This could have been a huge week for the open source industry to cash in on the retail industry. Instead it’s a missed opportunity. Microsoft, Oracle, IBM and other traditional software companies are making big news at a major New York event for retail CIOs, but open source application providers like OpenBravo are largely silent. Big mistake. Here’s a closer look at the situation.
The setting is the National Retail Federation’s 97th annual conference in New York. This is the retail industry’s “Comdex” — the big event of the year for tech companies that want to help automate retail enterprises. It’s where big software companies brag about their latest retail customer wins (examples: Oracle/Anchor Blue Bell, Microsoft/Dallas Cowboys, and IBM/Metro Group).
Okay, so the Cowboys example is a bad one. We all know the Cowboys aren’t a retail chain. In fact, they’re not even a playoff football team anymore. But they are using Microsoft Dynamics for some retail applications.
Back to the Point of Sale
If you want to catch a retail CIO’s attention, this is the week — and this is the event — in which to do it. Some open source firms such as Red Hat are at the retail federation’s conference. Nice. But there’s no major open source trend or buzz at the event. OpenBravo, in particular, could have benefited greatly from this conference.
Based in Spain, OpenBravo’s global ambitions include the retail industry — and point of sale software. As The VAR Guy reported in November 2007, OpenBravo has acquired Librepos (previously named Tina POS), the leading POS application in the open source space.
OpenBravo’s move into the POS market caused quite a buzz among The VAR Guy’s readers a few weeks ago. Too bad the company has gone radio silent this week. A quick search of Google News finds no recent info about OpenBravo. And as of 8pm eastern, OpenBravo’s Web site was dark.
Talk about bad timing. Retail CIOs are searching for new IT solutions at this week’s conference in New York. Sure, they know Linux has grown up and is a reliable platform for applications. But now, it’s time for open source application providers to tout their wares. Too bad OpenBravo and the rest of the open source community didn’t get the memo.
Interact: Add a Comment | Trackback Link | Permalink
Share: digg | del.icio.us | Technorati | StumbleUpon
Subscribe: RSS Feed
Story added…
Your story has been submitted to fsdaily.com! Come and promote your article by voting for it here on FSDaily! Let your readers know they can vote for your story too….
If CIOs are looking for open source solutions, they don’t need to go to a trade show. They just need to open a web browser and they will find exactly who has what for them. Open Source companies are not being lazy by not going to industry tradeshows, they are being smart. The tradeshow environment is not a place to make strategic decisions. It’s a place to compare oneself to one’s peers, and maybe enjoy a few days out of the office.
Michael: Full disclosure - I have great respect for you and your work at Red Hat. In fact, you and I connected at a few open source events in 2005 and 2006. The open source industry’s silence during this massive vertical market event was a missed opportunity, but I do remain bullish on Red Hat, as you likely know.
-jp (Joe Panettieri)
Couldn’t agree with you more: it’s high time for open source / free software applications. Especially business applications.
Wish to strongly disagree with Micahel above. I have done the web search for OpenSource POS systems. The major problem with OpenSource application websites is the complete lack of focus on the business side related to the systems, with all the focus on the technical side. The issue is just poor documentation in general. If OpenSource is to be viable in the marketplace a real marketing push is essential. It is with people, face to face, that decisions get made, and questions get answered.
Michael, it may be that an organization can let things happen, or make things happen. Trade shows offer opportunities to make things happen. One can build relationships, offer timely insights, or cause key people to reconsider their strategies.
Surfing the web has not produced anything on OpenSource POS systems that gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling in my stomach. You might reconsider how CIOs actually behave as opposed to how you think they should behave. If they are not coming to OpenSource, then perhaps OpenSource has to go to them.
[…] Going Vertical: The open source industry missed a huge opportunity to target big retail customers during an event in New York a few weeks ago. This time around, the industry should have great […]
After reading this article, I totally agree — there’s a total lack of any good retail point of sales support for Linux. Yes, Novell has SUsE Point of Sales Server, which is something that was based off of SLES9, but, that’s a few years old, and from my experiences with it, it didn’t support all of the major “retail” hardware (there were some NCR Point of sales terminals that it didn’t support — IBM put full support behind the program, in terms of contributing code to the project. Unfortunately, LibrePOS is a full-screen, java based application.
While that’s all fine and dandy, when was the last time you went to Wally world and noticed their wonderful cash registers? Their setup is essentially two 2×20 screens (one for the cashier, one for the customer) and a generic IBM POS keyboard. Can you get a full-screen, interactive POS application to run on a 2×20 display? Unfortunately, as it’s conceived, you really can’t.
Point of Sales technology has made long strides from where it once was. We’ve gone from an era of proprietary processors and software, to industry-standardized components and a start on the Open Sourcing of Point of Sales backend hardware. I don’t think that we’ll really see a true retail movement of open-sourcing of the actual Point of Sales code because a lot of retail companies consider their POS applications something that gives them an advantage over their competition. While this is true, how many places are using a stock IBM setup, versus, a custom-written, in-house setup? Giant Eagle has IBM, with their customizations. Sears/KMart use their own, custom-written application. While I know it’s not an apples to apples comparison, I think that it does a lot to provide some insight into the world of POS Applications.
Then, you have to deal with POS Hardware, and their interactions (for example, the Signature Capture devices need to be treated similar to PIN-pad readers, but, they’re two totally different classes of hardware, and have different requirements in order to operate at their full functionality, within industry security guidelines for both payment processing and information handling.
Finally, you have to have a payment gateway, and again, we’re back in the land of proprietary standards. You can’t just use authorize.net for your in-person transactions. You have to store the signature, check image, or whatever else, locally, or send it to your regional or national office. This doesn’t even include handling your ERP backend, or integration to timeclocks, payroll, or other specials (deli, made-to-order goods, gift card activation, etc).
All of this boils down to a large amount of $$ to the store, and they don’t want to add a new widget, only to let their competitor know that they’re going to release feature “foo.” Yes, I know that Dual-Licensing could solve this problem, but, grocery stores aren’t known for their legal skills, let alone programming talent.