As a worker in the trenches who has spent time with Patrol, Network Node Manager, Nagios, Hobbit (and yes even Tivoli), I have got to say that the only thing these days that matter is the tool easy to use. If the answer is yes than I can sell my management on anything (usually be showing them pretty graphs with flashing lights and colors).

No one is turning up their noses at “Open Source” these days.

All the Open Source solutions mentioned in the article have a for pay option:

Hyperic
Nagios - Groundworks

Just like RedHat. So you have the best of all worlds.

I love numbers.

Please explain what you believe I am conflating.

You have a provable and admitted sampling bias. That doesn’t mean you are biased. Just numbers…

Solar Winds doing something right or even better, doesn’t mean that Hyperic or Zenoss do better by dropping any mention of Open Source.

If you of all people don’t see the implication that Open Source solutions are somehow harder to configure and more expensive to maintain than commercial options is fear mongering then I don’t know what to tell you. Let’s see the numbers…

I think you should officiate the systems management bake off throw down.

Andrew

Are we going to continue this debate over here now? I think your comment is a conflation. My comment in this article has nothing to do with bias. I was asked to comment on Solariwinds vs Hyperic and Zenoss. Solarwinds did 98 million in revue in 2008 and I can’t image Hyperic and Zenoss combines did over 20 million in 2008. Solarwinds is doing something right and in my opinion is they are not talking about open source… No blatant fear mongering here… just numbers…

John

conflation

You have to love twitter…

Where should I start?

I think the main problems I have with this article is the conflation of real and imaginary issues and the blatant fear mongering.

God bless John M. Willis, but his sample may be a bit bias since the majority of his conversations with the enterprise are in the context of his Tivoli expertise. (Mind you, I’m not asserting his bias.) I don’t believe someone who is committed enough to Tivoli to be seeking Tivoli expertise is the best indicator of what the ‘enterprise’ is doing or thinking.

Furthermore, to avoid conflating issues, a much better question for John Willis to answer is if the mythical ‘enterprise’ would be more likely to replace Tivoli with Solar Winds vs an Open Source alternative.

You also might want to look at Hyperic’s and Zenoss’s marketing. Maybe this is just my bias, but I don’t believe ‘Open Source’ is the main thrust in most of what I can see. (I also believe the term you want to use is ‘beachhead’.)

Moving on to Solar Winds, a company that is over 5 years older and has a more diverse product offering than Hyperic or Zenoss, Kenny Van Zandt is spouting pure FUD.

Does commercial software configure itself for free now? In general, with commercial software, you get to pay for the software, and then get the privilege of paying someone to configure it or doing it yourself. I find it hard to believe that Solar Winds is much easier to configure than Hyperic or Zenoss. I’d love to see a bake off with some numbers to compare features, licensing, cost of implementation and determine the total cost of ownership. The sales process in enterprise software is essentially exploiting inefficiencies in the market place with asymmetric access to information. There is the possibility that Solar Winds might just be better, but without the data the alternative is to pay the Ignorance Premium.

One point Van Zandt does make, which I agree with and have been thinking about a lot, is how people fill in the ‘gaps’ in open source offerings. On one hand, there is a benefit that they can even do this since they have the source code. On the other hand the Open Source companies could do a much better job of partnering with each other to provide reference implementations of symbiotic projects. That could be win-win for all involved.

But that’s a topic for another day…

Andrew Shafer