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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