Matt Asay is vice president of corporate strategy at 10gen, the MongoDB company. Previously he was SVP of business development at Nodeable, which was acquired in October 2012. He was formerly SVP of biz dev at HTML5 start-up Strobe (now part of Facebook) and chief operating officer of Ubuntu commercial operation Canonical. Asay is an emeritus board member of the Open Source Initiative (OSI).
'Not even Santa could save Microsoft's Windows 8'
Open ... and Shut Didn't buyers know it was Christmas time at all?
Once upon a time any problem at Microsoft could be magically resolved with a new Windows release. Since Windows Vista, however, that formula hasn't worked. In fact, according to new sales data from NPD Group, it may be getting worse.
In late 2012, departing Microsoft board member Reed Hastings called Microsoft's Surface tablet " …
Forgetting Microsoft: How Steve Ballmer's Surface could win
Open ... and Shut Ignore Apple, it's Google he must take on
In a Windows world we bought the product. In Google's world we are the product. Judging from market share trends, we apparently don't mind being bought and sold. At least, so long as the price is right.
Yes, Apple gets all the news (and profits), but it's Google Android that is set to displace Microsoft Windows by 2016, …
Ballmer's lightened pay packet is the least of his problems
Open ... and Shut What's that smell around Windows 8?
Citing "slower than planned progress" at Microsoft's online services division and a 3 per cent decline in Windows revenue, Microsoft's board cut chief executive Steve Ballmer's pay to 91 per cent of his plan, or $1.3m. But that's the least of his concerns.
Microsoft is about to embark on the biggest shift in its Windows …
Gartner has its head in the clouds - and its numbers are WRONG
Open ... and Shut Less is more
Gartner analyst Frank Ridder recently opined that "the number of cloud offering[s] is not at all at a satisfactory level today."
He made this assertion after canvassing a number of IT users at two Gartner summits. Unfortunately, he may have missed the message these users were sending him. It's not that we need more cloud …
Seize your moment, Microsoft: iPad is RUBBISH for enterprise
Open ... and Shut Redmond's shortcomings could become assets in the post-PC era
Apple has given us much with its pleasing-on-the-eye iPad. But what it hasn't given us is a serious replacement for the lowly laptop or desktop.
As much as magazines like MacWorld may hype it as "The New Business Machine", the reality is that the iPad is only enterprise-ready in iFantasyLand.
Across the board, Apple's iPad apps …
Ex-Akamai man: Stop being faithful to your CDN
Open ... and Shut You need multiple relationships to perform well
Many of the benefits of cloud computing are lost in translation as enterprises attempt to force the "new wine" of cloud's flexibility into the "old bottles" of traditional data centers. By running a cloud environment within one's data center, the full benefits of infinitely scalable and flexible infrastructure fade, as Amazon …
Cloud proves that OldSQL is still cool
Open... and Shut Relational lives to fight on
As the IT world scrambles pell mell into the cloud, veteran vendors like Oracle are having to figure out how to make money in an IT market that is increasingly turning its back on traditional software licensing. While Oracle has faced down challenges to its core database business before from open source, the cloud presents an …
Why I'd pay Apple more to give iPad factory workers a break
Open ... and Shut Time to 'think different' on production line demands
Last quarter Apple churned out extraordinary profits: $13.06bn of them. But according to a New York Times article, Apple achieved these amazing profits on the backs of Chinese workers, who are subjected to punishing work conditions to ensure high-quality iPhones and iPads at the lowest possible price.
While the company claims …
Enterprise gets social: Twitter-style data streams, engagement 'apps'
Open ... and Shut Little numbers, big software and the data deluge
The winning game plan for enterprise software has long been to "play it safe."
Enterprise software developers are just as talented as their free-wheeling consumer-facing peers, but are shackled by the need to prioritise enterprise security over personal utility, and by the fact that IT buyers differ significantly from IT users, …
Enterprise IT's power shift threatens server-huggers
Open ... and Shut Users get what they need, not what you want
It's not that the role of enterprise IT is dying. It's just that it's changing so much that it may soon be virtually unrecognisable from its golden age of installing servers and managing data centres.
As more developers take on the task of building, deploying, and running applications on infrastructure outsourced to Amazon and …
Beware the software security scare silly season
Open ... and Shut Don't let touts cloud your judgement
The software risk silly season is upon us again. Every so often a big trend washes over the industry, and soon afterwards well-intentioned people start telling us why we should be afraid to dip our toes into the water. Or perhaps they are not so well-intentioned...
