Inside OpenNMS

Just getting back into the swing of things after showing off OpenNMS at SCaLE this past weekend. SCaLE is a great conference where there isn’t too much hype and you get to meet and see some of the finest and hardest working people from a few of the best open source projects.

This is our second showing at SCaLE and seeing the familiar faces from last year is already like seeing old friends. One friendly face that I haven’t seen at SCaLE is Ethan Galstad. So, since some of us open source network management “players” were able to make it and while showing off our projects we certainly don’t hesitate to claim our softwares each support Ethan’s hugely successful Nagios monitoring project, I thought I’d do a little marketing for Ethan. Here are some photos of me visiting the booths of Hyperic, Zenoss, and Groundwork with my “Nagios, only the NSA monitors more!” T-shirt. Ethan handed a few of these Ts out at our DevJam conference last year, and even though I wasn’t lucky enough to get one of those, I thought they were so cool that I ordered one from Ethan right away.

The Hyperic crew thought it was a riot, the Groundwork guys were jealous of the T, and the Zenoss guys just thought I was probably a nut case. They were all quite cool about it, actually.

Ethan, these photos are for you buddy:

The Hyperic crew were good sports and they put on a good face tolerating those “crazy OpenNMS guys.” Thanks to John, Stacey, and Chip.

---

 There were actually Zenoss folks there, though no one seemed too interested in being in this photo (grin). I’m quite sure if Mark Hinkle had been nearby he would have jumped in the photo.

---

 Peter was kind enough to let me snap this photo. He was working hard and was a good sport when I interrupted him.

---

 WTH? We’ve been infiltrated. Hyperic marketing folks are everywhere! That’s Ben (RangerRick), Stacey (from Hyperic) and Jeff (jeffg). 

I spend a good portion of my life working on a free software project and so, perhaps it’s because I grew up during the 60′s, that the word “free” in free software helps connote to me the freedom aspect of free vs. gimme that for free.

Free software is free to use, distribute, and even sell.  If you purchase software from Red Hat, you’re essentially buying a brand and what that brand means to you: confidence, continuity, quality, support, trust… in other words value.

v = b-c

In software sales ease, the value (v) is the benefit (b) something brings you minus what it costs (c).

So, by simply using free software, at no cost, that immediately increases value if you get the benefits you’re seeking. Such a case can be made for CentOS vs. Red Hat.  However, if you’re looking for qualified services and support and the backing of a company like Red Hat can provide, and it’s provided well, then supporting a revenue model like subscriptions or packaging/distribution fee(s) can, for many, increase the benefit enough to more than offset the cost and still provide value.

Tarus discussed in his blog this week, in a way that only he can, his zeal for free software and his dislike of what he calls “open source shareware”.  He calls it open source shareware because not all the software is open, and, in an opinion we both share, decreases its benefit as a free software project and, obviously, increases its cost.  However, I do believe, and many attempts are being made in the market today, that a case can be made for value under this model.

The trick for the companies selling software, shareware or not, is to be able to articulate and provide benefits in different ways than what free software provides.  Certainly, Oracle and Microsoft do this well so, I suspect, this model can be made successful, too.

In Tarus’ blog this week, he also mentions getting some concerned feedback from our friends at Hyperic about his comments this week.  When I say friends, it means that we have met personally, spent a good deal of time together, and realized, right away, that we have a lot in common and truly enjoyed each others company.  We also discovered that while our business models are different, they have a lot more in common.

One statement that Javier made, when we first met, that struck me at first as funny then quite enlightening was that we couldn’t have picked a tougher software market to compete in… the network and systems management market.  After having spent 12 years as a consultant and software engineer in this space, I couldn’t agree more!

So, today, I want to close out the week and blog about some network and systems management “love”.  Back to my 60′s reference, perhaps I can redefine free love .  Working with one of our enterprise support customers, we put together a project for end-to-end monitoring using OpenNMS and its distributed transaction monitors as well as an agent based technology to monitor the internals of Java based applications.  Hence, end-to-end, monitoring combining the use of agent-less and agent-based monitoring technologies.

As friends do, I first turned to Hyperic and really got to know their software.  As a consultant, I found the software to be just what we needed and recommended it to the customer.  The next step, integration.  Matt and I have been been burning the candle at both ends to make delivery early so that we an show some love to our friends at Hyperic… and, get paid by our customer, hehe.

So, today, I’m proud to announce that OpenNMS now supports an integration with Hyperic HQ that could have only been done with open source software and, no less important, enterprise quality software.  How nice.  Check it out and let me know what you think.

 Hyperic Integration