I am very excited about our recently announced partnership with Spencer Trask Collaborative Innovations (STCI). This partnership further validates what we see as the fundamental and rapid changes in organizations structure to achieve and support collaboration. STCI has brought together six companies to leverage their unparalleled expertise, knowledge and experience in collaboration, innovation, and to build and launch successful enterprises.
As I have discussed before, when we started our company we knew from our experience that collaboration on business applications was a natural evolution for the software industry. In our partnership with STCI, organizations that identify the need for enterprise software will work with CSI utilizing our collaborative approach to deliver innovative, less expensive, sustainable software products that leverages open standards.
I look forward to hearing your thoughts on this partnership.
Add a commentOne of the questions I am often asked is “what applications are good candidates for collaboration?”
The word “core” in business describes that at which you are distinctly, uniquely competent. Furthermore, it is what you are best at that differentiates you in the market or gives you that “unfair competitive advantage”. As a result, your customers are willing to pay more for your core competency. It just makes sense to put most of your efforts behind that core, that differentiator. Everything else, once you accept that definition of core, is considered “context.” Context is equally important to the success of your company: if you fail to fulfill a context task, you could easily lose a customer, be out of compliance with regulation or law, or alienate an employee, a partner or your community.
Core applications (those that differentiate you and greatly impact your customers) are usually best handled internally. All other applications are “context” - and are typically good candidates for collaboration. Collaboration on context applications helps save money, mitigate risk, and leverage subject matter expertise in the industry but maybe not in your company or available for this business application. This new approach allows companies to free up resources to focus on those processes that provide a competitive advantage.
CSI provides the methodologies and skills necessary to build provide and support collaboratively developed context applications. Today, leading companies across all industries understand it does not make sense to even attempt to independently develop context applications. The time is right for collaborating and innovation. Join one of the existing Core Teams or consider forming a new one and start leveraging the benefits of collaboration.
Add a commentBill Hersh, MD, Professor and Chair of the Department of Medical Informatics & Clinical Epidemiology (DMICE) in the School of Medicine at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) in Portland recently contributed a piece to Silicon Florist, regarding Health Information Technology and why it is important to Portland. I would like to take a minute to comment on it.
I agree with Bill, Portland could become a “hub for health IT at the intersection of industry, academia, and its health care systems”. As a small company active in Health IT since 2007, we have found Portland to be an excellent location to collaborate with academia. In August 2008 we launched TriSano ™, an open source public health community. The TriSano™ Community consists of Collaborative Software Initiative developers and subject matter experts (doctors, nurses, epidemiologists and informatics). Many of the SMEs in the TriSano™ Community are from Portland academia and industry. Although the outcome of this collaboration, CSI TriSano™ has been deployed across the state of UT and all of its counties to Bill’s point most of the funds to develop CSI TriSano™ came from outside the state.
Collaborative Software Initiative is committed to continuing to identify opportunities for collaboration in and outside the state of OR. As always, I look forward to hearing your thoughts.
Add a commentOn May 6th it was announced that Collaborative Software Initiative has been recognized as the “Software Newcomer of the Year” by the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) 2009. This award is presented to a new software or software services company whose product or service has the potential for significant impact on the industry, either through technological advancement or new business models. Now in its 24th year, the CODIE Awards program has raised the standard for excellence and serves as a prestigious representation on outstanding achievement and vision in the software and information industry.
I am honored and appreciative of this recognition of our business model. When we started this business we knew that collaboration on business applications was a natural evolution for the software industry. The open source community proved the collaborative model by creating Linux and key infrastructure products with global deployment. With all the social networking websites that are available today we knew people would begin to share their ideas and requirements for business applications that were not only dropped on them, like compliance, regulatory and industry standard issues, but they would also look at applications that they had written themselves or ones that they didn’t want to do internally in the first place. In this economic downturn we are finding collaboration and innovation in a variety of industries where people are trying to find a way to get their job done with less resources and budget so they are reaching out to us so they can team together to share costs, share risk, and share knowledge and get a high quality, well supported solution.
We value the recognition of the SIIA and promise to continue to raise the standard for excellence.
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April 01 2009
I have a long history in the open source software business, but as of two years ago I started to talk about a new development model called community source.
It was slow going at first. No one really grasped the idea until about a year ago when Gartner’s Brian Prentice defined the model and called out Collaborative Software Initiative as the first vendor to provide community source services.
Since then, more folks have written about it, and our company has been able to provide examples of the model in action - through TriSano in the government space and through our work with SIG in financial services, among others.
What remains confusing to many is the difference between open source software and community source software.
