The Role of Vendors in an Open Software Ecosystem

Challenges and Opportunities

Marty Tarle - BiblioCommons

Typical Library Software Ecosystem

Typical Library Software Ecosystem (cont.)

Some open source software

Lots of proprietary software

All needs to work together

Open Source

Software

Proprietary Software

Perception of Proprietary Software Vendors

Perceived as closed and inflexible

Lack of APIs, difficult to integrate with

Long development cycles

Focus is Often on Wrong Things

Open sourcing

Standards support

Direct access to data

Open Sourcing

“If vendors’ products were open source, we could make any change we want”

Inefficient and costly without vendor buy-in

Standards Support

“Vendors’ products just need to support industry standards”

Standards are out of date, and limited

Direct Access to Data

“If we could just get the data out, we can do whatever we want with it”

Tremendous duplication of algorithms, infrastructure and operations

Focus Should be on Vendor Cooperation

Interoperability is a two-way street

Vendors need to

– proactively enable integrations

– proactively integrate other solutions into theirs

Vendor Development Models

Agility is critical

Scrum and lean are now the norm

Long development cycles are unacceptable

Vendor Delivery Models

SaaS rapid deployment of new functionality

Cloud rapid scaling of hardware

Industry trend is towards “continuous deployment”

Vendor Culture

Openness = part of company DNA

Integration = core organizational capability

Openness = proactive, continuous effort

What to ask your vendors

Pace of innovation

How many releases

Release notes

Development model

Delivery model

What to ask your vendors (cont.)

API?

Public

Scalable

Flexible

White label?

Cloud / SOA?

What to ask your vendors (cont.)

Philosophy

Intentions

History

Opportunities

Different strengths of proprietary and open source presents opportunities

Technology lifecycle is important!

Technology Adoption LifecycleAdoption of Open

Source Technology by Libraries Adoption of Proprietary

Technology by Libraries

Adopting OS Technology Too Soon

Impacts service delivery

Increases in-house IT costs

Increases operational costs organization-wide

Best Time to Adopt Open Source

The most successful OS projects are in mature/commodity categories

– Operating systems (Linux, Ubuntu)– Browsers (Firefox)– Databases (MySQL)– Content Management Systems (Drupal, Wordpress)

Best Time to Adopt Proprietary

Commodity/mature products still charge high technology prices

Proprietary products provide the best value earlier in the cycle

Opportunities - ROI

Proprietary Investment

Open Source Investment

Opportunities - Strategic

Open source and proprietary can be combined strategically:

– Complementary

– Additive

Complementary

Primary goal is cost savings

Example: Proprietary solution use to complement open source

Drupal + Acquia (Drupal Gardens)

Evergreen + BiblioCommons

Additive

Primary goal is innovation

Example: proprietary platform enables rapid development of extensions

BiblioCommons API

Conclusion

Vendors and open source communities can work together.

What makes a successful partnership?

– Communication

– Transparency

– Accountability

– Shared Success

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