The three-day event was full of discussions, interactions and hands-on workshops that engaged and involved industry head-honchos, IT professionals and aspiring techies.
Open Source India 2013, Asia’s largest open source convention, turned out to be a platform for open source technology to grow and flourish. The three-day event (11-13 November 2013), popularly known as OSI Days 2013, was full of action for FOSS enthusiasts. There were discussions, interactions and hands-on workshops that engaged and involved industry head-honchos, IT professionals and aspiring techies.
OSI Days 2013 is credited to have taken FOSS to an entirely new level. Gone are the days when the term FOSS was restricted to free and open source software. The term was redefined by Lux Rao, CTO – technology services, HP India Sales. During his talk on ‘New Style Of IT’, he redefined FOSS as ‘Full Of Opportunities for Software and Services’. Rao shared his insights on how FOSS is helping modern IT reach newer paradigms.
The event witnessed a quality footfall of around 1800 people across three days. The fact that FOSS is not just about contributing code to an open source project was reiterated. The audience present at the show unanimously raised their voice and asserted that it is about opening up of mindsets. The platform not just proved to be a point of reunion for FOSS enthusiasts, but also helped in fueling several fruitful technical discussions. One such discussion was between Dr Rajeev Papneja, COO, ESDS Software Solution Pvt Ltd and Dr KY Srinivasan, principal architect, Windows Server and Cloud Division. Dr Papneja shares, “Our team was struggling with an issue that they encountered while running Windows virtual machines on Zen cloud. We were trying to fix this issue for over a year but we couldn’t get a perfect solution. I brought this issue up with Dr Srinivasan, when I met him at OSI Days 2013 and he suggested a possible solution within minutes.”
Open Source technology is not restricted to a brand or two. Quite a few start ups and even established brands like Atul Ltd and Just Dial turned up at OSI Days 2013 to discuss their open source implementations. With all these discussions, there was real business too. Amar Chigteri, manager sales – West and South India, EnterpriseDB, said, “We have been participating in this show for three years now and we have got some great business responses. This year also was a fruitful one for us in terms of generating some really good business leads.”
The three-day convention witnessed presence of over 40 speakers from the corporate world and the community. Companies like The Attachmate Group, Oracle, Red Hat, Intel, Acquia, HP, Dell, and even Microsoft came forward to show their support for open source technology at this platform. Mandar Naik, director – Platform Strategy, Microsoft, said, “It is always exciting to be a part of OSI Days and this year was no exception. The technology sessions were highly informative with some
of the experts sharing their insights on a range of topics including mobile application development, kernel and the cloud. I feel the conference proved to be a great opportunity for engaging with technology enthusiasts from all over the country ranging from app developers and open source contributors to the students.”
Similar to the previous year, this year’s OSI Days had a special emphasis on Google’s Android operating system, which was especially beneficial for mobile app developers. Right from technical talks to hands-on workshops, Android lovers had it all at their disposal at Open Source India 2013. Attendees got the opportunity to learn things like Android application development and Android app testing for business applications during the three-day open source convention. IT infrastructure, cloud, databases, Linux kernel were various topics that were touched upon during the event.
Commenting on the success of the show, Ramesh Chopra, executive chairman, EFY Group said, “Open source technology is getting bigger and better with every passing day. I am glad we are able to keep up to the momentum with Open Source India. We are glad that we have been able to bring much bigger, better and improvised OSI Days this year. We aimed at offering something for all techies, including software developers, IT managers and heads of IT departments, project managers, delivery experts, academia, and the open source community.”
Open Source India 2013 concluded on a positive note, promising to be back next year with much more power and increased involvement of the community.
About Open Source India:
Open Source India (formerly LinuxAsia) started in 2003, with the mission to accelerate open source adoption in Asia, and that has remained its mission even today. A key attribute of Open Source India is that it tries to bridge the gap between the community and the industry. OSI Days is organised by the ‘Forum for Open Source Initiative in India’ (FOSII), in association with Open Source For You magazine, and is backed by the EFY Group of publications. For more information visithttps://www.osidays.com.
About the EFY Group:
Over the last four decades, EFY Group has become synonymous with information on cutting-edge technology. Starting with its flagship publication, Electronics For You, which is South Asia’s most popular electronics magazine, the group now offers a bouquet of specialised publications like Open Source For You, Electronics Bazaar, and Facts For You, as well as Web portals such as electronicsforu.com, efytimes.com, bbpotimes.com, linuxforu.com, electronicsb2b.com and eleb2b.com.
The group also publishes directories and books, and organises several leading technology events like Open Source India and the EFY Expo. The EFY Group has offices in New Delhi, Bengaluru, Chennai, Kolkata and Mumbai.
Besides, it has representatives in Ahmedabad, Hyderabad and Pune. It also has distributors in the South East Asian countries. For more information, visit https://www.efy.in.
Primary Media Contact : Diksha P Gupta, [email protected], 91-97-17854520
Secondary Media Contact : Priyanka Sarkar, [email protected], 91-99-71597700