posted May 11, 2010 12:32 AM by C2 Interactive
By Miriam Tuerk
At the Olliance think tank in Napa this morning, a panel discussed exits gave some anecdotes on how to have a successful exit. The panelists had gone thru more than a dozen open source acquisitions over the last 3 years. They discussed ones that had been successful and ones that weren’t. On the success side:
1. If you are the seller, make sure you understand the motivation of the buyer – why does the buyer want to acquire you? Make sure you understand motivations of your employees – their motivation is key and it is not alway money.
2. Employee retention is key. As an acquirer, make sure you get to know the people and spend time with them. Earn outs are very complicated.
3. When doing an earn out try to ensure that you have defined the earn out in great detail at the term sheet not when you are doing the definitive agreement.
4. Make sure you tell people what their personal comp will be at the beginning of the process so that the team can focus on the transaction and not be distracted by their personal situation.
5. If there are issues that you know will come out during due diligence then disclose them early before the term sheet gets signed – it will affect price and it is better to deal with price at term sheet instead of later in the process.
6. Terms of commercial licenses can be a key item – uncapped IP infringement, for example, can be a big issue. While this used to be standard practice in the software industry, this is no longer acceptable. This can be very costly for the seller and makes the transaction much more complicated.
7. Make sure you do a code scan with someone like Blackduck before you go thru the sale process.
8. On the topic of retaining a banker, a banker is good if you need help on the negotiation. However, other than that transactions of any size can be done with or without a banker. |
posted Dec 20, 2009 8:25 AM by Target Source
[
updated Dec 20, 2009 8:27 AM
]
15, Dec 2009 Beijing,
OpenSourceCamp, the largest unconference open source in China just
finished 2 weeks ago,there were more than 100 people join the 2 days
events, including Apache Asia Road Show program, people who join the
event discuss lots of interested ideas , including: Intalio|Works: the engine for Enterprise Open Source IBM Open Principles and Practices Dr Tian Zhong | IBM Building a Winning Strategy for an Open Source Company Mikko Puhakka | MYSQL Investor Liberate vector processing capability to runtime software system Li Xiao Feng | Intel What's Open SourceCamp? Open
Source Camp is ad-hoc and unconference event that brings together open
source developer, Geek , entrepreneurs, academics, venture capitalists,
and technology influencer, tech media for an intense user-created
conference about open source, emerging technology topics. It's
organized by the community, for the community. The event
combines,sharing,learning,networking, and fun. Participants, who are
experts and innovators in their fields, are also the presenters. The
goal is to boost open source community and innovation around the world. This
year is special because we bring together Apache Barcamp and Eclipse
DemoCamp at the same time and same place, it's real communites
collaboration and meetup. About Apache Barcamp:
Barcamp Apache is a free dynamics get-together open to the public. Like
other unconferences, the schedule will be determined by the
participants. About Eclipse DemoCamp :
The format of a DemoCamp is pretty informal. The idea is for a group of
Eclipse enthusiasts to meet up and demo what they are doing with
Eclipse. The demos can be of research projects, Eclipse open source
projects, applications based on Eclipse, commercial products using
Eclipse or whatever you think might be of interest to the attendees.
The only stipulation is that it must be Eclipse related. Fore more live vedio: http://v.ku6.com/playlist/index_3718915.html Slide: http://www.slideshare.net/opensourcecamp We are looking forward to see you next year in Beijing, Shanghai, GuangZhou |
posted Dec 20, 2009 8:25 AM by Target Source
25,
Sep, 2009, Finland MindTrek is the leading Nordic digital media and
business conference, focusing on social media & Web 2.0. At
MindTrek you will see the newest trends, innovations, revolutionary
business phenomena and hear insights from the most high-spirited
visionaries.
Last year the conference gathered together over 800 people from 32 countries, with around 150 international visitors.
The
conference brings together entrepreneurs, researchers and practitioners
from diverse disciplines that are involved in the development of media
in various fields, ranging from sociology and economy, to technology.
In
recent years there have been speakers such as Marc Davis (Yahoo!),
Chris DiBona (Google), Anssi Vanjoki (Nokia), Bob Sutor (IBM), Ashwin
Navin (BitTorrent), Paula le Dieu (BBC, Creative Archive), Florence
Nibart-Devouard (Wikimedia Foundation), Teemu Kurppa (Jaiku), Jim
Zemlin (Linux Foundation), Monty Widenius (MySQL), Rick Falkvinge (The
Pirate Party), etc.
