Open Business Conference 2013 - Summary

The recent Open Business Conference held in San Francisco offered the opportunity to learn from business and technology experts working in the open source arena. It also allowed participants to network with open source peers, developers and sponsors. The two-day conference covered many of the strategic challenges that IT management deals with on a daily basis as they adapt to a world dominated more and more by 'open source', 'open standards', 'open IT architecture', 'open access', 'open data', and other facets of the growing 'Open Revolution' that is upon us.

Conference Tracks this year Included:
• Open Cloud: How open source and the Cloud converge
• Open Data: Open source solutions for managing the Big Data challenge
• Open Legal: Practical ways to apply legal strategies in an open source world
• Open Mobile: Utilizing open source to address the challenges of ubiquitous connectivity
• Open Enterprise: Open source applications for better business insights and decisions
• Open Future: Looking inside the research labs of some of the most successful business innovators

As reported in a blog posted at Home Port @cobiacomm conversations on innovation, disruption, and open source leadership dominated the sessions. Each presentation and conversation at the Open Business Conference reinforced how traditional business strategies are being disrupted by new market dynamics that are shifting power away from closed, proprietary corporate leadership towards global collaboration and open solutions.

Numerous open source companies were represented at the conference, like Red Hat, SUSE, ForgeRock, and Zenoss. Many open source startups like HortonWorks, Appcelerator, and GitHub that are leading their respective technology domains were also there.

The rapid pace of technology and social change is forcing companies in every sector of the economy to adopt agile product development strategies that rely on collaboration and open solutions to grow and rapidly innovate in today's global marketplace.

Keep your calendar open so you can attend next year's Open Source Business Conference.

Finally, take a moment to visit the COSI Open Technology & Solutions web site and remember this formula: Collaboration + Open Solutions = Innovation