Even as cloud computing takes off in the enterprise and Android …
Ex-Amazon EC2 wizard pinpoints where your cloud is crap
Open ... And Shut New tool to boost your app's performance
Even as the world goes cloud/SaaS, monitoring tools have stayed doggedly old school. With the rise of complex web applications, the cloud, DevOps, agile computing, and continuous integration, application changes are rolled out much more frequently than the one or two times a year of old enterprise software updates, with multiple …
Tech sugar daddies shovel millions into Hadoop war
Open ... And Shut Who will flash the most cloud cash?
There was once an idyllic time when people like Joe Kraus described an entrepreneur's dream of starting robust companies on a shoestring budget, powered by open-source software and cloud infrastructure. Apparently Cloudera and Hortonworks didn't get the memo. Both Hadoop competitors recently raised mountains of cash at sky-high …
Return of native: HTML5's enterprise battle
Open ... And Shut Following the Facebook playbook
Consumer smartphone apps may get all the press, not to mention $15bn in market size by 2013, but enterprise smartphone apps may well prove to be the bigger market.
This may be particularly true of HTML5 apps, which have been all the rage at Facebook, the Financial Times, and other consumer-facing app developers. The reason? …
Ellison's cloud conversion is good for business
Open...and Shut Skeptic turned evangelist to win CIOs
For those agnostics who continue to doubt the reality of cloud adoption, there are two clear signs: the adoption of Amazon's public cloud and Larry Ellison's public cloud creation. The first is a sign of the appetite for cloud while the latter is a suggestion that even the cloud laggards have eventually found their way to their …
Red Hat's Oracle shot: The Unbreakable Database?
Open...and Shut JBoss part II
Red Hat has always been joined at the hip to the success of the database market. What's surprising is that it has yet to launch its own database product. Perhaps that should change.
Much of Red Hat's success today was built on Oracle's early support for the Linux and middleware leader over the past decade. But it wasn't always …
Dear Dell and Microsoft: You're not Apple
Open...and Shut DNA transplant not an option
Dell has always been a first-class choice for budget-minded CIOs. The company grew to prominence by shaving everything – including R&D costs – from the bill of materials for its utilitarian, corporate machines. Today, despite four years of attempts to invigorate its brand with consumers, Dell remains a consumer-computing laggard …
Will Red Hat come back to haunt the Open Virtualization Alliance?
Open...and Shut IBM and friends RHEV anti-VMware crusade
In an attempt to cripple VMware's lead in enterprise virtualization, a posse of tech leaders decided to band together behind Red Hat's KVM in the Open Virtualization Alliance (OVA), announced this Wednesday.
The irony, however, is that these same companies may come to rue their propping up of an already strong competitor, one …
Microsoft waves CentOS club at Red Hat
Open...and Shut The open source enemy of my open source enemy is my friend
Red Hat is perhaps one of the most understated success stories in the software industry. Each quarter, the company registers roughly 20-percent year-over-year growth, fueled by partners that increasingly cement Red Hat's place at the center of the enterprise data center.
Despite repeated efforts, no other Linux vendor has come …
Oracle: Quit messin' and marry Hadoop!
Open...and Shut Why Larry should pop the question
Oracle isn't the biggest enterprise software vendor, but in 2010 it grew faster than its big-enterprise peers, including Microsoft and IBM, to claim third place. Being ever so ambitious, it's unlikely that Oracle chief executive Larry Ellison will be content to take the bronze. But it's equally unlikely that relational databases …
Newbie's virtual appliance stores up trouble for EMC
Open...and Shut Tintri's dilemma: When (not if) to get bought
With $11bn at stake, you'd think that someone would have solved the virtualized storage problem by now. The problem, however, is that there's so much more money in the existing storage market.
It's an "innovator's dilemma," Clayton Christensen style. It's therefore not surprising that it took a newbie Tintri to try and up-end …
Memo to Microsoft: don't bet against Amazon
Open...and Shut Private clouds will roll over
The technology world used to be fairly easy to understand. For a time, IBM dominated the back office while Microsoft monopolized the desktop. More recently, Microsoft and Linux split the difference on servers while Oracle bought the known universe to dominate enterprise middleware and applications.
But along comes the cloud, and …
MySQL price hikes reveal depth of Oracle's wallet love
Open...and Shut Time for Postgres?
Oracle has repeatedly declared its intent to invest heavily in MySQL technology in its effort to up-end Microsoft's SQL Server business.
What it didn't say, but which should have been clear, given Oracle's treatment of its own database customers, is that MySQL customers were going to have to pay for those investments. Through …
Opinion
Joe Fay
Server boss comes to London, become hostage to fortune
Dale Vile
Vendors, dealers live in parallel universes
Tim Ayling
Er, what does that mean? Anything you want it to
Eddie Pacey
Get your money up front if you want money up front