Unlocking the enterprise for open source
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as the rival LAMP open-source alternative rapidly emerged. Indicative of who's winning the war came in June, when Sun partially opened its Java software to open-source applications development. But the LAMP stack is nonetheless gaining traction.
Among the companies that have widely adopted the LAMP stack are Japanese electronics giant Sony, Houston-based Continental Airlines, Germany's second-largest bank, HypoVereinsbank and Swedish retailing giant H&M.
Now the new open-source avenue that's becoming popular is in middleware. Case in point: Atlanta-based JBoss' application server was being used by 35 percent of IT managers last year, according to a report from BZ Research, a Huntington, N.Y.-based research firm. JBoss' market share rose from 9 percent one year earlier, while IBM's WebSphere, BEA Systems' WebLogic and Oracle's application server shares all declined, according to the same report.
"The firms that were 'sticking with Windows and Solaris' now have major Linux adoption programs," says Evan Bauer, a principal research fellow at Robert Frances Group. "The scientific community and financial services industries are well down the adoption path, but we are seeing widespread acceptance for Linux, Apache, Tomcat, MySQL, Thunderbird, Firefox and OpenOffice in manufacturing, retail and government as well. The trend is only growing."
Making the switch
This rush of companies into open-source
software code for their core hardware has laid the groundwork for
open-source penetration in the business software applications arena.
Moreover, the rationale driving this new round of open-source
adaptation by corporations is not just about the pure cost-reduction
reasons driving the original shift to the LAMP stack.
"Companies initially used open-source software to save money," says RFG's Bauer. "Increasingly, they're doing it to take advantage of the world's largest pool of technical innovation and to take ownership of their technical architectures, rather than having to make a long-term bet on a vendor's marketing strategy and ongoing ability to execute. It is about opportunity as much as it is about cost."
Take the senior IT director at a medium-size business software company as a prime example of this trend. He prefers not to be identified, but says his Silicon Valley-based company first used open-source software two years ago to reduce its reliance on a single vendor. The company's decision to replace its closed-source third-party Simple Mail Transfer Protocol gateway software, which managed the company's 500-strong e-mail communications needs, with an open-source alternative called Exim, developed in 1995 at Cambridge University, wasn't flawless. The IT director was forced to deal with the lack of dedicated support and the need to keep the system's security up to date with patches and other new applications.
The tech executive, however, looks back on the process as a success and as a reason for the company's continued push into open-source software. "The fact that we were willing to switch our SMTP gateways to an open-source solution shows that we are willing to consider open source wherever it makes sense," he explains. "Of course, it would have to be fully evaluated, tested, justified and the risk understood before replacing a mission critical application."
Which is exactly what he's done since the successful switch from SMTP. The executive says that since the Exim implementation he has purchased Groundwork Open Source Solutions Inc.'s IT monitoring service to track network utilization and Web application performance and availability. And currently, he's evaluating open-source intrusion detection and server virtualization software from other open-source vendors.
"It's an easy jump from infrastructure to applications, and that will challenge the likes of Seibel, Oracle and SAP," says Paul Doscher, president and CEO of JasperSoft, an open-source business reporting software start-up. "As long as corporate technology offices believe
Continued ...
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