomer References
Decision: CognizantCEO Mandate for Open Source Leadership
Proactive Advisor to Customers for cost savingsHigh rate of customer satisfaction
Results: Early Success
Our internal engineering operations replicated within six days
Delivered three releases in one year
Several projects initiated completely by Cognizant team
Together, we are offering compelling cost savings to customers
60+ engineers are becoming experts in open source and SpikeSource tools
Challenges in Going Global
Distributed Management TeamRequires flexible, loosely coupled management approaches
Must help your business partners to hone their skills and capabilities
Identifying skills, enabling infrastructure
And, Differentiation must come from new placesYour competitors have access to the same global resources that
you do – differentiation must come from How vs What you do
When commodity components become cheap and abundant, innovation moves to
process automation
Optimizing every step in the supply chain becomes the competitive differentiator.
Going Global is Key.
Like open source, 21st century companies will be designed to be inherently modular
Innovative
Specialized
Loosely Coupled
Optimized for Partnering
Process automation + modularity enablesspeed to market
In ONE Year:Linux-based email firm grew to 60 customers, providing an
alternative to Exchange
“OVERNIGHT”
One India-based testing company grew to $30M in revenue
ONE College StudentLed development of the first development of a Tamil version of
Mozilla . . .
. . . There are over 80 million Tamil-speaking potential customers!
Taking advantage of commoditiesis the biggest opportunity
— for everybody who wants to be a natural resource…Or to build a business on them.
So: where’s this all headed?
No application, or business is beyond commoditization.
Portals
JetspeedAxisStruts
J2EE & Web Services Apps
ERP, Transactional Apps
LuceneeXistOpenLDAP
Open Source Adoption
Application Complexity
File Servers
Mail Servers
Self Service Apps
CRM, Collab Commerce
Linux Apache TomcatJBOSS
PgSQLMySQL
ALL
Catalogs and Websites
SOA FeaturesOS Web Server App Server Database Stack
Data Center Management
Building an Open CompanyLeveraging the “Three O’s”
Offshoring
Outsourcing
OpenSourcing
All of which means we’ll need to adapt to life in a world exploding
with new opportunities