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Nuxeo Core moves in at Eclipse

February 9th, 2011

As you might have seen in the news today, we decided to contribute a big chunk of our code base — our content repository, Nuxeo Core — to the Eclipse Foundation as a new project under the Eclipse RT umbrella: Eclipse Enterprise Content Repository. It’s a big step for Nuxeo, we’ve been preparing this for a few months already.

After 4 years of active development, Nuxeo Core is one of the most advanced content repositories on the market — if not the most advanced. It offers a wide range of services: content model definition (content types), mixins (dynamic schemas), storage abstraction, query, flexible access control, native de-duplication, format conversion, CMIS bindings and much more! And all of this is bundled as a set of OSGi bundles and highly optimized and tuned to scale well for large volumes (hundreds of million of objects in a single repository), but also run lean, making it easy to embed in existing apps, small or large.

Code-wise, it’s a large piece of software, yet very modular – designed around services and extension points, like the Eclipse architecture pattern. For those who like counting lines, we’re somewhere around 100K SLOC of Java code, in ~20 components, refined over the years.

Technically, it’s packaged and architected as a set OSGi bundles running on various Java container like Equinox, Virgo, Tomcat, JBoss (thanks to Nuxeo Runtime awesomeness) and integrated with the PDE for development. Everything is extensible through extension points. Really nice software!

Why Contribute? Why at Eclipse?

You might wonder why the move. After all, the software is already open source (LGPL) and follows a fully open development model.

We’ve got one main driver: innovation.

Nuxeo Core is a powerful content repository – it’s very extensible and versatile and can be used for a wide range of applications. By setting it free, we’d like to encourage the community to join and innovate in a vendor-neutral environment. We think Nuxeo Core (soon-to-be Eclipse ECR) has the potential to change the market in the same way Eclipse IDE did for the IDE market. It can ignite innovation in the content management space. We don’t know how it will morph, but we’re eager to watch it.

Eclipse has broad reach and a large developer community, trusted and respected by most thanks to the framework and process in place. We think it’s the right home for our little Core to grow big! ;-)

Why Now?

The content management space is changing and commoditization is setting in, led by SharePoint, vendor consolidation and more recently the <CMIS standard>.

We believe that the differentiation lies in the services we provide to our customers, not in low-level software components. That’s why we have developed offerings like Nuxeo Studio, Nuxeo Marketplace and the whole Nuxeo Connect package – a subscription offering for maintenance, support, and customization of content management applications.  From this perspective, it makes no sense to keep low-level components such as a the content repository and all related low-level services for one vendor only. And besides that, content repository technology is not yet well understood in the industry. This technology is a good fit for a surprisingly wide range of software projects, and it could be a great help for many developers and architects if knowledge about content repository technology was more widespread.

We’ve been thinking about contributing the Core for some time, but were waiting for the right moment. A convergence of milestones makes this the right time:

  1. The software has had time to mature. It is proven, robust, and deployed in thousands of shops around the world.

  2. We have the bandwidth to do the work required to contribute the code and ignite the project.

  3. CMIS is taking off, OSGi is hot – and the Core is compliant with both.

We believe it’s time to put more emphasis on content repositories as a technology. I believe that it’s great software and could be part of the developer toolbox, alongside traditional ORM. And for this aspect, credit should go to Apache Jackrabbit from our friends at Day. They have paved the way, even if we have a different take on how a repository should work. And we think for many use cases the Nuxeo Core approach is a better approach, especially when your content is not inherently hierarchical, which is usually the case for document management, enterprise content management, case management and digital asset management.

So here we are – Nuxeo Core is going to Eclipse, and we hope it’s the start of a long story that will make a real difference and impact the market in a very positive way.

What’s a Content Repository? Why should you care?

Nuxeo Core is a Content Repository and that might not be clear for you. :-) So here is my own definition.  A Content Repository, in the content management world, is the database where the content is stored. It basically gives you a high-level API and a set of services to easily store, query, retrieve and process content objects in a way that makes it easy to manipulate and match your domain model.

In this case, content is pretty much anything that: has a data schema (fixed or dynamic), needs access control, can live in a hierarchy, can be versioned, and can be rendered. That’s all.

Why use a content repository? Because if you start from scratch using a pure ORM or bare SQL when building an application to interact with business content, there is a very good chance that you’re going to rewrite the features we’ve developed, refined and optimized over last few years. And that’s the whole point of a content repository – it enables you to model, manage and interact with this content. That’s why you should care and use it! ;-)

You might have noticed that I haven’t mentioned “files”. That’s intentional, because that’s not the key part of the software. Of course, you can add BLOBs to any content object and we manage them well, doing low-level de-duplication and transactional integration. But a content repository is NOT just a file system. It’s much more than that. If you’re just looking to manage files, use a file system. If you’re looking to manage content, that can include files, then a content repository is the way to go! And we think Nuxeo Core is pretty powerful for this purpose.

