Monday brought the announcement of DevZuz, an open source delivery platform that seeks to connect organizations and open source projects and processes, which also brought with it a change in name that reflects a renewed focus on enabling companies to leverage leading open source technologies and best practices throughout the application development life cycle. I've spoken with Winston Damarillo, Executive Chairman of the new company, while he was still running Simula Labs and he was indeed passionate about the possibility of extending the value of open source within the software development process. He has been a consistent supporter of the need to develop mechanisms for seamlessly delivering open source through subscription models not only as a product/product but as a value accelerator within IT infrastructure.
Therefore, it is little surprise that Simula Labs, a successful open source venture partner is now a stand-alone vendor offering a delivery platform for open source projects and developers. In order to complete the transition, the company sold its controlling interest, and all other assets including customers, in LogicBlaze, Inc. to IONA Technologies. The all-cash proceeds are set to be re-invested towards fueling the early growth of DevZuz, fresh off a consolidated Series A financing of $ 9.25 million which included Mission Ventures and Redpoint Ventures.
The company's business model is banking on the premise that a rising demand for both commercially and non-commercially supported open source alike should feature a channel for enterprise ready packaging and delivery. Personally, I have always been a big-time advocate of polishing delivery methods to better meet rapidly evolving needs and characteristics of the demand side of the market. So this announcement caught my eye in more ways than one. DevZuz is definitely ahead of the curve but the reality is that a significant chasm remains between the enterprise grade delivery capabilities of commercial open source and non-commercial open source, so the opportunity for future growth definitely exists.
The gap in being able to attain open source software assets with and without the necessary support infrastructure often determines how efficiently such artifacts can be integrated anywhere. DevZuz sees itself as being uniquely positioned to enable enterprise IT organizations, which specifically depend on open source components as a competitive differentiator and driver of faster time-to-market capabilities. The steadily improving levels of adoption make it evident that the number of organizations which qualify for this category is swelling significantly.
However, the key for this venture won't be the actual potential market but rather the methods of reaching it. Whether the company plans to align itself at the community level as a sort of partner or if it plans to leverage existing contacts as an initial selling point has yet to be seen. Regardless, it won't hurt that they'll be offering professional-grade backing and enforceable service level agreements, but it will take time to illustrate what the total value proposition is over the entire lifecycle of a software asset and how exactly DevZuz is going to drive productivity in the meantime. I'm interested in observing how this plays itself out, especially as more and more companies continue to make similar delivery and packaging plays available.
About the blogger: Alex Fletcher is lead industry analyst at Entiva Group Incorporated, a research and analyst firm which concentrates exclusively on the open source software industry. His main focus is working to help clients of all sizes formulate strategy and policy surrounding their use of open source software within the enterprise. Alex has prior experience as a consultant, software engineer and start-up founder. He can be reached at alex dot fletcher -at- entivagroup dot com.
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