Steven Grandchamp has more than 30 years of experience in the software industry, serving in executive roles at four successful start ups and at Microsoft. These days he’s the president and CEO of OpenLogic, where he's focused on the company’s mission of helping enterprises successfully and safely build and deploy applications built using open source software.
Steven will be speaking at the upcoming All Things Open Conference in Raleigh, NC, on the challenges of open source in the enterprise. In this interview, Steven talks about what his clients are surprised to learn when they first come to OpenLogic, big market drivers for open source solutions, and more.
OpenLogic's mission is to help enterprises use open source software. Why should enterprises choose open source software over other proprietary options for their IT applications?
The reality is that in today's world, enterprises have mixed source development environments where open source, proprietary offerings and internally written code exist along side each other. Open source has a tremendous pace of innovation. For a large number of companies there are no available proprietary offerings and they are faced with a choice of writing the entire solution on their own or choosing from the many enterprise-ready open source products available.
When clients come to OpenLogic seeking help identifying open source software solutions, what do you find they are most surprised to learn?
The consistent answer here is that they are always surprised by the amount of open source that is found in a scan of their company’s software. We have done thousands and thousands of scans and in every one of them the results show much more open source software is being used internally than customers were aware of.
What types of software do your clients most commonly seek open source software solutions for?
The big market drivers today are cloud computing, the continued trend toward mobile applications, and the emergence of big data.
It was recently announced that OpenLogic has been acquired by Rogue Wave Software. How will open source developers benefit from this merger?
The acquisition will provide OpenLogic significantly greater resources. This should provide additional opportunities for OpenLogic to contribute back to open source communities and open source developers. Eight years ago we founded the OpenLogic Expert Community (OXC) which pays open source developers for assistance and provides contributions to open source communities.
Can you give us a sneak preview as to what you will cover in your All Things Open talk?
The talk is called Challenges of Open Source in the Enterprise and will cover best practices and examples of large companies setting up their open source software (OSS) programs and policies. Open source software has become a key part of almost every software solution at many of the world's largest companies. And yet many organizations using open source to build these products encounter challenges as they attempt to formalize OSS policies and place OSS on a level playing field with proprietary software.
We will discuss how large companies view cost savings and the risks of OSS in their organizations and explore the steps they take to ensure OSS can not only survive but thrive in their organizations.
Read more from the All Things Open speaker interview series.
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