Zenoss is proud to take part in the Texas Python Unconference 2008 on October 4-5 in Austin. This is a FREE event at the University of Texas. We’ll be presenting and hope to see a big turnout of Python fans from Texas and beyond. Presentations are open-format, so if you have something you’d like to demo or present, please sign up.

Tags: Community, Events, Python, unconference, Zenoss

Roberto Galoppini did a nice job highlighting the good work of the Zenoss Community yesterday:

Open Source Systems Management: Zenoss expands platform support, an interview with Mark Hinkle | Commercial Open Source Software

Roberto’s an Italian blogger who has very good commentary on open source, a good addition to any open source blogroll.  Thanks Roberto!

In case you missed the press release, we announced our Gold Sponsorship of the Twisted Software Foundation. We think this is important because as CTO Erik Dahl said:

“At Zenoss our software lives and breathes Twisted, and as a commercial open source company we feel it’s important to give back to the projects we use.”

It also helps when they share our vision for open source in the enterprise and provide the tools to make it happen.

“As early as two years ago, many people still questioned the use of open source software in the enterprise,” said Glyph Lefkowitz, founder of Twisted. “Forward-thinking companies like Zenoss are proving that through collaboration and community involvement open source software is not only ready for, but can excel in, an enterprise environment. The Twisted project enables companies like Zenoss to benefit from the collective input of a highly technical and savvy community.”

Zenoss is grateful for the support of our partners, community and customers and we’re always eager to help those who help us. Thanks again for your support.

Mark and I just got back from a weekend in sunny Bellingham, Washington with the Open Source faithful. There were a good thousand enthusiasts there and we got to talk to a fair number of them. We gave a presentation of the latest Zenoss beta and attended a few ourselves. Lots of great talks like Hacking with Asterisk, MythTV and the BOFs for OpenSUSE and Fedora. Talked to a lot of folks who were using the product or planning to soon, and pointed a few to creative new ways they might want to use Zenoss for monitoring unexpected things. In addition to the presentations, there were many interesting booths and I enjoyed talking with quite a few of them, including the Portland PostgreSQL Users Group and the folks from Untangle. We even gave away a SqueezeBox to Gary in Richland, WA from our drawing. LinuxFest NW was a great community event, and we look forward to coming back next year!

Anton Olsen has a tip that I would have never expected for Zenoss which makes it a little bit cooler. In Dallas traffic is a challenge for Anton’s coworkers so he included a traffic monitor (the automobile kind) in the Zenoss dashboard so he and his coworkers can see what trouble they might face during their commute.

You can read the tip on Anton’s blog: Zenoss Google Maps Traffic Monitor at antonolsen.com

Here in the office we’ve got the Zenoss dashboard up on a large LCD on the wall so we can keep an eye on our servers. As a service to the people here that commute into Dallas on the way home I have added Google’s traffic reports to the maps portlet on the dashboard.

Fortunately the traffic reports are already built into the Google

This is a pretty simple hack, but it does involved editing a javascript file in the template. The usual disclaimers apply, backup your files, and expect the hack to disappear when you upgrade zenoss.

Find geomap-2.1.js, it should be in Zenwidgets/skins/zenui/javascript/. It’s exact location may vary depending on how you installed zenoss and which system you are using.

Anton’s tip has made him eligible to win the Asus Eee, he has also posted his tip to the Tips Folder on the Zenoss wiki. You can submit your tip and get a chance to win your Linux laptop.

For the past three years, an open source consulting firm appropriately named the Olliance Group has put on an event called the “Open Source Think Tank” .

Nowhere else can you spend two concentrated days talking to open source execs, thought leaders and CIO’s. It’s good for expanding the Rolodex. More importantly, its good for expanding my perspective on open source.

Last year, I was left with mixed feelings on the “state of open source”. I think timing had a lot to do with this. At the time, we were wrapped around the proverbial axle on licensing issues. As a result, much of the conversation was consumed with speculation around GPLv3, its impact, etc. While licensing is obviously is an essential underlying piece of infrastructure required to support the ecosystem, these discussions can quickly slide into the arcane and are often far removed from our core goal of making life better for end users.

This year, the primary conversation was different. While licensing remains an evolving and nuanced issue for all of us in the open source ecosystem, the topic has (fortunately) drifted into the background. In contrast to last year’s discussion which was internally focused on issues within the open source ecosystem, this year’s conversation focused externally on the end user perspective, needs, wants, likes, etc. Over the last year open source has made a leap forward as a valid approach to developing and distributing enterprise software. SaaS and commercial open source are entering the mainstream.

My summary observation is that over the last year open source as a viable approach to enterprise software has made quantum leaps in terms of entering the mainstream.

The best evidence of this progress is that the debate over whether “commercial open source” is really an oxymoron has all but died among this group. While there is plenty of divergence in terms of approaches to commercial open source, it is clear that free software, community and commercial business are symbiotic. It is now plainly clear that open source is a permanent and pervasive driver in enterprise software.

