|
Lighting the LAMP |
|
Source: IT Business Edge | Priority:
Leveraging Open Source |
Topic: Open Source Software Development
Date Published:
9/6/2005
|
With Ashish Seth, director of products for EmailLabs, whose parent company is Uptilt. The company has utilized the LAMP software stack across the organization from its earliest days.
Question: How did you decide to employ the LAMP stack instead of other solutions?
Seth: Uptilt Inc. was bootstrapped in 1999 with the idea of providing Web-based marketing tools as a hosted service at a competitive price. The open source movement was in its infancy and the components that make up the LAMP technology stack (Linux/Apache/mySQL/PHP) were in varied states of maturity. However, the engineering team recognized that the LAMP technology stack offered a technically sound and cost-effective option to rapidly build our product suite because:
1. The entire technology stack was available via open source.
2. It provided the scalability needed for our product offering.
3. It was easy to learn.
4. It worked on cost-effective hardware.
5. It enabled us to focus on building a great product and not worry about licensing costs.
Over the past five years, open source adoption has increased exponentially and is now embraced by large corporations, educational institutes and government organizations, both in the U.S. and abroad. The technology has matured too, and the LAMP stack actually works to our advantage and often gives us the competitive edge. As an ASP, uptime, reliability and scalability are touchstones for quality of service. Linux and Apache ensure the uptime and reliability we need. MySQL has given the scalability (425-plus clients are proof), and the new PHP 5.x release compares favorably with other OOPs languages.
Question: Have you or are you developing applications in-house? What advantages have you seen using the open source tools?
Seth: We are a hosted service provider for marketing automation tools with a strong engineering focus and have championed open source technologies. We develop our entire application on the LAMP platform. We also embrace open source tools for internal use in support, sales and marketing departments. Advantages include: reliability and scalability; easy to learn and use; absence of software licensing costs; and works with cost-effective hardware.
Question: Companies like SpikeSource and Source Labs are configuring and testing software stacks – LAMP and others – for the enterprise, and providing support services. Is this a product you see a lot of demand for in the marketplace? Is it something you’d use?
Seth: I do foresee a demand for their support and testing services, especially with large corporations, educational institutes and government organizations adopting open source. As bigger IT organizations adopt open source technologies, support services would certainly be needed. For example, major ERP vendors like Oracle and SAP now support the Linux platform, thus customers and vendors alike need support services. Apache runs more than 60 percent of the Web sites; support is crucial and a single source of support would be helpful. As an organization, we would be interested in exploring these support services; we also would be interested in knowing more about testing and benchmarking services.
|
 |
|
MySQL, Sun Upset Open Source Community
TAKEAWAY: The fact that new features for MySQL that are written by Sun Microsystems will first be made available to paying customers has the open source community up in arms. Dana Blankenhorn notes in this blog that the code split between MySQL Community and MySQL Enterprise occurred before Sun entered the equation. While open to interpretation, Blankenhorn doesn't necessarily believe this makes MySQL closed source.
Source: ZDNet |
Priority: Leveraging Open Source |
Topic: Open Source Databases
Date Published: 4/17/2008 |
Date Reviewed: 4/18/2008
JBoss-to-Apache: IBM, Covalent Create Migration Tools
TAKEAWAY: IBM and Covalent have joined forces to introduce tools that help customers migrate from the JBoss Application Server to the open source Apache Geronimo application server. The Apache Geronimo server is free, easy-to-configure and pre-integrates the most common services for building Java applications. IBM says the tool was developed as a result of customer feedback that indicated a desire for collaboratively built open source technology.
Source: WebWire |
Priority: Leveraging Open Source |
Topic: Open Source Software Development
Date Published: 4/2/2007 |
Date Reviewed: 4/3/2007
Apache is Open Source Innovation
TAKEAWAY: To refute the argument that open source only imitates what proprietary software has already done, this writer points to the Apache Web server. With Apache, he says, open source developers anticipated a need that Microsoft and other commercial vendors didn't — at least not quickly enough to implement it first. And not only do the majority (62 percent) of Internet sites run on Apache, it also boasts stability, high performance, a near-perfect security record and more features and extensions — which allow greater functionality — than offered by commercial counterparts. (Microsoft's Internet Information Server is one.) Apache created the market, the writer says here, and though IIS will still be around in five years, Apache will never give up its leading position.
Source: Computerworld Australia |
Priority: Leveraging Open Source |
Topic: Open Source Software Development
Date Published: 9/8/2006 |
Date Reviewed: 9/13/2006
> Read
" Blazing Trails with Open Source" at Computerworld Australia
|
|
|