TargetSource's Founder , Mr Peter Cheng will
join MindTrek 2009 which will be held in Tampere, Finland from Sep
30th – Oct 2nd. He will talking about new ideas about "connecting
communites , from China to World " and " Communtiy Driven Business" at
the conferece.
More information about MindTrek, pls visit www.mindtrek.org , we are looking forward to see you in Tampere, Finland. |
posted Dec 20, 2009 8:23 AM by Target Source
Paula Rooney From ZDNET, 12, Aug, 2009
Add
SpringSource to the expanding list of independent open source companies
that have been gobbled up by proprietary software giants. Let’s
consider the growing list: IBM’s purchase of Gluecode, Novell’s
purchase of SUSE, Citrix’s XenSource deal, Nokia’s Trolltech buy, Sun’s
purchase of MySQL, Oracle’s purchase of Sun (and hence MySQL and
OpenOffice) and now VMware’s planned $420 million acquisition of
SpringSource. Is this what the founding open source developers envisioned? Doubt
it, but fewer open source backers are opposed to such mergers as the
use of open source software expands in the corporate sector and mixed
hybrid software stacks are growing up in the data center. Open
source is not toppling the ranks of proprietary software giants (yet)
but the quiet revolution is taking place: the model of free and open
software development has reduced vendor lock-in and is delivering
enormous benefits to developers and customers, observers maintain. The
acquisiton trend simply reflects this notion: industry titans can’t
beat it so they’re joining open source, observers also maintain. “I
expect VMware will continue to invest and grow the platform and that
bodes well for open source. I hope they realize that part of the value
is the large number of people building on the platform for free,” said
Larry Augustin, president and CEO of SugarCRM, a large open source CRM
vendor. “VMware doesn’t have a long history in open source but this is
a big bold step for them and I’m keeping my fingers crossed.” “They
did some contributions to the kernel and and made a free version of the
hypervisor available but not in open source. This is their first big
open source step and shows the value of these open source companies and
platforms. ” Some open source players question Oracle’s acquisiton of Sun but think the VMware-SpringSource marriage is a healthy one. Open
source is “a great production and distribution model, the latter being
more important, that creates some truly enterprise-class products that
customers need. For software developers this is especially true,
since they want unfettered access to products to try them and
understand how they work without needing to engage in a lot of
commercial activity, which they find to be a distasteful time sink,”
said Jeff Hartley, VP of Products and Marketing (correction) of
Terracotta, which develops open source clustering software for Java and
partners with both VMware and SpringSource. “With
our software, you can look at the code if you really want to know how
it works, and you can suggest improvements or become a committer and
help make future products. This point about distribution is perhaps
just one reason why VMware and SpringSource make sense together, with
Spring as an open source provider,” Hartley said. “As VMware builds its
portfolio of products to make enterprise software easier to build and
manage, it needs to connect up the stack with developers. SpringSource
has certainly done a good job of that and is a big help in high regard
in the developer community and have fantastic adoption.” Once
upon a time, corporate behemoths like Microsoft, Sun and VMware were
considered the greedy proprietary vendors that open source startups
would one day replace. Yes? But
that’s not panning out. Open source has gained credibility but the
industry has yet to spawn another billion-dollar baby. So what shifted? A
realization that the open source business model may not be working as
well as the open source development model? Or another aspect of open
source’s bottom up success? OpenBravo’s
CTO recently said such deals are inevitable as proprietary giants
infuse needed revenue into aspiring open source companies whose
download count vastly exceeds their revenue. Some
think such marriages are ideal because they generate vendors with a
healthy mix of proprietary and open source software. This prevents
lockin while ensuring commercial provders enjoy a profit. But will all successful open source companies end up in the clutches of proprietary software titans? Have
IBM, Novell, Sun, Citrix, Oracle and VMware thrown in the towel and see
open source as the inevitable future? Or are they simply gobbling up
the competition to protect their revenue streams for as long as
possible, or making strategic buys to counter their rivals’ open source
acquisitions? I
question this each time one of these deals are announced. Call me a
cynic. But one has to wonder about the viability of the open source
business model if all of the top open source dogs are acquired by
traditional software vendors. Paula Rooney is a Boston-based writer who has followed the tech industry for almost two decades. See her full profile and disclosureof her industry affiliations. |
posted Dec 20, 2009 8:22 AM by Target Source
FRAMINGHAM, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--A
recent IDC study reveals that worldwide revenue from open source
software (OSS) will grow at a 22.4% compound annual growth rate (CAGR)
to reach $8.1 billion by 2013. This forecast is considerably higher
than 2008 for three reasons: (1) the bottom-up list used to calculate
the revenue has expanded through an exhaustive effort to include more
projects in this forecast; (2) open source software has had a much
higher level of acceptance over the past 12 months than previously
expected, and; (3) the economy accelerated the uptake and use of open
source software in the closing months of 2008. "The
open source software market has seen a strong boost from the current
economic crisis," said Michael Fauscette, group vice president,
Software Business Solutions. "OSS is increasingly a part of the
enterprise software strategy of leading businesses and is seeing
mainstream adoption at a strong pace. As the overall software industry
continues to consolidate, it will be key for OSS vendors to reach scale
if they plan to continue as a standalone business." Additional key findings include: - Large
software vendors like IBM, Sun, Dell, HP, and Oracle are making
significant amounts of indirect revenue from their activities with and
support of OSS. This has greatly aided mainstream adoption and
acceptance of OSS.
