I should be writing this post about 6 hours earlier than I actually am however, I confess I gave way to the temptation of playing Battlefield: Bad Company 2 for the first time with my clan in the UK. I love it - it's fun to have a new game to play especially after a busy and at times rather intense week.

Today, gaming is practically the only occasion I find myself using Microsoft technologies for personal use.  It is a stark reminder that, as much I as wish to embrace open source in its entirety, it will not be possible until I can convince my clan members that there are options using open source technologies that can compete with the incumbent offerings.

Thankfully, that is not the case when it comes to enterprise software.  So, putting gaming aside, what can I tell you about Solutions Linux 2010?  Let's cut to the chase - I was dismayed that this year did not exceed last years' attendees nor did it bring back previous exhibitors such as Alfresco, OpenBravo & SugarCRM to name a few.  Well known vendors instead let their partners such as StarXpert represent them so I guess they feel they're getting more value using other channels to market their brands and build-out their partner ecosystems.  Some of the chaps from Alter Way I spoke to feel that it's because of the credit crunch taking bite: marketing budgets are much tighter and there's less 'to go around' one might say.

Attendance on the first day was good to busy, the second quiet and it picked up again on the third day, perhaps in part to the support and contribution of OW2 to the conference programme (disclaimer: I work with OW2).  One can conclude that both exhibitors and attendees are being more careful with time and budget. The mood amongst exhibitors at the conference was very upbeat, thanks to positive commercial developments and one could sense deal-flow taking place in the VIP lounge. I know that's really vague and as intangibles go I scored pretty high in that last sentence so, suffice to say keep your eye on Nuxeo over the next few weeks as an example to corroborate my points above ;-)

Various things caught my eye during the show though the one that I'm most excited about (with the exception of PetalsLink - my passion for ESB still burns brightly and I'm very enthused about their product suite roadmap) is actually 2 projects that collaborate together and should appeal to subject matter experts in IT service management:

• GLPI (Gestion Libre de Parc Informatique) is an open source IT asset management suite with a rich feature set that would make proprietary vendors envious,
• GOsa² is a configuration management tool with LDAP bindings that is, for want of a better expression, sweet.

After many years I've finally found the open source solution that can provide similar features as Microsoft's policy administration and deployment tools via Active Directory - yes, that thing that controls whether or not your users can change their Windows desktop background as well as other much more useful configuration items.  This ability to control has been a major reason Windows sys admins have been nervous to migrate to a Linux-only or hybrid network because of the inability to deploy operating systems in a turn key fashion with template user profiles as well as manage, on an ongoing basis, those profiles and other configuration data, at scale i.e. for 1000s of users.  These 2 projects are not only capable of delivering on this promise they have production references including an installation managing >100k users in Munich - there's some positive feedback shared at Slashdot about the project too.  I should also mention, albeit inferred by the point regarding hybrid networks, that the suite can manage and deploy Microsoft operating systems and associated user accounts / profiles / settings as well, it's rather good at it too :-)  Take a look, I hope you like what you find, I did.  For commercial enquiries feel free to get in touch with me or the team at OpenSides.

Now, as I'm also a fan of high performance computing (HPC),  it's de rigeur if you consult to financial organisations, it was good to meet the INRIA team and learn more about the ProActive Parallel Suite.  Those in the know will remember that DataSynapse, a similar and proprietary technology, was recently acquired. DataSynapse had done a great job bringing parallel processing capabilities to general business applications - general is perhaps a misnoma, more like apps that could not get budget authorised to be run on supercomputers is maybe more appropriate and would benefit from more processing power in order to do their work - think middle office VAR reports for example.  ProActive Parallel Suite is represented commercially by ActiveEon and one of the nice things about this system which might well appeal to many financial boutiques and hedge funds is the ability to use both private and public cloud infrastructure i.e. Amazon cloud images to help get the calculations spun faster.  Icing on the cake of course is no vendor lock-in whatsoever and you can use any of the popular virtualisation technologies to build your clusters.  No doubt DataSynapse customers might well be wondering whether it's time to review their contracts in light of  this exciting new technology.

What else...

• UshareSoft is worth a look - if you're an ISV looking for a solution to custom appliance packaging this is it.  UShareSoft are fresh and thus far there's not really anyone quite like them in the market just now,
• XWiki continues to evolve their wiki platform and I'm looking forward to using their upcoming groups functionality that is currently under development,
• Ubikis / OpenMobileIS is helping the Java community enable pervasive solutions through an extensive framework of libraries - if you're syncing behaviour and data between different devices this is definitely worth a look,
• I enjoyed my demo of SpagoBI, a business intelligence tool, developed by the visionary Italian conglomerate Engineering Ingenerica Informatica - I'll be recommending this to clients as there are some great ways to manipulate business data in real-time and present this to an audience which, amongst other uses, will make for really productive meetings between co-workers and avoid the dreaded death by powerpoint,
• BonitaSoft, Talend and Jaspersoft are doing well in gaining more mindshare and customers; it's great to see such positive examples of open source vendors of generic enterprise applications - do visit their respective sites to learn more,
• MedinTux is an open source patient record system for general practitioners and consultants - extensive in functionality though poorly marketed as you'll see when you visit their website,
• Edenwall have integrated their firewalling with LDAP user and group objects so that you can have granular control of your rules and bind those directly to the LDAP objects to deliver an Identity Based Firewall - while not open source it might be of interest to my IT security friends who I hope are reading this ;-)
• Linutop is a fanless mini PC helping us use technology more efficiently with better TCO - where space is an issue this is going to be your answer - ideal for use with the Linux Terminal Server Project (LTSP).

It was good to participate in this year's Solutions Linux trade show though if there's one thing I would say it is that there needs to be much more "story telling" taking place - I'm bored of product pitches that don't tell a story - it's the ability to identify with stories, rather than features, that allows me and visitors to better understand how and why we would recommend or adopt these solutions.