Open Source Business Intelligence (BI)

The lineup for the upcoming September issue is pretty impressive:

Sam Selim, Founder and Chief Technology Officer of SQL Power Group Inc., discusses how open source is shifting the buying and software evaluation patterns of BI users.

John Kemp, a Principal Consultant, and Benjamin Dietz, a BI Consultant, provide a primer on BI, introducing the terms and concepts used throughout the issue.

David Currie, founder of Clearview Informatics, examines the keys to success that allow an organization to extract maximum value from an investment in BI software.

John Kemp takes a look at how buying patterns have changed and what it means for businesses looking at open source BI software.

Steve Holub, a BI Consultant, reports on a recent survey of open source software tools used in BI and data warehousing systems.

Benjamin Dietz and Lily Singh of SQL Power Group compare the features of four popular open source reporting solutions.

Thierry Badard, CTO of Spatialytics, highlights the need for geospatial BI software and the integration of the spatial component in a BI software stack in order to consistently enable geo-analytical tools.

Tom Bondur, Content Development Manager in the Developer Communications group of Actuate Engineering, and Jason Weathersby, the BIRT Evangelist at Actuate Corporation, introduce BIRT and discuss why Actuate chose the open source development model and the benefits that this project brings to the BI user community.

Upcoming Issue on Tech Entrepreneurship

The upcoming issue is being prepared for publication on August 1st. This month's authors include:

Brian Hurley, an entrepreneur and CEO at Purple Forge, provides an overview of ecosystems models and why they matter. Brian also highlights, through numerous examples, how it is possible to take advantage of the related, like-minded and even competitive players in an ecosystem.

Carlo Daffara, head of research at Conecta, has conducted a survey of over 200 open source companies and provided what amounts to a map of entrepreneurship in that space. Carlo clearly demonstrates the economic advantages of open source across a wide variety of business models and commercialization approaches.

Peter Carbone, an ICT executive and Coral CEA champion, discusses a new approach to commercialization through the creation of a new ecosystem for communications enabled applications. This is an exciting effort in terraforming a space to create a new ecosystem.

Gordon Quinn, Co-Founder & CEO of iPic Innovations Incorporated, writes about entrepreneurship and users' experience in a world that assumes the Internet. The Internet was certainly disruptive and spawned a number of new ecosystems. Gordon looks at how to disrupt for gain in that context.

John Boden, CTO & Senior Vice President of Corporate Development at Movius Interactive, takes on the issue of entrepreneurship within existing enterprises. Innovation and culture are closely linked and he explores the role open source can play in stimulating both.

James Bowen, an entrepreneur and adjunct professor at uOttawa’s Telfer School of Management, considers a number of the attributes of the entrepreneur. James provides a perspective on the importance of the quality of thinking and quality of people with respect to success in all aspects of a venture.

Dave Hudson from Lead to Win is guest editor and I think you'll agree that he has done an excellent job of finding authors to discuss the editorial theme of Tech Entrepreneurship.

Upcoming July Issue

Here's a sneak peek of the upcoming July issue on Collaboration:

Evan Andrews from Sylvatica discusses open analysis methods, software, and data that can be used to help companies, the economy, and society become greener, faster.

Joseph Wilson from the Treehouse Group provides examples of how successful adaptation to market conditions comes from collaboration with people across traditionally demarcated fields of study.

Norm Friesen from Thompson Rivers University describes recent developments in the adaptation of open source and open content to educational practices and technologies.

Chris Tyler from Seneca College outline's Seneca's approach to sustainably involving students in open source communities that has proven successful in a course setting.

Andy Adler from Carleton University, John C. Nash from the University of Ottawa, and Sylvie Noël from the Communications Research Centre of Canada introduce TellTable, an open source system designed to allow single-user software applications to be managed in a collaborative manner.

Peter Deitz and Christine Egger from Social Actions describe how this organization applies open source principles to the its products and processes.