Interested? Come on in – it’s open!

This technology is already fully open, so don’t hesitate to come by, say hi and start hacking if you like:

It’s going to be an interesting journey,

EB.

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Posted in ECM, Nuxeo, Open Source, Software

Can Day Software Propel Adobe Towards a More Open Business Strategy?

July 30th, 2010

As most involved in the broad content management market, I’ve seen the news of the week: Adobe acquires Day Software, the hot WCM vendor.

I have known and respected Day for a while: they deliver neat technology, have a clean business model and contribute significantly to open source. Plus, I appreciate the people I know from there.

Waking up on Wednesday and seeing the news starting to pour in my tweet stream was a big surprise. I thought about it a bit over the breakfast. My take: great for them, I know some people in the industry are going to hate it, but won’t be change much for Nuxeo and for the open source projects Day’s people are leading. So sent some congrats, a dinner invite, and went on my day waiting for the analysis and industry reaction overview from our great CMO later in the day. Which, in turn, confirmed my take. All good, move on. :-)

I’ve been asked a few time about my opinion and gave it. Until the last time when I thought “but what if Adobe doesn’t follow the Day way?”. Because many people have talked about Adobe closing more of Day’s technology and I don’t buy it. Developers working on the open source project are well respected, they will continue to work on those projects be it for Adobe or for an other company. So that wouldn't be a problem.

The question that started puzzling me is: What if Adobe goes onto a more open way? First reaction: That would be huge!

Imagine, for a second, that Adobe open source the whole CQ5 product. You have:

  • CQ5, great WCM software considered as one of the best in its category (the best?), available as open source

  • Day’s team, a team that knows how to ignite and lead communities

  • Adobe’s marketing war machine to let the world know

You get a winning product, with the capacity to transform the WCM market. By commoditizing this technology, Adobe would hit hard its competition in the WCM market. Despite the fact that it would unify some of the opens source WCM crowd, EMC/Fatwire, Autonomy/Interwoven, OpenText/RedDot/Vignette/Obtree and friends would be under heavy attack.

Adobe could concentrate on monetizing global service offerings: Omniture, Livecycle, end-to-end workflows for medias, acrobat.com on steroids, more online services, etc. Commoditizing the core WCM technology would keep the competition busy and let them make money where they hardly have any meaningful competition, innovate more with new services spanning and leveraging the wide reach of their offerings. We also would see an ecosystem thrive on CQ5, providing the ignition — for free — Adobe needs to enter the market. Kinda the Google way, after all.

Actually the more I think to this and after having read Adobe’s plan for Day, I think it’s the best way to achieve it. If they truly want to create a platform for customer engagement management, this is the way. This is how the industry builds big platform nowadays, by open source software.

All this for a mere $240M and -$50M in revenue addition. That would be the slam dunk that Laurence Hart doesn’t see coming! :-)

Am I crazy enough to think that Adobe will execute this? No. And I haven't thought all this thoroughly. But that would be really fun to watch! :-)

Onto some real work now,

EB.

1 comment »

Posted in ECM, Open Source, Software

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Business of open source: my take on “open core”

April 1st, 2010

The “open core” debate has been around since the inception of the model itself, and gained significant adoption among so-called “commercial open source companies”. The debate is heating a bit these day, and I got inspired by 2 recent blog posts from Brian Prentice and Matt Aslett. I advise to read both posts to understand the reactions bellow. :-)

I think a lot about business models leveraging open source as it’s what makes our business run and I’m deeply convinced that “open core” is fundamentally flawed. This conviction has been formed by real world observations: running a real business for several years now. And I’m happy to see high-profile analysts reach the same conclusion with a sharper analysis and better process! :-)

About Sales & Marketing Savings

James Dixon from Pentaho argues — not suprisingly — that open core is the right model because it reduces the sales and marketing costs to distribute the software. And that might be true. But it is not linked to open core neither to open source, intrinsically. It’s linked to the internet distribution model and the rise of the web as a way for new and small companies to become known.

I would also add that I think the open core market is less powerful as a distribution model than a freemium (or free trial)-one based leveraging proprietary software. The reduction in sales and marketing spend is more related to the online distribution of the software than the open source aspect of “a software core”. So, of course, when you distribute a software online, you have to make it easy to install (hence improve packaging compared to traditional proprietary offerings). But it is really linked to internet-enabled distribution, not to the open access to the source code of the software.

