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By Bimble on
I’d like to put forward a proposal for a company and product concept using Drupal as the foundation. I’m posting here because I’d like to collect feedback on the concept and attract interested people.
The Problem
:
Any IT or Telecommunications environment has the challenge of ensuring a diverse range of servers, applications, switches, routers and other infrastructure is configured correctly and working optimally. Managing this complexity spawns a multi-billion dollar global software business (if you’d like more information on this there is no better place to start than the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITIL page and its links).
The problem that remains unsatisfactorily addressed is around FCAPS http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCAPS functional duplication.
1.Nearly all equipment vendors provide their own EMS (element management system), since any deployment in volume of their products requires full FCAPS in order for the product to be operated commercially.
2.Since most businesses have many hundreds of infrastructure vendors this poses a significant operational and commercial tax.
3.This duplication costs billions in additional tools and services to integrate and consolidate the FCAPS functions across vendors.
There have been and are many initiatives to solve this problem, some around standards to make integration easier, some around so called multi-vendor EMS.
Major equipment vendors like NSN and Cisco are offering what they hoped would become open EMS frameworks. The main reason that their uptake has been poor is there is no reason for their competitors such as Juniper or Ericsson to support their venture – why should they strengthen their competitors?
There are other independent software vendors such as Nakina and ManageEngine trying to approach this problem from a platform approach, but due to their commercial model, they are only scratching the surface of the potential market.
Proposed Solution:
A fully open and “free” EMS based on Drupal that addresses all the technical and commercial challenges of FCAPS delivery of multi-vendor IT environment challenges and potentially other ITIL areas. To start a company that build core EMS extensions into the Drupal and it’s contributed modules such as CCK. E.g. Southbound SNMP interfaces, CCK schema extensions.
The company will focus on the core EMS extensions to turn Drupal into a Free Open EMS, but it will ultimately be up to other parties to build the device specific modules.
Who will be these other parties that build the device specific modules?
Well initially these might be small players, such as the odd IT administrator that wants to add a certain IP router or PBX to their Drupal based EMS environment. But over time, the vision is that this might system integrators or the device vendors themselves as they look to reduce EMS development costs and maximize ROI.
If a virtuous circle takes effect, eventually the customers/telco service providers will demand that device manufactures release management onto this proposed Drupal EMS, as the cost benefits of a truly consolidated management platform are enormous.
Why would they? Part of my commercial vision here is, that while the Drupal based EMS will be free, the device specific modules will not. These will be sold through the start-up company in a kind of iTunes Store model for device management plug-ins, thereby motivating and rewarding the individuals or companies that create them. It is my hope that this commercial model will both foster and accelerate adoption.
Making Money
So why would we bother doing this start-up?
As mentioned above, the core extensions of this proposed Drupal based EMS will be given freely to all, but the start-up will retain the rights to sell and distribute the device specific module plug-ins taking a percentage cut of the retail price. Intrinsically linked to the terms & conditions of the Drupal based EMS will be the “plug-in store”, kind of a controlled sales & dist. channel.
Startup Innovation
I have a long term vision (or desire) of changing the way the software industry operates. The major software companies earn billions but the engineers that create the products earn peanuts. I’d like to make the software industry much more like the medical or legal profession.
I propose the start-up be formed as a Limited Liability Partnership (LLP), where all original contributors are equal. The objective will be to take the project as far as possible without seeking any early stage angel/seed finance. There are many reasons for doing this way, but the main ones are that ALL the creators will be rewarded, retain a greater share of the income, in return for investing their time up-front.
About the Author
The author is a Product Management Director with 15 years in the telecommunication and IT software industry, with particular expertise in OSS and systems management sectors. He is also a big fan of Drupal and its community...
