Steven L. Grandchamp

Red Hat's announcement last month that it was buying JBoss has been the hot topic for almost anyone involved with Open Source. It's too early to tell exactly what the ultimate outcome will be. However, we can begin to speculate on what it means for end users as well as the Open Source community and the ecosystem. Having completed several acquisitions in my career, there are a few factors that impact the success or failure of an acquisition including the strategic fit and the cultural fit. Based on the strategic and cultural fit of these companies, I believe that the combination of Red Hat and JBoss makes a lot of sense. Operational execution will be critical to the final outcome. Strategic Fit Customer Perspective Based on what we hear from enterprises, we think that the most end-user companies will be happy with the acquisition. There may be some concern among users... (more)

The Importance of Open Source Governance in Mitigating Risk

Programmers naturally gravitate toward the best software packages and components for development. They are increasingly choosing a broad range of enterprise-grade open source packages from Apache and Tomcat to Axis and Eclipse. But imagine for a moment this all-too-common scenario: a programmer at a Global 2000 is faced with a looming deadline and after a little bit of research, picks an open source package that he thinks will meet his technical needs and enable him to get his job done more quickly and effectively. Although the open source package may have all of the functionalit... (more)