- Hybrid
business models seem to be increasing. It is likely that this will end
up as the most prevalent business model, with on-premise vendors adding
SaaS, SaaS vendors offering on premise, OSS vendors selling variants,
and closed source vendors offering more OSS.
- The
opportunity to leverage OSS in ways that increase competitive
advantage, such as a part of BPO offerings or as a part of a software
appliance, is on the rise and should help increase adoption and growth
for OSS vendors.
This IDC study, Worldwide Open Source Software 2009–2013 Forecast (IDC
#219260) provides a new forecast for the open source software market as
a bottom-up sizing of the OSS market in 2008 and a 2009–2013 forecast.
Historical and forecast revenue data is shown for the total worldwide
marke |
posted Dec 20, 2009 8:20 AM by Target Source
Beijing, China.—June 18, 2008
Today from the Ministry of Information Industry and the State
Development and Reform Commission, Ministry of Science and Technology,
organised by the Beijing Municipal People's Government, the Chinese
software industry associations create software Branch, solar system
(China) Co., Ltd. in association with the "build Eco-system software
together help open platform "forum held in Beijing. Huihoo the open
source community under the co-founder of Peter Cheng spoke Record:
Huihoo
the open source community co-founder of Peter Cheng: Today I talk about
this part of a simple, I have in the past been involved in some of the
open source community understand how to truly help companies adopt
open-source technologies and products.
I start from 2001 to the
open source community Huihoo, 2004 came to Beijing, in various forums,
open source technology to do the research and exchanges, and we will
continue to do some inter-community interaction activities Open Source
Camp. Today, I still talk about how the focus on helping enterprises to
adopt open-source kind of technology.
Now the plan inside, you
will see a lot of open source software participants, individuals,
communities and enterprises in this inside the participation of
everyone through constant communication and to form a complete
ecosystem, we will see the inside of various All sorts of different
roles. At the same time there are many commercial companies gradually
some of their original strategy into the strategy of raising revenue,
more revenue is the commitment to the user to produce better software.
I
often ask customers, particularly in China, more revenue for the
understanding of the use of free, rather than genuine boost to use. In
China's concern on the market in the end, what does » I visited many
companies and customers, when they buy a software, the first is to
stabilize the operation, if the instability may lead to bad management
accountable. The second and stable operation of the future must be
better performance, so you get a better return. The third is to see
whether there is a corresponding skills with the talent, and these
people need training in the time-consuming. The last to care about the
issue of cost, in the end the software how much money be spent on
investment, so the final price is a problem. When we used to make
open-source inside the enterprise, we often referred to some problems,
an open source project and the final forming of the gap between the
products, bought today is not tomorrow can be used » Open-source
software is not also have to assess the way » Have your own company
with open-source software and technical talents to better use the
software. Your investment in the open-source software, how to calculate
your return on investment, and so on, and you will care about the
business support services, these are all you need to consider the
issue.
The real inside large enterprises, we feel that if we
use good open-source software, the need to develop a strategy,
including Bank of America to set up a special department to do the
overall assessment, we participate in the open-source and the
application of open source to provide services for customers , Summed
up some of our experience, a real business, if you should be an
open-source software, whether from the community to an open-source or
from a certain product makers get put into use, have to go through four
A process. First, the product itself to be evaluated. Second, depends
on whether the company's technical staff have the appropriate skills.
Third, the legal departments of the software the legal risk
assessments. Finally, as a high-level strategy departments, needs
assessment so I bought a software, the input of financial and material
resources, how long will the recovery proceeds, after the passage of
the four procedures, to enter a business within the enterprise-class
open-source software warehouse Lane.