Atlassian (or Skype) might be the flagship of success for this model… without being open source at all (but while contributing to it)!

About the “open core” model

With an open core model, you have to exclude/remove features (hence value) from the open source software to in order to preserve your business: you could be forced to even limit innovation in the open source branch because it could damage your business. It does not leverage any benefits that should be derived from the open nature of the code — which is the very core aspect of open source. It only leverage free distribution not the open aspect of the source code.

I would add that a subscription-based model (where subscription is for maintenance and support services) is superior on the long-term because it drives the company to align and organize itself around the value created for its customer. The more the customer deploy and benefit from the software, the more revenue goes to the vendor. So I think it’s a great way to align vendors and users on the same value stream.

Also, using an open source license does not require free download (advocated by open core users): RHAT is, I think, considered as the most successful company in the open source world. Yet their software is not freely downloadable, while 100% open source.

Hybrid?

I read a lot about “hybrid models“, based some blend of proprietary and open source software, to justify/support an “open core” model. I don’t believe in this at all. Of course, proprietary software is not going away anytime soon. It’s a valuable and proven business model that works and can deliver value to customers when properly applied. Same for open source: it’s here to stay for good. But the “open core” model offer no long-term benefit for customers: it just blurs the real value of open source for them, only leveraging the distribution channel it implies for the vendor benefit.

I believe in clear business models. Successful companies use clear business models because that’s what enable trust from customers. Open core is not one of them: there is no clear line between open source / proprietary, neither serious justification for the customer. Open core is just the good old proprietary model, nothing new here. All vendors uses open source software today!

From a higher perspective, I believe that the whole IT market is moving toward service-based approaches — SaaS paved the way — because it aligns customer value with vendor revenue. That’s why we — at Nuxeo — won’t use the open core model even if it could increase short term revenue. We’re here to stay and we believe that basing our revenue stream on the value we create for our customers is the best way to create sustainable growth.


Cheers,

EB.

6 comments »

Posted in Business, Open Source, Software

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What makes Nuxeo ECM different and worthy of interest? (No, it’s not “open source”)

March 18th, 2010

Note: this post follows the previous one about the ECM market and I advise you to read it to better understand the context of this one.


What differentiates you from the other enterprise content management offerings?


Standout-from-the-crowdI get this question regularly, and too often the expected answer is “open source”. While playing a role, I wouldn’t say that open source is what makes us different. Open source is in our DNA, but that’s not the key for our customers, nor the biggest change we’re aiming to bring to the market.

What makes us different? Our technology, the ECM platform.

This is by far our main market advantage and what we have to bring to the market: Nuxeo Enterprise Platform (EP), our ECM platform. We’ve built superior technology, leveraging an up-to-date Java stack, design pattern and modularity. This is hands down the main reason that we win deals today with enterprise architects and technology-savvy business sponsors.

The value proposition here is simple and compelling — We dramatically reduce the time and the cost of building on top of the ECM platform when compared to LiveLink or Documentum. This is why we won major deals with Jeppesen — a Boeing Company, Orange, BBC, EllisDon, Cengage Learning, Overstock.com, and many more.

We don’t try to hide from architects, we bring them back to the center of the game and give them the tools to answer challenges of the 21st century. To fully bring competitive advantage and deliver the value it promises, technology is important. We believe software is an engineering discipline, at the service of the business.

Of course, open source is deep in our DNA and brings a lot of value, ease and insurance to our customers. But from a decision-making standpoint, it plays a role but isn’t usually a key factor. The same is true for cost. Yes it is important but clearly only satisfying the functional and technical requirements are paramount. Ironically, price regularly plays against us: such as when our competitor friends have the financial resources to buy deals from us when money is key. Hence the best case for us to win is when what we offer is not achievable by the incumbents.

We offer a better ECM platform, enabling a new generation of content applications

On the platform side, our mission is to commoditize the market for “ECM platforms” with standards, widely known technology and great infrastructure. We made a strategic bet 3 years ago on a stack of technology and infrastructure that is now mainstream. So we have a great ECM platform, leveraging open standards and a well-known technology stack, highly modular and flexible. It runs on a wide range of hardware (from embedded devices in planes to large farms with terabytes of data) and serves very diverse needs (from mission-critical editorial systems for press agencies to a highly secure case management system for a nuclear agency or a mobile document repository for an offshore welding engineer.)

The net result of all this is that our platform is the most flexible and modular on the market and is widely recognized as such. This has become a great market advantage for us with the rise of content applications (CEVA/CCA: Content Enabled Vertical Applications / Composite Content Applications – as Gartner puts it and discussed at its recent Gartner Portals, Content & Collaboration Summit).