Stephen Huddart from the McConnell Foundation and Anil Patel of the Framework Foundation propose the concept of Applied Collaboration Studios to engender a quantum shift in the social sector’s efficiency, reach, and impact through the combined use of open source technologies, social process tools and collaboration platforms.

Upcoming Issue on Open Source in Government

Here's a preview of some of the articles in the upcoming May issue on Open Source in Government:

Gijs Hillenius, from the EU's Open Source Observatory and Repository, provides an overview of the advancements and some of the setbacks of the implementation of open source and open standards by public administrations in the 27 member states of the European Union in 2008.

Edgy Paiva, Director of IVIA, shows how the Brazilian Government is using OSS, gives some examples of successful Brazilian projects that use OSS, explains some difficulties for implementing OSS, and makes a comparison of the advantages and disadvantages of using OSS.

Darlene Meskell, Director of Intergovernmental Solutions at GSA, provides an overview of current open government initiatives in both the United States and other parts of the world.

Zigmunds Zitmanis, Vice-Rector for Information Technology at Riga Technical University, discuss the reasons for the decision of Riga Technical University in Latvia to choose an open source product as the application to provide the single point of entry into electronic services for the University.

Upcoming April Issue

The theme for the upcoming April issue is "Open APIs". Here's a sneak peek at the authors and their articles:

Michael Weiss from Carleton University describes a research framework to examine the structure of the mashup ecosystem and its growth over time using network analysis to obtain key characteristics of the ecosystem and identify significant ecosystem members and their relationships.

G.R. Gangadharan, a research scientist at the Novay in the Netherlands, provides an overview of open API licensing, provide examples from current open APIs, and briefly discusses open licensing of open APIs.

Owen Byrne, Senior Manager of Travelpod Labs, compares the features of the most commonly used JavaScript Toolkits used to create rich Internet applications and how freely available toolkits are able to compete against proprietary alternatives.

Roberto Milev and Steven Muegge of Carleton University describe a method for examining the evolving modularity of large-scale software systems and introduce a new modularity metric for comparing code bases of different size.

Byron Thom, a student at at the University of Ottawa's Faculty of Law, summarizes a recent Torys Technology Law Speaker Series where Professor Madison, Associate Dean for Research and Professor of Law at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, introduced a novel interpretation of copyright in the age of OSS using a spatial framework to deal with open source licenses.

Upcoming March Issue

The March issue is making good progress towards being published early next week. The theme for March is "Geospatial". Here's a sneak peak at the articles:

Tyler Mitchell, Executive Director of the Open Source Geospatial Foundation, discusses the factors needed to get open source geospatial products into the hands of users, the value of marketing open source projects, and the advantages provided by an open source ecoystem.

Mark Lucas, a principal scientist at RadiantBlue Technologies Inc., and Scott Bortman, system architect and primary developer for the OMAR web processing system, introduce the OMAR web based system for archival, retrieval, processing, and distribution of geospatial assets.

Andrew Ross, a Director within the Engineering team at Ingres, provides a primer on geospatial technology and discusses some of the lessons learned from Ingres' geospatial open source project.

Paul Ramsay, a Senior Consultant with OpenGeo, examines how geospatial open source provides an example of the market challenges of a mid-sized vertical market.

Upcoming February Issue

The February issue is undergoing the final formatting stage with plans to publish early next week. The theme this month is "Commercialization" and the authors include:

Tony Bailetti from Carleton University provides a conceptual tool to measure the strength of a business model and shows how open source can strengthen a company’s business model.

Peter Carbone, an ICT executive that specializes in ICT strategy and commercialization, highlights the relevance of new business models and ecosystems in the knowledge-era economy.

David A. Wheeler, a software developer and technical author, argues that there are two types of commercial software: proprietary software and F/LOSS.

Jennifer Bell introduces VisibleGovernment.ca and describes why open government data is not only a requirement for greater government transparency, but also a valuable investment in our country’s infrastructure.

Mike Kavis answers the question "Do you have any suggestions for how an individual or small business can give back to an open source community?".

