What do Bosch, NYSE Technologies and U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs have in common? Not only are they all key examples of current and influential open source trends, they’re also betting a significant portion of their future innovation and competitive positioning on successfully leveraging open source models. Bosch, a large global automotive supplier, exemplifies how the automotive industry is adopting open source in cars, and extending this to create internal communities of open source-led innovation and implementing inner-sourcing techniques. NYSE Technologies, the technology spinoff from the New York Stock Exchange, has launched OpenMAMA – an industry-led consortium supported by Fidelity, Bank of America and others – to build an open source-based middleware agnostic messaging technology. And VA and the DoD have joined to create OSEHRA, a groundbreaking global open source electronic health records consortium.
The combination of user-driven communities and the implementation of inner-sourcing techniques are two critical steps in the evolution and maturation of open source. Moving FOSS from being simply an enabling technology supported by a new development, licensing and consumption model, towards something much more far-reaching. Open source, and its elements of collaboration, transparency and meritocracy have changed the way technology evolves and is now changing the way businesses evolve. Innovation is no longer a defined and structured process within a vendor’s business or product unit. Today, it’s a cross-functional, cross-entity and cross-ecosystem interaction with all elements contributing and prioritizing product advancements. Innovation is no longer a silo’d and prescribed process; it has become social.
To learn more about one of these important initiatives, I encourage you to attend OSEHRA’s (the VA and DoD’s open source health records initiative) first Open Source EHR Summit and Workshop on October 17th and 18th. Come and learn about the Federal government’s perspective on health care and open source from senior government speakers including Karen Guice, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs; Dr. John D. Halamka, CIO, Beth Israel Medical Center; and Howard Hays, MD, CIO, Indian Health Service. I am pleased to have the honor of presenting the opening day’s inaugural luncheon keynote on Open Source Trends and the Future, and hope to see you there.
Additionally, OSEHRA is looking for contributions from the community and is taking abstracts on topics such as community development, business models, collaboration models, etc. To see more and learn how you can contribute and submit a speaking proposal, please visit the summit’s website.