Content Apps represent a steady move in the ECM market where buyers want to buy vertical solutions, solving actual business problems. They don’t want to pour money into generic technology anymore. We are seeing a new category of ISVs, packaging business knowledge into software to create and sell those content applications (ex: construction project management, clinical facts management for biotech and life sciences, software for control and command centers, etc.). Content apps are a logical evolution of the ECM market toward more vertical, business-ready solutions. And we believe we offer a great development and composition model for the next generation of content apps.

As such, I believe Nuxeo is well-positioned to benefit from this evolution given that:

  • Open source software has shown superior ability to commoditize markets, recycling big vendors’ license revenue into a new stream of value. We participate actively in this commoditization, deriving revenue for us and offering better value for the customers.
  • Our platform’s flexibility and feature scope combined with the open source aspect of the software ease the life of content app architects and developers. The development model the platform offers is widely recognized and praised. We believe we can enable a new way of building content apps. Easier, cleaner, faster.
  • Our business model derives value from applications built on top of Nuxeo EP (thanks to the subscription-based business model we have created).

That’s why we’re here. To offer and evangelize an ECM platform and the associated content apps, responding to the new needs of businesses in this era of information explosion.

I hope this also bring some clarification and will entice people to look beyond the “open source” label. Because there’s a lot more to discover and that could really help your business!

Cheers,

EB.

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Posted in ECM, Marketing, Open Source, Software

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Is there room for Nuxeo in the mature and crowded ECM market?

March 15th, 2010

While exchanging with a well-recognized and successful industry expert about our differentiators and the market we are in. Since they popup frequently, I thought it might be interesting to publish the answer.


Bazaar-istanbul

ECM is a mature and crowded market. Is there really room for anything more than a niche player at this late stage in the game?

Hegemonic vendors

At a macro-level, the enterprise content market is composed by 5 hegemonic vendors (OpenText, EMC, IBM, Oracle, Microsoft) and a set of minor ones (~15 notable), after a strong and fast consolidation of this market. Gartner says: 3 top vendors have 52% of the ECM market. The Triad of ECM? ;-)

As many vendors have skipped investment in technology aggregating software from their acquisitions (with the notable exception of Microsoft) much of the current batch of software has been designed 15 years ago and hasn’t evolved much. They have forgotten they are in engineering, not retail. In this world of lean, on-demand, instant-on, the major ECM payers still talk literally in days or weeks to install their software. It’s faster to setup a whole virtual datacenter processing and storing terabytes of data on the Amazon Cloud than setting up a vanilla ECM system!

On top of this technology breakdown, many of these acquisitions have been poorly integrated, to say the least (with a special mention to OpenText on this side). And the pace of the recent consolidation has created a disturbance in the market.

Those two combined dynamics enable new vendors with good technology and the right go-to-market approach to enter the ECM arena, tickle the incumbents and rise, and bring some fresh air and fun to this market.

Perspective shift from customers

We see important shifts in how customers evaluate and choose ECM platforms:

  • More and more Architects are actively involved in the choice of next-generation ECM platforms (not only business users / archive managers) and are putting it at the core of their information system. This sets high expectations in terms of software architecture, integration capabilities or flexibility and technology stack.

  • They need to update systems deployed in the ’00s because incumbent vendors are not supporting those versions anymore => the cost of upgrading is high and they are looking for alternatives. Often we can offer efficient and better replacement for those systems for a fraction of the price of the ongoing maintenance. Let alone the license fees…

  • Given the lack of technical investment and the legacy of major ECM platforms, implementation is complex and expensive => we can do better with today’s technology. Monolithic is no where near the state-of-the-art of software-and Architects care because it directly impacts their ability to make these ECM platforms meet the new business challenges.

Move fast, commoditize legacy, create value with the rest

I really believe that the market maturity combined with the legacy technologies of monolithic players is a key advantage for us: we are disrupting the market by commoditizing the technology (platform) and deriving value from this commoditization.

We target what hurts: the fat and comfortable maintenance stream. We target it with more flexible, up-to-date technology and a company organized to provide superior service for support & maintenance as our customers actually deploy and use our products. That’ll tickle! ;-)

So yes, I’m firmly convinced that there is a room for new players, like us. And timing seems just right for a big one. The market needs to evolve and renew, in the best interest of customers. And they well deserve it, given the challenges of the knowledge era that just starts…

That’s going to be a tough ride. But… feels fun too!

Cheers,

EB.

2 comments »

Posted in Business, ECM, Marketing, Open Source, Software

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