Open source software is typically software that is developed by a community of individual contributors; although, in most commercial open source software companies, the company employs many of the key contributors. The software is freely available to download under the General Public License, or customers can buy a subscription with services and support.
An open source software project is usually started and gains momentum because a handful of developers are passionate about the project and are the “subject matter experts” - the people who are experts in what needs to be included in the software and who will be using the software.
This is where community source software really differs.
There are large number of business applications that are commonly used across companies and organizations in any given industry. But, that handful of developers passionate about those particular applications doesn’t exist. And, the subject matter experts aren’t developers anyway: they are doctors and nurses in the public health space; and public officials in the online voting industry; and graphic designers in entertainment; and bankers in financial services, for example.
Community source combines the best of both worlds: the traditional development model (largely considered the proprietary model) and the open source software model. The results transcend “us vs. them” and include significant cost savings, better software, platform and vendor flexibility like never seen before with enterprise applications.
Add a commentIT Business Edge this week is running a column I wrote about how government is pushing the envelope on technology. I know; this is not something I would have found myself saying a decade ago.
But, as my article goes on to point out, a variety of recent movements at the federal level indicate that government is leading the way on openness and collaboration in application development.
An important point not captured in my column is that industry needs to quickly get on the same train as government. Collaborative methodologies and community sourcing will save companies millions of dollars in the next few years, as we weather the worst economic storm we’ve seen during our lifetimes. And, it will help these companies emerge stronger, leaner and more effective as the tide begins to change. Beyond cost savings, the applications developed through the community-sourcing model are just better software products. Period.
We see this taking hold in financial services, specifically. I see this industry as an early adopter of collaborative methodologies to build commonly needed applications at a fraction of the price of traditional development methods. It’s not that surprising considering this industry was also an early adopter of Linux.
I would be very interested to hear from you on what you think. Your thoughts?
Add a commentI’ve been encouraged to see a strong level of support for the “Open Letter to Obama” released last week, which now has almost 100 signatures.
I’m really pleased to see the world’s most successful Linux distributions - Novell and Red Hat - join the list.
Why did this letter see such an influx of support so quickly? Some folks in the press have argued that it’s because each company has something to gain. No doubt, that is true at some level.
But more importantly, the support comes from companies, organizations and individuals who believe in the power of much more important concepts - collaboration, openness, and transparency. By developing software and igniting government projects through collaboration, new technologies will start to be adopted to build the digital infrastructure for a new century. This is beginning to permeate through public health departments and state agencies and will wind its way into a variety of state departments in the coming years.
Another point that I think needs clarifying, given the level of discussion that has resulted from the letter, is that the letter doesn’t suggest open source software be mandated. I don’t support mandates and I would never sign anything that says that. Rather, I support equal credence be given to open source software and proprietary software. Most importantly, I believe the collaborative model is the key. Regardless of how the end product is licensed or delivered, collaboration in development will accelerate deployments, facilitate interoperability among government departments, and increase knowledge among subject matter experts and developers through a traditional network affect.
While some folks still debate the merits of open vs proprietary software, I find it a tired conversation as I have always said that there will always be places for both and great solutions today that can only be delivered by one of them. What’s hard to dispute is the value of collaboration, which will be a catalyst for innovation and fuel a new generation of business applications.
Add a commentWith so many blogs today and new ones popping up every day, I imagine you could easily decide the world just doesn’t need yet another guy telling a story or trying to get his thoughts heard and I couldn’t agree more. That is why I haven’t had a blog before. My years in high technology, my experience with Linux and the open source community, and now the obvious role for collaboration in this new era of enterprise applications tell me that those who work in and work with technology enjoy conversations about the effects technology has on making a difference in the world. So I have decided to jump into the blogging world.
I’ll be traveling to New York City in a couple of weeks to meet with banking members of our core teams who are looking for new ways to develop software at a fraction of traditional costs and open up new opportunities for everyone. These types of conversations have always provided me with more to think about as my team and I adapt collaborative software development and community sourcing across various vertical industries. In a completely different industry struggling with the same issues of collaboration I was in Utah late last year talking to a group of subject matter experts (doctors, nurses, epidemiologists) about how they want to advance our TriSano platform, which was developed using the community sourcing model in the public health sector as part of a public/private partnership.
I’ve found recently that a few folks have heard the term community source, and for those who have, they don’t fully grasp its definition in the context of software development. I’ll look forward to illustrating this through my experiences and conversations with other leaders from across industries as the year unfolds. From time to time, I’ll likely use this blog to comment on industry news I find relevant to the model for which we’re blazing the trail.
My goal is to spark discussion on a variety of topics important to our customers, prospects and the industry at large. Your comments and views are critical to this conversation and I look forward to hearing from you.
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