There is some truth in this argument, particularly with respect to the open source movement but commercial enterprises want support, training and other back-up facilities that you don’t get without a company to back the product up. Of course, you could argue that it is the product that is more important than the company. Worse, there is absolutely nothing about the product on the company’s web site-not even a mention of it-you have to go to the Greenplum site for that.
Now, despite the fact that I have an introduction from Greenplum (one of the exceptions when it comes to open source marketing), which is a partner of Kinetic Networks, the company has continually failed to answer my e-mails requesting more information.
As an example, I am trying to get details about the open source KETL ETL (extract, transform and load) product from Kinetic Networks. So, why haven’t you heard of Liferay? Because it is an open source vendor and open source companies don’t tend to market themselves very well. There is at least one pure play portal vendor still in the market, which is Liferay. The second point with respect to this purchase is that it has been touted elsewhere as representing the demise of the pure play portal vendor, following earlier acquisitions of companies like CoreChange (by Open Text) and TopTier (by SAP). Interesting questions but it is not my intention to address these in this article. The first is the perennial question of integration that arises whenever a vendor buys another that has a directly competing offering: how will the two products be merged? How long will it take? Will they, in fact, be merged at all? If not, how long will the acquired product continue to be supported? And so on and so forth. Analysis Plumtree is being acquired by BEA.
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