internetnews.com: IT Execs Present Open Source Wish Lists

"IT executives speaking here at the Open Source Business Conference this week delivered a message to the open source community: Focus on middleware and applications.

"Robert Lefkowitz, chief technical architect at AT&T Wireless, said the Linux desktop will have limited utility to corporations running custom hardware and vertical applications. IT executives are indifferent to what desktop operating system they use, but the rest of the hardware and software at his company is built to run on the Windows platform.

"Lefkowitz came to the conference hoping to convince developers to work on what he needs: billing and CRM applications, business process management and business intelligence apps, and data warehousing software. Unfortunately, these projects are not perceived as cool, he said.

"'The 'community' is individuals, and if you can't get individuals interested in a project, it doesn't get done. So it has to be 'kewl,'' he said..."

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