Microstrategy and Panorama showing signs of stress from open source

A while back Red Hat did a great video called ‘Truth Happens’ based on this Mohandas Gandhi quote

First they ignore you…

Then they laugh at you…

Then they fight you…

Then you win…

The video is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjSDAUykkzQ

MicroStrategy

Earlier this year MicroStrategy released a ‘free’ reporting edition. At the time BI commentators such as Cindi Howson did not see this as a strategy against open source – despite the fact that in the database and middle-ware space Microsoft, IBM, and Oracle all used this ploy. Now, it seems, MicroStrategy is contacting community members and bloggers in the open source BI space to ‘push’ their free offering.

http://twitter.com/josvandongen/statuses/4313121049

This indicates to me that their ‘free’ edition is, at least in part, an anti-open source gambit. This puts MicroStrategy in the ‘then they fight you…’ stage. Only one more stage to go MicroStrategy. We’re cheering for you…

Panorama Software

Further behind Microstrategy in the progression is Panorama. They seem to be moving from the ‘First they ignore you…’ to the ‘then they laugh at you…’ stage – judging from this post on their site:

http://www.panorama.com/blog/2009/09/will-saas-lead-open-source-to-extinction/

I particularly like this quote:

Well, advocates for political correctness will be happy to hear that cloud is chasing open source out the window, especially in the BI space.

This is amusing because, to my knowledge, the only BI companies to go under this year have been, wait for it…, SaaS BI providers – not open source BI companies or on-premise BI companies. First Lucidera and, this week, Blink Logic. To quote Captain Barbossa from Pirates of the Caribbean:

Think you can outrun the world? You know the problem with being the last of anything, by and by there be none left at all.

So Panorama seems to be firmly in the second stage, with two more to go. Keep going Panorama, maybe you can catch up with MicroStrategy. We’re cheering for you…