Just found this marketing landing page published on social networks. It's made by TIBCO and attempts to highlight the downsides of Open Source ESBs. You don't need to be a rocket scientist to gather what exact ESB they are targeting (not us): just look at the images.
http://www.tibco.com/integration/open-source-ESB-alternative Even though it's a clear exercise of FUD vs. OSS – as it provides no quantitive measurements to their claims (whatever happened to the scientific method...) – I was planning to write a rebuttal post in my blog, but I haven't updated it in a long time and it needs a bit of love first. So I thought I'd just publish my thoughts – as I wanted to get it out ASAP – and start a qualified discussion here... In particular I would like to dissect / take down their 4 "myths" about OSS ESBs: *> *Myth # 1 - Open Source ESB Software Is Free** (Their statement: OSS ESBs are not Free.) Well, no software has zero Total Cost of Ownership. As long as the world is *not* entirely controlled by androids, you will need humans to operate the software, including TIBCO's. What we need to look at are the costs of hiring those people and their learning curves. For Camel, any developer with Java, XML and a few other "commodity skills" will do. And they can get started in days. Many people in this forum got started in hours. For TIBCO, you need a specialised consultant because their stack is proprietary. Or you need to train them, and TIBCO training is not cheap. I have been a TIBCO consultant and I know this for a fact. Moreover, specialised (already trained) TIBCO consultants are not cheap either (like with most proprietary software – think SAP, Salesforce, etc.). Furthermore, brand new customers need consultancy to get started – and that is not cheap either. *> *Myth #2 - Open Source ESB Communities Innovate Faster** (Their statement: Proprietary ESB vendors innovate faster) This is plainly wrong. Just take a look at the release notes of TIBCO ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks. This [1] is the latest version, and there's a dropdown at the top to browse through past versions. To analyse this statement, we need to track two things at least: (1) frequency of releases, (2) new features introduced per release. About frequency of releases: TIBCO ActiveMatrix release line 6.x: 9 months between minor releases, 4 months between micro releases. [9 months] 6.1.0 (May 2014) ---> 6.2.0 (Nov 2014) 6.1.1 (Sep 2014) 6.2.1 (Mar 2015) [4 months] [4 months] Camel (analysing past 2 minor releases): less than 6 months between minors, less than 3 between micros. I noticed that 2.15.1 was released quite early, so I included another datapoint for one more 2.14.x micro release. [< 6 months] 2.14.0 (18 Sep 2014) ===> 2.15.0 (10 Mar 2015) 2.14.1 (16 Dec 2014) 2.15.1 (01 Apr 2015) [< 3 months] [< 20 days (special circumstance likely)] 2.14.2 (10 Mar 2014) [< 3 months] I know that analysing so few releases is not an indicative – ideally we would analyse the entire release history – but I don't have time right now. Nevertheless, the release policy of Camel is 6 months between majors and 3 months between micros (if I recall correctly). Next, let's take a look at the innovation aspect: * TIBCO AM BW 6.2.0 carries 22 new features [2], many of which have to do with their IDE, not with core functionality. * Camel 2.14.0 carried 38 new and noteworthy features, PLUS 15 new components, 1 data format, 1 new EIP (Circuit Breaker), etc. Judge for yourselves ;-) *> *Myth #3 - Access to Source Allows Reviewing Code and Deploying Safely** (Their statement: Access to source does not uncover vulnerabilities). Well, all software has vulnerabilities and with Open Source you can identify them yourself and fix them. With proprietary software, you rely entirely on the vendor's turnaround time. Moreover, we are very transparent about this and we publish our Security Advisories here [3]. *> *Myth #4 - Open Source and SaaS Work Well Together** They say: "Cloud-based open-source ESBs work just like other SaaS applications: you typically don't have access to the code. How well will it connect your on-premise applications with other SaaS services? You can't know." Well, that's just plain absurd. It amuses me that a closed-source vendor is using the "you don't have access to the code" against an Open Source product :D Makes zero sense, both marketing- and technical-wise. With TIBCO, you don't have access to the source on-premises nor cloud-based software. With the other vendor, you may not have access to the source of their iPaaS but you know it's largely based on the on-premises software, to which you have access (even though it's a "gated community" in the strict sense...). --- Discussion open! 1, 2, 3... GO! [1] https://docs.tibco.com/products/tibco-activematrix-businessworks-6-2-1 [2] https://docs.tibco.com/pub/activematrix_businessworks/6.2.0/TIB_BW_6.2.0_relnotes.pdf [3] https://camel.apache.org/security-advisories.data Regards, *Raúl Kripalani* Apache Camel PMC Member & Committer | Enterprise Architect, Open Source Integration specialist http://about.me/raulkripalani | http://www.linkedin.com/in/raulkripalani http://blog.raulkr.net | twitter: @raulvk
