Matthew Aslett and I are in San Francisco for the next few days at the Open Source Business Conference (OSBC). We will be moderating a total of three panels this year. Matthew’s panel on the the state of the open source database market is especially interesting, given that we are days away from publishing a report on the same topic (more details on that in a day or two). For those of you reading this blog entry from OSBC, I am hoping you’ll attend the panels listed below…

Tuesday, March 25, 11:30am - 12:20pm
The Future of the Operating System
Raven Zachary, Research Director, Open Source, The 451 Group (Moderator)
Dirk Hohndel, Chief Linux and Open Source Technologist, Intel
James Hughes, Sun Fellow & VP, Sun Microsystems
Roger Levy, SVP & GM of Open Platform Solutions, Novell
Jack Lo, Sr. Director of R&D, VMware

The operating system market and development models are undergoing rapid change. Virtualization, open source, and shorter development cycles are redefining what’s possible and how organizations plan OS strategy. Where is the operating system going, and what does it mean for business?

Tuesday, March 25, 3:00pm - 3:50pm
The State of the Open Source Database Market
Matthew Aslett, Analyst, Enterprise Software, The 451 Group (Moderator)
Andy Astor, CEO, EnterpriseDB
Roger Burkhardt, President & CEO, Ingres Corporation
Ken Jacobs, VP, Product Strategy, Server Technologies Division, Oracle
Zack Urlocker, EVP of Products, MySQL

In recent years, open source databases have gained widespread enterprise adoption. A number of these projects are now backed by vendors offering commercial services. This panel discussion will explore the role of open source databases in a world historically dominated by large, established vendors, and to what extent the rise of open source database technology will have a disruptive impact on these players. This panel will also touch upon adoption by end users - how this technology is being deployed and the motivations for adoption by the enterprise.

Wednesday, March 26, 3:00pm - 3:50pm
Converting the Open Source Lead Funnel
Raven Zachary, Research Director, Open Source, The 451 Group (Moderator)
Mark de Visser, CMO, Zend Technologies
Chris Harrick, Sr. Director of Product Marketing, SugarCRM
Dr. Ian Howells, CMO, Alfresco
Roy Russo, Co-Founder & CEO, LoopFuse

Nurturing community, cultivating developer creativity, providing a safety net through world-class support; successful open source marketers have learned how to resource and successfully execute against these critical tasks. What still confounds many companies is how to crack the code on efficiently converting a goldmine of downloads into actual revenue-generating customer opportunities. Some of the open source community’s most seasoned marketers will share their ideas on what’s worked and what hasn’t when it comes to up-selling, cross-selling and creating the kind of value that turn a loyal fan base into productive, paying customers.

While Matthew and I have fairly full schedules this year, there are a few slots left for meetings - feel free to send us an email and we’ll see what we can do about getting something scheduled - raven.zachary@the451group.com and matthew.aslett@the451group.com.