Alec Saunders SquawkBox

Nope.   The blog doesn’t have a cold.  Those are the names of some of the open source projects that Om Malik has highlighted in his latest story on the impact of open source in the telecoms world.  Or at least, Snort and XORP are… there is no sniffle to my knowledge.

There’s no doubt that open source is wreaking havoc in many industries.  At iotum, our servers are all built on open source — Linux, MySQL, python, Nagios.  We use Asterisk in house for our PBX as well.  You can build commercial grade systems from these parts with ease. 

The reaction to open source varies dramatically from business to business.  Most people assume it’s a threat.  However, that’s not always the case.  Last night I had dinner with the CTO of a very large PBX manufacturer.  We talked about Asterisk at length.  His assessment?  Call control has become a commodity.  If he can outsource it to an open source project, it lets him assign resources to the far more lucrative applications market, which is what customers are asking for.

\

Fortune Magazine called DEMO American Idol for Entrepreneurs in their latest article on the conference.  Towards the end of the show, writer Adam Lashinsky was cruising the room, looking for entrepreneurs to chat with.  Howard grabbed the opportunity, and the last paragraph was about us!

As Demo draws to a close, conference organizer Shipley anoints ten of the companies as Demo "gods" on the strength of their presentations. Howard Thaw, co-founder of one winner, Iotum, which has developed ingenious software to screen incoming phone calls, e-mails me shortly before 11 P.M., just after the conference has concluded. "Some VCs are already sending congratulatory notes, with requests for confirmations of follow-up meetings," he writes. "One of them has summoned us to an all-partners meeting on Tuesday." Thaw, in a moment of exuberance, has revealed what Demo is all about. Producing nifty technology and nailing your demo, after all, are nice. Collecting the cash is what makes you a true Demo god.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything quite like this.  Enjoy