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I don't expect any "Oh wow" open source software (OSS) news out of LinuxWorld in San Francisco this week (I'm always happy to be proven wrong on that count). The very nature of the OSS community precludes the "tight lid" on a story that was typical of the information technology (IT) market pre OSS. The one thing I did notice is the continued commitment to OSS by the company that is arguably now the largest company in IT, H-P. (I say arguably because you get into interesting research and analysis questions about what to count when it comes to IBM's new business-services strategy--the acquisition of Price Waterhouse Coopers a few years ago being an example.)

Among other things, HP announced at LinuxWorld 2007 the "open sourcing" of its Parallel Compositing Library. That's software that lets customers visualize complex data sets if they have the horsepower, according to HP. That's a further extension of HP's ambitious return to the software market under the umbrella of information lifecycle management to my investment research clients. That's OSS underlying big-ticket deals to everyone else.

Even though the OSS is "free," big IT suppliers are basing big-dollar deals on OSS and getting services revenue as add on. So sure, OSS community, take this high-performance computing software and make it even better. That'll mean more big deals for us.

It's not clear whether this OSS step was either a deal maker or deal breaker with two multi-million-dollar healthcare delivery sales also announced by HP today. It could have been neither. But it certainly didn't hurt given the medical centers' dedication to Linux and OSS. This is not a new marketintg technique but previously such an arrangement would come with cross-license and co-development strings between HP and the medical centers (or universities or oil companies, and so forth) that would tie down or up true innovation.

HP had some other OSS news today but that a $90 billion IT supplier is so committed to OSS is news enough.

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

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