For more than 20 years in the past, Open Source was like a crying baby – loud but not loved. Many open source companies including Red Hat, a pioneer, had only made marginal revenues compared with other concurrent big software companies. Players around the world who genuinely loved open source concept, were competing against dominating windows-based software in guerrilla warfare fashions. The randomness came with the volunteering contributions, the shortage of funding, the lack of general organizations and development roadmaps had made open source software painful to use, especially for large enterprise environments where robustness and ease of maintenance are often the core requirements.
But things are dramatically changed with the new waves of cloud services and Big Data today. Now it becomes everyone’s favorite baby almost overnight. For example, Docker, a small San Francisco startup who just barely released its v1.0 software container solution for cloud about 1.5 years ago [See our August blog on Containers and Cloud], is instantly pursued by all major cloud providers. Google is using container templates directly for its cloud deployment features including autoscaling and load-balancing. Microsoft rushed to sign a new deal with Docker in October in order to allow generic Docker containers to be supported on windows servers and Azure platform in the near future. Today Amazon and Google’s popular cloud platforms have promoted a major chunk of Big Data solutions from open source communities, by either insulating the complexity of management tasks or delivering automation packages to the market. At the meantime, big old telecommunication companies are spending billions to develop open-source-based software-defined network infrastructure. Late for the party but with its own flair, Microsoft started to open its developer source code a few years ago to join the community. This week Microsoft disclosed its intention to open source its re-architected .NET Core as a foundation for both open-source application development and for cross-platform cloud services and application deployment.
On global mobile market, many OEMs and ODMs in emerging markets have been developing and packaging customized mobile applications using open source technologies on their devices, mostly on top of free Android mobile OS. This strategy has proved both fast and effective for many of them. The rocket rise of Chinese local smartphone maker Xiaomi, now #2 in market share in smartphone delivery in China, is a great example. [See October blog on The Fast Shifting Market of Mobile].
What are the reasons for the rebirth and stellar rise of an old baby? First, through time when a disruptive innovation has accumulated enough momentum, reached critical adoption mass and refined enough its solutions to form a sustainable ecosystem, it transforms itself from a smaller player in marginal markets to a powerful player that can compete head-to-head with incumbent dominating technologies in main markets. Second, other disruptive forces of present, triggered by the Second Machine Age innovations, demand new thinking, new ideas, new solutions to brand new problems which incumbents are not prepared to deal with. The disruptive technology thus becomes a more attractive, creative and cost-effective alternative for the experiments of seeking new solutions. Third, once worldwide great minds start gathering around on the subject, everything is possible. To sum up, the current condition is ripe for a broader penetration of a once insignificant disruptive technology to the mainstream market.
Some recent comments on Wall Street Journal explained the current appeals of open source software to big businesses. Companies think that it’s less expensive and easier to customize than proprietary software. They believe that open source options can help them develop new services faster. Obviously speed and cost are the top decision factors and signatures of today’s technology market.