Even though I've been involved with our commercial sales effort for years, the thing that really brought me to Zenoss was our Open Source background. I love the idea of working for a company that offers a free (as in beer, freedom and love) solution to users and customers alike. As all of you know, product differentiation's in our space can often be very nuanced, however, the fact that we offer Open Source software is something that truly sets us apart from the rest of the competition. It's something that a lot of our competitors are actually scared of for a multitude of reasons.
As discussed many times on this blog before, openness is something that is absolutely critical to most users/customers today. No one wants to be locked into a solution they can't extend or adjust based on their requirements. Being Open Source gives us a huge advantage in this area, since we have to provide a open and viable platform for people to build extensions around. So the more open and usable our product is, the more attractive and viable of an ecosystem we have. Openness, interoperability and flexibility are the result and are therefore at the core of our business.
Another advantage Open Source brings to the table for us is quality. It certainly takes a lot of courage to expose the source of your software to the world, and with it, all its faults and bugs, all of it out there for everyone to see. What we get as a result, however, is a rigorous and brutal test track, which would be impossible to replicate in a lab or test environment. Instead we test/run our software in the harsh conditions that tens of thousands of different environments throw at us. The result is a product which outperforms most proprietary software and delivers more value to users/customers.
This and many other reasons, is why we are excited about our recently released Core 4 Alpha. We're excited that the most powerful open source datacenter platform, is becoming even more powerful by being unleashed it to the world. We're excited about its capabilities, and are waiting in anticipation to see what people will do with it. We're excited because the Zenoss ecosystem will be stronger and bigger than ever before, thanks to our Core 4.
