Open source is a term that was coined in the late 1990s to encompass a series of free software licences that give various levels of freedom to the users of software. On the one hand you have so called copyleft licences like the General Public License or GPL that place some restrictions on the user to other much more liberal licences like the BSD license that place very few restrictions on the user. All of the licences give the user access to the source code of the software and allow them to modify the software. The user is then able to re-distribute the modifications as they see fit.
Google Trends is an on-line service for comparing the search volumes for up to five keywords. I thought it would be interesting to compare the relative buzz of the new wave open source network management players between themselves, but also between other open source projects and commercial products.
Google Trends doesn’t supply the search volumes themselves, so no quantitative data will be presented. The data that is presented is solely comparative.
Tools like the Test-Um Wi-Net are great for trouble shooting wireless networks. But, Wi-Net falls a long way short of giving you real low level technical insight into your wireless network. What do you do if you need more? Say, you need to capture packets and the like.
Wireshark Capturing Wi-Fi traffic using AirPcap One solution is to use the WireShark + AirPcap combination.
WireShark I’m sure most of you have heard of.
There does seem to be a lot of heat in whether or not the new wave open source systems management players are going to take on the Big 4 (IBM, CA, BMC & HP). You can get more info here and here.
If the new wave do end up undercutting the Big 4, won’t the Big 4 just buy the new wave companies?
The new wave are venture funded…venture capitalist want to cash out at some point.
For a long time non-commercial open source projects had exclusive access to an audience. Sites like Slashdot are very focused on open source, commercial software doesn’t get a look in.
With the emergence of commercial open source players things are a little more complex. The commercial open source players have access to traditional media, but they are also able to access the traditional open source audience as well. That is bound to cause problems for the non-commercial players.
Michael Tiemann made an interesting post titled Will the Real Open Source CRM Please Stand Up. Alex Fletcher wrote an interesting follow up.
That got me thinking…how kosher are the licences used by the “new wave” open source network management companies? Have Hyperic, Groundwork and Zenoss really got the open source bug, or do they want the open source kudos without really opening up?
I did a bit of digging around, and I am pleased to say that, at least to my non-legal eye, the licences do look the real deal.
One of the odd things about the three new wave players is that, of the three, only one Hyperic supports Windows natively.
The lack of native Windows support in the other two Zenoss/Groundwork seems like quite an oversight. It will be interesting to see whether the lack of native Windows support hinders their adoption. I’d be surprised if it doesn’t.
Zenoss have produced a nice virtual machine for VMWare. Kudos to them for that.
A bunch of venture funded network management start-ups are storming the enterprise space with pockets full of venture capital money.
The new wave comprise: Hyperic, Zenoss and Groundwork.
What ties them all together? All of the tools are open source, but that isn’t new in network management. Projects like Nagios, OpenNMS as well as a raft of others have been around for a decade or so. What’s new is the combination of open source products and the level of funding going into the new players.
There’s a buzz going around at the moment in the open source systems management space. A new consortium, aimed at evangelising the best tools and companies, has been formed. The Open Management Consortium is a loose grouping of projects, organisations and individuals interested in how open source can impact systems management.
The consortium has a great page with all of the member projects and companies. I think you’ll find much there to interest you.
Another commercial open source systems management software product has recently appeared on our radar. Hyperic, founded in 2004, is going after the enterprise market.
The following quote is from the Hyperic blog:
Enterprise customers are open to participating in communities and are eager to reap the >benefits. but they don’t care about having access to the source code of a product or >participating as much as some would like to think.
It is nice to see the open source network management community is still in rude health. Another network and systems monitoring tool has popped onto my horizon. Don’t know how I missed this one, it looks a goodie!
Based upon the much underrated application server platform Zope, Zenoss sure does look the part. If the website is anything to go by I can see a lot of IT and network managers finding a home for this one.
