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Technical Track
Preface Open Source is a topic that is demanding the attention of senior executives.
On June 24 and 25th, the University of St. Thomas and The Open Group
will host a standards workshop in Minneapolis for senior business executives.
This one-and-a-half day standards conference for senior executives,
comprising four panels, will feature an introduction of the issues
and follow-up with an interactive discussion between the speakers and
the audience. The aim is to capture and publish the issues that are
discussed in order to raise the industry awareness of the benefits
and challenges of Open Source software. The panel sessions cover each
of the Business, Technical, Legal, and Social/Ethical Challenges Ahead.
Technical Panel Objective
The Technical Panel, moderated by Terry Blevins, CIO, The Open Group
will seek to understand and capture the following about Open Source:
-
Is Open Source robust, scaleable, portable, interoperable enough to support
and enterprise?
- Is Open Source usable for SME's (small, medium enterprises)?
- What
Open Source technologies are coming down the road, e.g. infrastructure
and applications?
The Technical Panel will answer moderated and ad
hoc questions concerning the overall technical position, its fitness
for purpose, and impact
on the technical environment and its management. Additional questions
will
evolve around:
- Understanding what a SME has to do to exploit open source
while minimizing risk.
- Understanding the support ramifications.
- Understanding the impact
of open source on managing an enterprise environment.
- Understanding
how Open Source can help us achieve the Boundaryless Information
Flow vision.
Technical Panelists
Currently the status of the technical panel is:
- Bruce
Perens, Perens, LLC
- Dr. John Collins, Department of Computer Science, University
of Minnesota
- John Terpstra,
Samba
- John Schmidt, Best Buy
- Eduardo Gutentag, Sun Microsystems
- Andras Szakal, Chief Architect, Federal Software Group, IBM
Technical Panel Agenda
The technical panel session will be approximately 2 hours in length
and follow the agenda below.
- Introduction by Terry Blevins (5 minutes
max). Terry will set some background, introduce the rules of the game,
and then introduce the panelists in
general.
- Introduction of each panel member and their opening positions
(5 to 10 minutes each) (50 minutes). Each panelist will come up and
introduce themselves
further and then present a few slides that represent their fundamental
position on the three main questions surrounding Open Source:
- Is Open
Source robust, scaleable, portable, interoperable enough to support
and enterprise?
- Is Open Source usable for SME's (small, medium
enterprises)?
- What Open Source technologies are coming down the
road, e.g. infrastructure and applications?
- Panel session with
mixture of moderated questions and questions from audience (60
minutes). Terry and the audience will ask questions directed
at all
or specific panelists, including questions such as:
- What success
stories can you relay that demonstrate the capabilities of open
source in the enterprise?
- Many questions surround whether the
Open Source model will truly result in higher quality. What is
required to make this happen?
- In your experience what is needed
to effectively use Open Source in an SME? What new positions are
needed, or roles? How about
processes?
- What relationship do you think there is between Open
Source and open standards? How important is it that Open Source
conforms
to
some stated
open standard?
- How do you see requirements management working
in the Open Source model?
- How does open source increase technology
innovation?
- Would each of you tell us what 2 Open Source “products” will
dominate the next two years?
- Where do you see Open Source
being most applicable? Application layer, middleware layer, infrastructure
layer, or operating
system layer?
o Do you see the Open Source model working with deliverables
other than software? For example business models, architectures, …?
- What
role do you see Open Source playing in Boundaryless Information
Flow? For information on Boundaryless Information
Flow see http://www.opengroup.org/cio/iop.
- Thanks and close
of Panel Session (5 minutes max)
- Summary readout and discussion
(30 minutes on day 2). Where Terry will summarize the key points
and observations from the discussion
to provoke a discussion on next steps between the panelists and audience.
Technical Panel Participant Requirements
Panelists should send presentations for their specific introduction
and their opening positions. The presentations should be designed for
5 to
10 minutes. It is recommended that at least 4 slides be provided:
- Introduction slide for the panelist
- Slide commenting on is Open
Source robust, scaleable, portable, interoperable enough to support
and enterprise?
- Slide commenting on is Open Source usable for SME's
(small, medium enterprises)?
- Slide commenting on what Open Source technologies
are coming down the
road, e.g. infrastructure and applications?
All the presentations will be preloaded in a master presentation
and run from a single PC.
We also encourage the positions be supported by a short paper
that would be published along with post meeting documents,
of course
with full attribution
to the contributor.
All panelists are encouraged to attend the full event, especially
to participate in the summary discussion on the second
day.
Finally we encourage panelists to send questions that you
think should be brought forth. There is no guarantee
that these questions
will be
used, but they will be given full consideration. |
