OStatic

Open source collaboration software vendor MindTouch announced today that its widely-used enterprise collaboration platform is now available in the cloud. This is great news for businesses who want a service comparable to Microsoft SharePoint, but don't want the headaches of proprietary software or the hassles of a lengthy installation process.

If you're a regular reader of OStatic, then you know this move is one of series of releases MindTouch has launched to drive the future of collaborative networks. Following the creation of the MindTouch Creative Knowledge Base and the MindTouch Collaborative Intranet, a move to the cloud was the next logical step.

The phrase all-in-one always puts me on edge. Perhaps that shouldn't be the case any more -- there are ever increasing numbers of software and hardware products offered in group packages, and most, if not wonderful, deliver what's claimed on the box. But instead, the first association that comes are the old school printer, copier, and fax combinations. They generally did one task well (depending on the manufacturer) and the other features didn't quite live up to even lowered expectations. The manufacturer was a huge factor in which functions worked well. Even with apparently sound off-label fax modems and drivers, printer manufacturers couldn't quite make it all work together. They deal mostly with printers, after all.

Open-Xchange's collaboration with Rack-Soft brings an all-in-one solution that's an actual solution. The partnership combines Open-Xchange's open source groupware with Rack-Soft's telephony products.

Let's face it, open source software companies and projects have a wide variety of innovative platforms and methods to drum up awareness, business, and interest in development for the projects they create and support. The problem is, it's not always easy to quantify how much interest and awareness (or ultimately, new contributors, users, or customers) result from any specific method.

Social networks are a great way to reach out to people with specific interests and start the chain of word of mouth recommendation. But they just aren't the traditional sort of public relations drives or advertising many organizations are used to. If an organization understands this, there's a lot to gain from social network outreach -- and open source software, a model that works based on input from the wider community, is in a position to benefit even more.

There's just that matter of metrics -- will the push yield good results? Engine Yard, a Ruby on Rails hosting and services provider, found it's well worth the effort.

While there have been some questionable strategies playing out on Wall Street recently, and the Securities and Exchange Commission continues to scrutinize the legalities of a few high frequency trading techniques, former NYSE chairman William H. Donaldson's statement to New York Times holds true: if an individual investor can't keep up with larger brokerages, it's a major disadvantage.

Marketcetera feels that open source software is an ideal way for smaller brokerages to keep up with -- and perhaps outmaneuver -- their larger competition. Marketcetera CEO Graham Miller sees open source hosted/SaaS (software as a service) trading platforms as having particular potential for investors using high frequency trading methods. And Miller isn't the only one who believes this -- the evidence is vibrantly illustrated by Sky Road LLC's integration of Marketcetera's open source, automated trading platform into its SaaS financial services product line.

When I heard that Funambol was rolling out an open source mobile cloud sync service for mobile VoIP users, I'll be honest -- I wasn't thinking about the open code, or about how much easier it would make contacting people worldwide over a diverse array of devices. I immediately thought of my dad.

He could very well be just like your dad, or mom, or you. He likes gadgets, and if the gadgets beep, flash, or vibrate at a random enough interval to make my mom grind her teeth or clutch her ears, he likes them even more. However, he's got two things working against him -- he's not blessed in the patience department (like my mom, it would seem) and he's got arthritic hands to the point of immobility. As such, his work-issued Blackberry wasn't nearly as useful as his old Palm Pilot when it came to being an electronic memory. It was merely a phone he couldn't dial all that easily.

He was delighted when I showed him Skype, and was flattered when all these young women he didn't know kept calling. The novelty gave way to annoyance when he realized he must know some people on Skype, but finding and connecting with them took patience.

New mVoIP users start with a blank address book, and many mVoIP services can't sync existing contact information from cell phones or other address books. Funambol's mVoIP enables service providers to allow syncing from address books and social networks -- so that an address change made anywhere (say, a contact's Facebook profile or the Funambol web portal) updates all associated devices.

Cloud computing: A natural conclusion of open source? The cloud takes open source toward a logical goal, with services reigning.

Will European rules impact open source business models? Differences between enterprise and community versions of applications call for scrutiny.

Is Mozilla planning to scrap tabbed browsing? It's running a design challenge to find an alternative to tabs in browsers.

10 solid Linux distributions for your netbook. Every distro has its own advantages.

Is Linux not yet ready for the desktop? Here's a laundry list of alleged shortcomings.

Last week, we did a story on the open source cloud project Eucalyptus, which was originally an effort out of the University of California at Santa Barbara. As we noted then, the project is now the basis of a well-funded new company, Eucalyptus Systems, which has closed a $5.5 million Series A round of financing led by Benchmark Capital, with BV Capital also participating. (Benchmark Capital is a heavy hitter in funding commercial open source firms, having invested in MySQL, Xen and more.)

Eucalyptus Systems will focus initially on providing Red Hat-like training and consulting services for the Eucalyptus platform, which (under a FreeBSD-style license) provides an infrastructure for cloud computing on clusters that duplicates the functionality of Amazon's EC2, using the Amazon command-line tools directly. Many companies are already using Eucalyptus as a platform to seamlessly manage their public cloud and on-premise cloud applications, reaping cost advantages over proprietary cloud players. We caught up with Eucalyptus Systems' CTO Rich Wolski, one of the founders of the project, to get details on the company's plans.?

Maybe it's not a completely counterintuitive concept that giving away a service can yield new business relationships and profits, but undoubtedly, actually doing so is still a leap of faith. It was a chance that Open-Xchange felt was worth taking when it announced it would be giving away its webmail module to qualifying telecom, non-profit, and educational organizations. Almost three months later, Open-Xchange is seeing that giving a little bit can bring good returns.

Open-Xchange's ongoing Webmail4Free promotion offers a free (in speech and cost) webmail module in exchange for marketing the company's open source groupware and mobility modules to the qualifying organization's users and signing a support agreement. The agreement terms vary depending on the organization's size and scope.

It's working out for Open-Xchange, which is reporting a rosier Q1 than expected, and has seen a number of new partnerships and customers thanks to the promotion.