While we are each contributing at various levels to bringing open source to the mainstream, no doubt the MySQL / Sun transaction has moved the needle most significantly. I was sure to given Marten Mickos a big thank you and clink his glass of Pinot Noir when I saw him at the event this year.

For first movers and purists, there is always some ambivalence to the mainstreamifying of any concept. As a beta-geek myself and having made a career operating in the early phases of new IT paradigms (e.g. client-server, web, SaaS), I can relate to this odd mix of emotions.

For all involved however the progress is unequivocally good news. For us (the provider), the evolution is obviously positive. Mainstream adopters are the lifeblood of a vibrant software business (closed or open source). Users and contributors (community and commercial) clearly gain as well. Only a healthy and growing business can afford to invest in enabling the community and the next realm of innovation — and give most of it away!

Unisys VP and GM of Open Source Business, Anthony Gold recently made some predictions for 2008. The prediction that caught my eye was this one:

4. Businesses will increase the speed with which they leverage open source in enterprise applications as well as in operational and business management functions.

Gold says that in 2008, adoption of open source alternatives for a variety of enterprise applications and management requirements will continue to increase in areas that have long been the nearly exclusive province of proprietary solutions.

Increasingly popular tools for business and IT monitoring – such as JasperSoft and Pentaho for dashboard reporting in business intelligence (BI) applications and GroundWork, Hyperic and Zenoss for operations control – will penetrate even further into corporate IT infrastructures. So will business solutions such as Alfresco for enterprise content management (ECM), Concursive Concourse for customer relationship management (CRM) solutions, Compiere and Openbravo for enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions, and a host of new collaboration technologies based on web 2.0 capabilities.

Gold points out that market dynamics and government requirements are major factors in this evolution. Many rapidly developing areas, such as China and other parts of the Asia Pacific region, have first-generation IT infrastructures in which proprietary applications have not been widely deployed. Consequently, they are very receptive to open source solutions as a first choice. In Europe, state and local governments and even the European Union are driving use of open solutions for ECM in order to facilitate the sharing of increasingly large amounts of information among governments with a common need for access.

I think Anthony’s right. More applications are going to displace or take the place of proprietary enterprise applications. Obviously we think there’s a huge opportunity for Zenoss especially when faced with the alternative of proprietary enterprise applications. I also agree that as developing countries like China grow their IT infrastructure they can grow it without locking into proprietary software from the start.

Kick the Tires on Zenoss

This article came through the tubes today, and it was a joy to see. Of course we know how easy and simple it is to get zenoss installed and up and running, but to read about long time users of Nagios and other network management tools itching finding for something new, and finding what they need in our project is always good to see. And for someone to say that he’s having “fun” with it, that’s just icing on the cake (although I’m somewhat skeptical).

US states slam Google, Firefox as no match for Microsoft

I think they really missed the mark on this one. While a valid point is made in the OS field, linux based OS’s may not put any dent in the market share of Microsoft, but that does not mean Open Source can not achieve such a feat. We’ve seen from the success of Firefox, that providing a superior product for free to consumers, that people will take the steps to use something more than what Internet Explorer offers. Microsoft no longer acts monopolistic, it does not keep consumers from downloading Firefox, it doesn’t prevent computers from installing Ubuntu or Fedora. You can’t denounce Microsoft, crying monopoly because of it’s market share, because of the laze of IT managers in state agencies, that won’t allow the use of Firefox or Linux, even though it may be completely capable (or even superior) to fulfill the task.

We use Linux for our critical infrastructure here at Zenoss but on the desktop we use a variety of operating systems Linux (mainly Ubuntu), Mac OS X, and Windows but we all dream of a day we are able to use 100% free software desktops. To that end we would like to encourage all our community members to participate in the Linux Foundation annual Linux Desktop Survey. The survey will help inform the decisions and focus of the Linux Foundation Desktop Linux workgroup.
Over the past year, the industry has seen increasing Linux desktop and client adoption, especially in Latin America and Asia, and a number of Linux desktop offerings from major computer vendors. The LF’s 2007 Survey is designed to address these trends and secure the broadest possible participation by companies, institutions and individuals throughout the world.

The 2007 Linux Desktop Survey will be conducted from October 17, 2007 - November 30, 2007. Survey results will be made publicly available shortly after it concludes. To take the survey, please visit:

https://www.linux-foundation.org/en/2007ClientSurvey

At Zenoss, we are very fortunate to have a group of very passionate community members.  They are very vocal and they do not hesitate to praise as well as criticize us.  Our forum provides a good medium to capture general requests and rants, but we felt that we also needed to capture great anecdotes and best practices we hear from our community.  Recently, we had a chance to visit some of our customers around the nation and capture their experiences, best practices, etc.  We learned a lot from our visits and we documented them by capturing our community’s stories on video as well as print.  Two of those stories have already been released and can be found at http://www.zenoss.com/product/case-studies/case-studies .  You can find links to both Medifast and Mercy stories from both a C-Level and a SysAdmin perspective.  We hope that you enjoy watching them as well as we enjoyed documenting them.  Let us know if you would be interested in telling us your Zenoss story and become a Zenoss Video Star.