OpenNMS Could Be a Budding Linux-Like Success Story

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C. – Tarus Balog and a small group of developers are determined to do for networking management systems what Linux has done for software in general.

Open up the field, the OpenNMS crew says, just as the Linux devotees of Linus Torvalds said to the Windows world.

OpenNMS recently won a major reader’s choice award from SearchNetworking.com over high-profile name products from IBM and Hewlett Packard. In a recent interview with Balog, who is based in Pittsboro and is the “maintainer” or oversser of the project, we talked about OpenNMS and its future:

Why is OpenNMS free?

Software is moving in two directions. It is either becoming a commodity or it is so complex as to require a lot of services. OpenNMS was started by people who had been using the high-end commercial management software for years as consultants but were not satisfied with either the way the software worked or the extremely high price required to purchase it.

With the advent of the free and open source software movement in 1999-2000, it was hoped that a community could be built around an open source network management platform that would grow to be strong enough to take on the intrenched commercial software providers. It has taken a long time, but OpenNMS is now ready to stand with the likes of HP's OpenView, IBM's Tivoli and CA's Unicenter.”
What is the secret sauce that makes OpenNMS so good?

The community. A lot of people think open source is about making source code available. So a bunch of guys will sit in a room, write some code and then present it to the world and say "here."

OpenNMS development has been public and community-based since 2000. It was slow going at first, but over time people have aggregated around the project and through their input, advice and hard work OpenNMS can now challenge the big guys. The project grows in the way the end users need to it grow, and not in they way some marketing guy wants it to.

How do you make money?

We print it on a laser printer.

Seriously, what commercial software vendors don't tell their clients is that for every dollar spent on an application like OpenView a company can expect to pay seven to eight times that amount for services to get it running. With a better tool, we figured we could reduce that cost and get rid of the initial software licensing expense as well as annual software support.

The OpenNMS Group provides support, services, training and custom development for OpenNMS. It is also the main financial backer of the OpenNMS Project which has a community that is much, much larger than the company behind it. It is this community that has been key to OpenNMS's success.

How many people work with you?

The OpenNMS Group has about half a dozen employees, most of whom are in the Triangle area. The key governing group of the OpenNMS Project is The Order of the Green Polo which now has about 15 members.

How long have you been involved in the project, and why? What does "maintainer" mean?

I started working with OpenNMS in September of 2001. The project was started by a group of people that later went on to for Oculan. In May of 2002 Oculan decided to focus on their network management appliance and I took over the stewardship responsibilities for OpenNMS.

Why located in Pittbsoro?

Because I live on a 21-acre horse farm halfway between Pittsboro and Carrboro and there are no broadband internet solutions available out there. I rented some office space in town and we've just stayed there as the company grew.

Do you work with Red Hat at all or other Linux developers?

Not really. We are working with the Mandriva Linux distribution in hopes of being distributed directly through their servers, but we have never been able to meet up with the right people at Red Hat to talk about a partnership.

With another award on top of the LinuxWorld honor you received in 2005, what are your plans?

To keep doing what we are doing. Our 2.0 release is scheduled for this summer, and in the words of Al Jolson "You ain't seen nothing yet."

What does a proprietary system like Tivoli cost to install?

It depends, but depending on what you buy the starting price is probably around $50,000, with a medium size installation running into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Back in the 1990's I worked on projects that had spent several million dollars on license fees for products like Tivoli.

What is the secret sauce that makes OpenNMS so good?

The community. A lot of people think open source is about making source code available. So a bunch of guys will sit in a room, write some code and then present it to the world and say "here."

OpenNMS development has been public and community-based since 2000. It was slow going at first, but over time people have aggregated around the project and through their input, advice and hard work OpenNMS can now challenge the big guys. The project grows in the way the end users need to it grow, and not in they way some marketing guy wants it to.