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There was a lot of open source software (OSS) under the covers of the new Internet B2B and B2C services introduced at Red Herring East this week in Boston. (There are a couple of more 2007 Red Herring conferences on tap in 2007 if you are interested.). And there was one out and out OSS firm—Apatar— that debuted at the meeting, which is a traditional venue to get a company story in front of movers and shakers in the venture capital world.

Apatar is bringing to market what it calls “Enterprise Data Mashups,” which are data integration software tools. The development model is OSS with what I think of as the Compiere twist (see the Talking with Compiere entry from March). Like Compiere, Apatar is probably more interested in getting the community to extend the product as opposed to playing with the core code. What Apatar wants most from its community is to add to the already over 100 pre-existing metadata maps it already has in its library. Also like Compiere, it doesn’t mind if the community includes power end users as well as traditional developers. Apatar says it is the first to release OSS for power users; I don’t agree with that but with the computer sophistication of hardcore analytical apps guys, it may be the first to make such an emphasis work. Wide end user participation is more likely to happen for Apatar than it is for Compiere.

The Apatar distribution model is primarily software as a service (SaaS) although it offers a MySQL-like two-tier licensing scheme as well. The target market is the millions of data integration projects that never get done because the return on investment is too low (or negative) using standard extraction/transform/load and integration software. Apatar lets users link information between files (Microsoft Excel spreadsheets, CSV/TXT files), databases (such as MySQL, Microsoft SQL, Oracle), applications (Salesforce.com, SugarCRM), and Web 2.0 destinations (Flickr, Amazon S3). Being able to work with RSS feeds is a nice functional plus.

We will be “talking with” Renat Khasanshyn, Apatar founder and CEO shortly. If you have some questions for him, let me know.

Posted by dennisb in OSS Business Issue |Digg This|Add to del.icio.us

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