Open Gardens

Wireless mobility - Innovation - Digital convergence - mobile web 2.0

 

Now Available
for FREE Download
as an E-Book

Operator Open Innovation
by Ajit Jaokar and Chetan Sharma

About Open Gardens

Open Gardens is published by futuretext

Recently, the OpenGardens blog was rated amongst the top 10 mobile blogs as per technorati stats.


On W3C/Planet Mobile

Blog Directory - Blogged
Rated 8/10 on Blogged.com

Wikio - Top Blogs - Technology


RSS Feed

Subscribe By Email: Enter your email address:

Delivered by FeedBurner

About The Open Gardens Blog

I (Ajit) founded the blog on May 26, 2005 based on my vision and philosophy of OpenGardens i.e. the philosophical opposite of 'walled gardens' especially as applicable to the mobile data industry.

Today, the OpenGardens blog is one of the few blogs that span both the Web and the Mobile domains.

The blog covers wireless/mobile applications, open networks and mobile web 2.0. My vision behind the OpenGardens blog has been :

  • The blog is about the Mobile data industry and Digital convergence('Mobile web 2.0')
  • Analysis is more important than story/controversy. I don't believe that bloggers are true journalists. The blog is not about the latest 'story' but it's more about independent analysis/viewpoint
  • The OpenGardens blog is broadly about opening up the networks, growing digital usage and digital businesses i.e. we don't advocate closed networks, broadcast media etc
  • It is about disruptive digital technologies

Founder and Chief blogger : Ajit Jaokar

Ajit Jaokar is the founder of the London based publishing and research company futuretext (www.futuretext.com) focussed on emerging Web and Mobile technologies -including Web 2.0 and Mobile Web 2.0.

His thinking is widely followed in the industry and his blog, the OpenGardensBlog (www.opengardensblog.futuretext.com), which was recently rated a top 20 wireless blog worldwide

In 2009-2010, Ajit was nominated as part of the Global Agenda Council on the Future of the Internet by the world economic forum. He hopes to use this opportunity to further extend the pragmatic viewpoint of the evolution of Telecoms networks in an open ecosystem.

(Note: The Network of Global Agenda Councils plays a significant role in shaping the global agenda by monitoring global issues and elaborating recommendations to address them. Each Council, comprised of 15-20 Members, serves as an advisory board to the Forum and other interested parties, such as governments and international organizations. The Global Agenda Councils also act as the intellectual drivers of the World Economic Forum's Global Redesign Initiative, an unprecedented international, multistakeholder and multimedia dialogue that aims to develop a 21st-century vision of global cooperation. Members of the G20, the UN and other International Organizations have pledged their support for this initiative. )

Ajit is best known for his books Mobile Web 2.0, Social Media Marketing. Two new books ('Open Mobile' and 'Implementing Mobile Web 2.0') are being released in 2009.

His consulting activities include working with companies to define value propositions across the device, network, Web and Social networking stack spanning both technology and strategy. He has worked with a range of commercial and government organizations globally including The European Union, Telecoms Operators, Device manufacturers, social networking companies and security companies in various strategic and visionary roles

His recent talks and forthcoming talks include: CEBIT 2009;MobileWorld Congress(2007, 2008, 2009); Keynote at O Reilly Web20 expo (April 2007);Keynote at Java One; European Parliament – Brussels – (Electronic Internet Foundation); Stanford University's Digital visions program;MIT Sloan;Fraunhofer FOKUS ; University of St. Gallen (Switzerland); Mobile Web Strategies (partner event of CTIA in San Francisco)

Media appearances include BBC – Newsnight – 3phone launch; CNN money; BBC digital planet

Ajit chairs Oxford University's Next generation mobile applications panel and conducts a course on Web 2.0, Social networking, Mobile Web 2.0 and LTE services at Oxford University.

Ajit lives in London, UK, but has three nationalities (British, Indian and New Zealander) and is proud of all three. He is currently doing a PhD on Privacy and Reputation systems at UCL in London. Ajit is a fan of animation especially Tom and Jerry, Tintin and Asterix and likes the music of ZZ Top and other rock bands

You can contact me at ajit.jaokar at futuretext.com

You can follow me on twitter at http://www.twitter.com/AjitJaokar

See a video of my talk at CEBIT in Hannover
(intro in german - presenttion in english)

► MORE

► CONTRIBUTING BLOGGERS

  • Ajit Jaokar on Twitter

February 25, 2009

UK Government appears to recommend Ingres over Oracle …

UK government backs open source

On the face of it, this sounds good news ..

But like many things – I don’t think people understand the issues

The BBC article refers to two Open source comments

Simon Phipps, chief open source officer for Sun Microsystems, said the UK government’s stance was part of a “global wave” of take up for open source in governments.

and

Steve Shine, Ingres says Open source can help avoid many of the hidden costs of proprietary software

I have already said before the misconceptions of open source governance and open source licensing model Open is the new closed? – Bringing transparency to Open source by separating Open source licensing models and Open source governance models ..

Let us consider the mention of Ingres in the context of Open source above ..

A long time ago .. I used to work for PeopleSoft which is now Oracle corporation . Prior to mobile, I have worked extensively on databases(especially Oracle) and also data warehouses.

So, databases are familiar to me ..

Hence, I was surprised to see Ingres now calling itself an Open source company information management company ..

Was it the same Ingres which used to be around so many years ago? (at that time the race was between Oracle, Sybase, Informix and Ingres)

Over the years – Oracle won! By a wide margin!

In fact, I did not know that Ingres still existed :) until I read this article

Yet – by calling itself ‘Open source’ a once forgotten company tries to be ‘cool’!

Worse – in my view – the UK government seems to mandate that Ingres(because it is supposedly Open source) is better than Oracle(which is not)

Anyone who knows anything about database business knows that the critical factor is not open source – but the data itself(protection, reliability, etc etc)

These factors seem to be ignored and ‘Open source’ seems to be the key criteria for inclusion

I have said before .. that there are politics of Open source .. and while Open source has its place within any ecosystem – governments and regulatory bodies should not mandate Open source or open standards one way or the other. Microsoft vs. the EU: Can we legislate to force a company to use Web standards ..

That’s a key line to cross .. and it would appear to me that companies who have not been commercially successful(like Ingres) are now claiming product superiority over those that have(like Oracle) only by claiming to be ‘Open source’ – a factor that has only limited value in the broad scheme of things within a database context

Disclaimer: I have no commercial relationship with Oracle

Post to Twitter Tweet This Post

Filed under: Uncategorized — ajit @ 9:58 pm

1 Comment »

  1. Having been an Ingres database user for a number of years I can with some authority say that technically it is a very good product. However, one big omission is a free text search module.
    That aside I would rather use Ingres than Oracle any day and it will be cheaper to administer week to week.
    But there is a sting in the tale. Ingres whilst proclaiming to be open-source and technically it is, isn’t cheap. Moreover, there sales tactics are somewhat aggressive in my humble opinion.
    I would however, recommend that you perform your own calculations before getting into bed with Ingres.

    Comment by John Clarke — February 28, 2009 @ 12:24 pm

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URL

Leave a comment

Open Gardens is published by futuretext