For more details, please visit: http://www.slideshare.net/targetsource/open-community-open-strategy |
posted Dec 20, 2009 8:18 AM by Target Source
Beijing, China.—May 8, 2008 Today, TargetSource is very glad to announce that Stephen Walli , an open source strategist join the advisory board of TargetSource. Stephen
is an consultant of open source strategy . He was vice president of
open source development strategy at Optaros, Inc. He worked for
Microsoft for 5 years after the acquisition of Softway Systems, Inc,
the makers of Interix which lives on in the Services for UNIX product.
While at Microsoft, he continued to work on Interix, then joined the
Rotor team, and finally worked as part of the business development team
exploring how Microsoft could best develop open source communities.
We
believe that Stephen will bring more international business and
community experience on open source to TargetSource, help to make
TargetSource successful on the road of Open Source. |
posted Dec 20, 2009 8:09 AM by Target Source
Beijing, China.—April 10, 2008, TargetSource-an
open-source software services and consulting company in Beijing
announced the establishment of formal open-source community as a new
member.
As a large number of new software system through the
help of software vendors, built on open source-based system
architecture, these applications, will bring both enterprise-class
features, but also greatly reduces the complexity of enterprise IT and
cost . It is an open-source and gathered crowds of open source software
services and consulting companies, through the distribution,
management, integration and support of open source software and
application software through a global network of collaboration, and
cooperation partners will deliver quality service to End-users. TargetSource
through the development of the Enterprise-Ready Open Source ™ platform
for these new powerful open source-based solutions for enterprise
applications provider of innovative vitality. Enterprise-Ready Open
Source ™, is a set of components and services that can help simplify
and automate labor-intensive and complex task, and ensure that the
solution is easy to deploy and easy to use, and to enterprise-class
quality and performance. These solutions can increase revenue through
the gathered crowds of professional support services, access to
critical security patches, updates, to ensure that users need when they
can receive timely. For each solution, assembling people to choose the
right open-source components, and then integrate, build, test and
packaging them, finally delivered an optimized solution.
At
the same time, assembling people to raise revenue also includes a very
strong advisory team, as a global open-source software and a leader in
risk investment, will TargetSource company's long-term development to
provide support and assistance. TargetSource these expert consultants
will bring more business guidance and the open source community's
development strategy are:
- Mikko Puhakka: Mikko
is founder of Holtron Ventures First investor in MySQL (2001), exited
to SUN for USD 1 billion. in 2008 Open Source researcher at Helsinki
University of Technology since 2004 Advisor to COSS, Finnish Center for
Open Source Solutions since 2005 Well known thought leader in Open
Source, having given speeches and organizing network events in China,
Europe, Africa and USA Advisor of Open Source companies in Europe, USA
and China.
- Peter Kronowitt: Peter is
a Software Strategist in Intel's Open Source Technology Center and is
responsible for developing and managing the worldwide program for Linux
operating system vendors. Peter has 20 years in the high-tech sector,
with IBM, Xircom and more than twelve years with Intel. He has led
global teams for market and platform roadmap development in the
worldwide channel and directed software ecosystem relationships for new
Intel platform introductions. Peter has held positions as board
observer at JBoss as part of an Intel Capital equity investment, was a
founding and Steering Committee member of the Open Business Readiness
Rating, and Steering Committee Vice Chair for the Open Source
Development Lab Desktop Linux Working Group.
- Gong Min: Dr. Gong graduated from Peking University Department of Radio, assigned to the Chinese Academy of Sciences, which has worked to the United States 2002, and later to Helsinki, Finland, Hong Kong Polytechnic University of painstaking research It is in Finland, Gong Min involved in the LINUX operating system development and research. 2000 Gong Min backto Beijing to start returning Ningsi Technology Limited.
- Zhang Wen Song: Dr. ZhangWenSong graduated from National University of Defense Technology, Ph.D., the incumbent TelTel chief scientist. Dr.Zhang, founded in May 1998 LVS, and applied to many systems on the Internet, including SourceForge.net, abc.com. LVS Linux kernel as an important item for the high availability of
network structures cluster system important features and performance.
Dr.Zhang as China's open-source Software leader, encouraging more young
people to participate in open-source software development and promotion
of the past.
- Zhang Shu Guang: Zhang Shuguang who have more than 10 years experiences in international law business is a partner of Beijing Longan law firm, he was promulgated the Law Society of the first batch of possessing both the Bar, the English proficiency of foreign-related legal counsel. Zhang Shuguang was graduated from Beijing Language Institute Bachelor of English and American Literature in 1994. And also received a master's degree in International Economic Law at China University of Political Science and in 1997.
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