Enterprise 2.0 Open Source Panel

Stephen Powers of Forrester Research recently released a report identifying Alfresco and Drupal as the two open source content management platforms to which enterprises should pay the most attention. Specifically, the report claims that "enterprises interested in open source should keep an eye on two offerings — Alfresco Software and Drupal." (Also check out Matt Asay's coverage of the report for CNet).

I couldn't agree more - though I wish the report had come out a few weeks ago. It would have made for a good introduction to the panel on Open Source Platforms which I moderated at the Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston. The panelists were:

• Bob Bickel, of Ringside Networks, which is creating enterprise open source middleware for the social web, allowing companies to embed social networking in their own sites and do cross-network identity mapping
• John Newton, co-founder and CTO of Alfresco, an enterprise class open source content management framework
• Jeff Whatcott, Chief Communicator of Acquia, a company formed to provide commercial support, certification, and related services to enterprises around Drupal, the open source community publishing system

The audio from the panel is now available. You can listen using the player below or download the file directly (it's a 43MB mp3).

Unfortunately, although many of the business case studies were leveraging open source software, and although many of innovations undergirding E2.0 came from open source communities, the conference as a whole had only a single panel specifically talking about the approach, as opposed to many presentations from proprietary software vendors. 

Hopefully next year's Enterprise 2.0 will offer more opportunities to talk about how open source platforms can be incredibly effective in an enterprise context: enabling agility and experimentation, support collaboration, and avoiding the "success tax" of per-seat licensing.