Squiz Gartner Event Success

Squiz Gartner Event a Huge Success!

01 September, 2009

MEDIA RELEASE

On Thursday 27 August 2009, Australian web solutions company Squiz sponsored a Gartner morning seminar entitled "Supported Open Source Software Unavoidable, Beneficial, and Coming to an Application Near You" which attracted 110 pre-registered attendees to the Sydney venue, L'Aqua Restaurant.

The seminar contained presentations from Gartner Research Vice President Brian Prentice, Squiz Managing Director John-Paul Syriatowicz and Funnelback search Chief Scientist David Hawking all of which were well received by the audience. Of special significance was the round-table discussion inviting interaction from the room full of "C" level executives from IT and Marketing.

Attendee Bruce Bryant from boutique management consultancy Stylequity commented that "the seminar was the most informative I have attended in 2009. Squiz is at the forefront of Open Source Software developments and provision which is great to see from such an innovative Australian company."

As a result of the event and subsequent discussions it is quite clear that aligning the web directly to business outcomes is now essential, supporting the trend that first appeared with the emergence of Web 2.0. Tied to that premise was confirmation from the audience that open source solutions can now be serious contenders at the enterprise level. Many of the reservations previously held about breadth of functionality and available support for open source are now being dispelled by recent successful open source deployments by major organisations.

In the words of Gartner VP Brian Prentice, "unnoticed by many, the open-source movement has changed irreversibly during the past five years. Open source once stood as the industry's direct factory outlet mall the place to acquire software directly from the manufacturer at a significantly lower price, albeit with some inconvenience. Now open source is firmly ensconced in the mechanics and machinations of the software industry."

The emergence of mature supported open source solutions into application areas traditionally driven by the use of proprietary software is enabling IT Managers and Marketers to address core business requirements with greater efficacy and lower cost.

One of the key issues encountered in the discussions was the lack of knowledge of what open source actually means. A number of the attendees were of the opinion that open source implied compromised functionality and inconsistent and variable quality of software code with resultant instability, insecurity, and high maintenance costs. In reality, nothing could be further from the truth with the audience being shown that supported open source such as Squiz's MySource Matrix CMS is highly quality controlled, subjected to regular independent security audits, and for which Squiz takes full responsibility for ongoing support.

Squiz MD, John-Paul Syriatowicz emphasized the fact that as the source code is open it can be thoroughly viewed, tested, validated, and configured to requirements thereby providing much greater comfort levels than with closed proprietary code solutions.

Given the success of the event Squiz will be running further seminars on topics of interest in the IT industry.

About Squiz
Squiz is an Australian owned private company delivering web content management solutions via offices throughout Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and Europe. Squiz is the author of MySource Matrix, a fully supported enterprise class open source content management system used by over 600 organisations globally across government and industry.

For further information
Contact: Steve Walker
T: (02) 8507 9900

http://www.squiz.net.au

SOURCE: Squiz