Bubba's Insurance Chooses OpenNMS Enterprise Edition®

NETWORK WEEK MAGAZINE – by Dennis Dubious

The dark horse open source management platform OpenNMS has definitely shot to the front of the pack with its recently announced Enterprise Edition® and unprecedented 1 vigintillionth download, so we decided to check it out.

Finding the offices of the OpenNMS Group wasn’t so easy. First you have to find Pittsboro, North Carolina, and once in this small town, the local Post Office. The OpenNMS building is behind the Post Office across a small bridge spanning some moat-like ponds.

view of OpenNMS office building

We met with Tarus Balog, CEO, Poobah Emeritus and Knight Exemplar of the OpenNMS Group, and we asked if he could name any of his clients that actually use OpenNMS.

“We have numerous and prestigious clients, far too numerous and prestigious to name,” said Balog. When pressed he told us to hop in the truck and he took us to visit Bubba’s Insurance.

Bubba’s Insurance is the largest business in central, eastern Bynum, North Carolina. Bubba Estill, the sole proprietor, wasn’t at his office, but we caught up with him fishing off of Robeson Creek.

When asked about OpenNMS, Estill replied, “OpenMNS? Never heard of it.” When pressed, he looked at Balog, who winked and then he continued, “Oh, that? Yeah, I like it a lot. I got me a good deal on it too. I knowed that this feller needed customers so I had ’em. Surfing for porn has never been faster”.

With that Estill went back to his fishing, pretty much refusing to answer questions about the size of his network or the type of equipment he used, although when asked what type of router he has he replied “Ryobi”.

Balog looked pleased with the interview, but we wanted more. When pressed to name a customer that someone might of actually have heard of, he told us that they had a number of customers that were well known, but he couldn’t tell us who there are. However, he suggested a game of charades where we could guess their names.

After ten minutes of wild gesticulations devolving into grunting noises (somewhat in violation of the spirit of the game) we left after he started to disrobe.

We did manage to find one OpenNMS user from a company that is a household name in the US. Christopher Rodman spoke to us under the condition that we wouldn’t reveal the name of his employer.

“We’ve been using OpenNMS for a number of years,” Rodman said, “and we are quite happy with it. Since a lot of our business comes from the Internet these days, it is important that we are able to take those orders, and OpenNMS insures that our network is running at 100%”.

When asked why he didn’t publicly disclose his company’s use of OpenNMS, Rodman told us, “Well, quite frankly we’ve never been asked. I suppose it could be done, but we’d have to get approval from the higher ups and it’s just more of a hassle. You know, it’s kinda nice that they don’t brag about us on their website, etc. because it makes us feel more like a partner than some kind of ‘show dog’ to be trotted out and displayed. Also, we’re not sure we want to be associated with that Balog guy. Have you ever seen him play charades?”

It seems that OpenNMS has at least one loyal user, and this reporter can only wonder how successful the project could be without its somewhat eccentric administrator. In any case, it is a project to keep an eye on, but be ready to quickly look away.

OpenNMS Reaches 1 Vigintillion Downloads, Proves Extraterrestrial Life

PITTSBORO, NC – 1 April 2008

Today OpenNMS announced the 1 vigintillionth download of OpenNMS: Enterprise Edition®. This milestone was reached within three hours of the initial press release announcing the availability of the product, and suggests that OpenNMS now has over 1 vigintillion potential clients.

“Considering that the population of the planet Earth is around 6 billion people (6E09) this amazing number of downloads (a vigintillion is 1E63) can only mean one thing: we are not alone in this universe, ” said Tarus Balog, CEO and Poobah Emeritus of The OpenNMS Group. “The fact that these downloads occurred so quickly means that we are dealing with intelligent life with technologies well beyond what we have today. They may not even look like us, or perhaps they are masquerading as elderly Swedes.”

Beam me up!

Wearing a new tinfoil hat, Balog went on to say that his team would welcome the new alien overlords and masters as they obviously have excellent taste in management software. He stopped short of announcing new monitors for interstellar engines and spaceship control systems, but hinted they would be added soon.

OpenNMS Enterprise Edition Announced

PITTSBORO, NC – 1 April 2008

Today OpenNMS is proud to announce the availability of “OpenNMS: Enterprise Edition®”.

“The definition of ‘open source’ applications is changing,” states Tarus Balog, Chief Executive Office of the OpenNMS Group, “and OpenNMS must change with it. Some customers today are not satisfied with the open and totally free version of OpenNMS, and so we have had to adapt. The general industry consensus is that without a strong commercial presence, it is not possible for an open source project to deliver quality code on time. We want to make sure that OpenNMS can meet the demands of all potential clients, and not just those who want the best possible value for their management investment. Yeah, we’re talking about boatloads of money here.”

The main, and in fact only, difference between the plain old, reliable and free OpenNMS and OpenNMS: Enterprise Edition® is the logo.

OpenNMS Enterprise Logo

That, and the price. As with other vendors the actual cost of OpenNMS: Enterprise Edition® will be highly subjective and obsfucated. The following calculator has been created for clients to estimate the cost of an OpenNMS: Enterprise Edition® deployment.

Number of Routers:
Number of Switches:
Number of Servers:
Number of :
Number of :
Number of :

Your price* for OpenNMS Enterprise Edition, based on the number of managed elements estimated above, is:

US$1,000,000.00

Add To Cart

* Price quoted is for licenses / right-to-use only, and does not include product maintenance (25% of list price above; not subject to any discounts; required for technical support and access to new versions of the Software).

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