Upcoming January Issue

We're finishing up the formatting of the January issue which should be ready to be published early next week. The theme this month is "Enterprise Participation". Here's a sneak peek at the articles:

Ian Skerrett, Director of Marketing of the Eclipse Foundation, presents a model for establishing successful innovation networks.

Kingston Duffie, CTO of the Fanfare Group, outlines how a small independent software vendor can work with large enterprise consumers in an open collaborative environment.

Stephen R. Walli, an open source consultant, explores the impact open source is having on the mobile Internet.

Stormy Peters, Executive Director of the GNOME Foundation, discusses the importance of consumers within an open source project.

Alain Désilets, a Research Officer at the National Research Council of Canada, presents what to consider before releasing an asset as open source and launching an open source community.

Upcoming December Issue

The theme for the December issue is "Enabling Innovation" and it should be ready to publish some time this weekend. Here's a sneak peak at the authors and their articles:

Leslie Hawthorn from Google's Open Source Programs Office examines the origins of Google's Summer of Code program, how students benefit by participating, and how Google views this investment in the F/LOSS community and its potential to improve the overall progression of Computer Science as a discipline.

Tom Scheinfeldt from George Mason University introduces Omeka, an open source next generation web publishing platform for academic work which is based upon a set of commonly recognized web and metadata standards.

David Wiley from Brigham Young University describes how Flat World Knowledge is leveraging principles of openness to bring textbooks back into reach of all students, creating significant social value in a manner that will sustain itself over the long-term.

Steven Muegge from Carleton University and Chukwuemeka Afigbo from SW Global present a for-profit private sector company that creates high-impact value at universities and governments in developing countries through an innovative business model anchored around service subscriptions, open source software, and open content.

Fred Dixon from Blindside Networks and Jill Woodley from Volunteer Ottawa share the experiences of a unique community/university partnership to bring accessible technology to a non-profit community.

John Weigelt from Microsoft Canada discusses the role service oriented architecture and interoperability can play in keeping an organization innovative and competitive. He also discusses Microsoft's interoperability principles, its commitment to its open source community, and the benefits of embracing openness as part of an organization's business strategy.

Michael Grove from CollabWorks introduces the Open Innovation 2.0 model and its ability to transform companies even during down times.

Upcoming November Issue

The theme for the upcoming issue of the OSBR is Health and Life Sciences and we hope to publish shortly after November 10th. Here is a preview of some of the articles in the upcoming issue:

Jacob Brauer from the Mirth Project provides an overview of healthcare interface engines, the healthcare and connectivity standards Mirth supports, and compares Mirth to other interface engines.

Mark Yendt, Duane Bender, and Brian Minaji from Mohawk College describe their reference implementation of the Canada Health Infoway pan-Canadian Electronic Health Record Solution standard and the lessons learned that can help reduce the cost, risk and time barriers to widespread adoption of eHealth systems in Canada.

Brian Berry from Open Health Tools introduces an open source ecosystem where members of the health and information technology professions can collaborate to build interoperable electronic health record systems.

Upcoming Issue on Social Innovation

We're knee deep into the editorial process for the upcoming September issue. The theme this month is "Social Innovation" and the guest editor is Dr. Tony Bailetti from the Department of Systems and Computer Engineering and the Eric Sprott School of Business at Carleton University. This is shaping up to be an excellent issue and what follows is a sneak peak of some of the authors and their topic within the editorial theme:

Dr. Roseann O'Reilly Runte, President and Vice-Chancellor of Carleton University, explores the challenges for social innovation and the use of information technology.

Tonya Surman, the founding executive director of the Centre for Social Innovation, and Mark Surman, the Executive Director of the Mozilla Foundation, explain the Constellation Model, an innovative approach to organizing collaborative efforts in the social mission sector which shares various elements of the open source model.

David Wiley, Chief Openness Officer for Flat World Knowledge, describes how open textbooks leverage openness to create social value.

Edward Jackson, Associate Dean in the Faculty of Public Affairs at Carleton University, discusses the dynamic triangle of community-university engagement (CUE) and how universities can play a pivotal role in social innovation.