Thursday, October 12, 2006

Open sourcing Zimki

I was asked recently why we are intending to open source Zimki?

Well, there are some concerns with commoditised web operating environments around lock-in fears & availability concerns. By this action and some other releases in our roadmap, we plan to create the infrastructure for a "national" grid for Zimki environments.

This means that not only can people and companies swap suppliers easily but also suppliers can sell capacity into the grid - which is an important part of the process.

Yes it means we are going to give an easy route to competitors into this environment, but that's the point - to create a wider market.

I'd always go for the small bit of very big pie rather than the whole of a very tiny pie and commoditised web operating environments won't really take off until a company can change supplier as simply as changing electricity provider.

That's why open source and the "grid" is part of our roadmap.

Anyway, we are on that road now - things are starting to happen.