Case Study

Real-World Application Performance with MongoDB

Fri, 26 Oct 2012 09:30:00 EDT

Recently FireScope Inc. introduced the general availability of its Stratis product. Stratis brings all of the FireScope Unify capabilities to the cloud, with the added advantage of a new architecture that delivers near infinite scalability. Moreover, the new Stratis architecture provides scalability at all application layers including its back-end operations, which were newly designed to leverage the benefits of MongoDB. In this article we will discuss several of the architecture choices that were made as part of this effort with the hope that others might benefit from the research and analysis that was performed to bring this product to market. As background a functioning FireScope deployment has the ability to gather metrics from all forms of existing IT assets, normalize the gathered metrics, provide historical analysis of the metrics, and most importantly provide service views for worldwide operations which is unparalleled in the IT industry. In the early phases of designing the Stratis product, FireScope undertook significant research into the scalable persistence architectures that were production ready at the time of this effort. FireScope ultimately chose MongoDB for its ability to scale and its flexibility in supporting an easy transition from a relational persistence model to a NoSQL model.

Case Study: Red Hat Enterprise Linux in Use

Sun, 09 Sep 2012 10:15:00 EDT

The case study features an organization that has made a broad commitment to Linux and has adopted best practices to optimize that environment. The retailer highlighted in this IDC paper has taken an important step toward building a tightly controlled standard Linux server operating system that has a predefined, well-understood life cycle. Through a broad commitment to a single Linux distribution, and through the use of a minimal number of operating system variations, this company has been able to optimize its environment and optimized value received back.

Don't Blame Batch Processing for Your Business Process Failures

Mon, 02 Jul 2012 13:42:00 EDT

The recent train wreck that was the CA batch process failure at RBS should probably be ringing alarm bells for some folks running batch processes into their systems; however, more importantly it should remind us of two important things. A call I participated on a couple of months back with some students from an esteemed college in North America resulted in a conclusion that what I was talking about and showing these students wasn't very interesting because a lot of what I was focusing on, was batch processing of data. For some naïve and deluded reason they were of the opinion that real time OLTP was a more interesting story and so wanted to focus on that aspect of the Winshuttle technology stack rather than on the mass and batch related activities. In reality, our world of data processing and systems, relies heavily on both aspects. I have to confess that I hardly ever give the concepts of batch vs. real time much thought, but this recent failure in the payment runs for thousands of banking customers brought home the importance of batch processing and reminds us that batch processing is alive and well everywhere.

Talend Open Source Approach Provides Holistic Integration Capability

Fri, 01 Jul 2011 10:00:00 EDT

The role and impact of integration has shifted, and a more comprehensive and managed approach to integration is required, thanks to such major trends as cloud, hybrid computing, and managing massive datasets.

Case Study: Open Source + Business Intelligence

Tue, 25 Jan 2011 11:30:00 EST

Data-driven businesses are facing some tough challenges in today’s rapidly changing information landscape. As decision cycles continue to shrink, companies need to act on information within hours and minutes rather than weeks and days. At the same time, the volume of data that needs to be analyzed is growing exponentially. Business intelligence (BI) approaches that might have made sense a decade or even five years ago may no longer be the best fit for organizations that must quickly and affordably make sense of terabytes of incoming data that shows no sign of slowing down. For my company, MX Force, speedy data analysis is not simply a “nice to have,” it’s critical to our business. As a cloud-based provider of email security for organizations of all sizes, we need to identify the origins of spam, viruses and other potential threats for our clients, fast. But as our business has grown, so has the volume of email log data that we must store, filter, search, analyze and report on. Recently, we were challenged to find a database that could reliably enable quick and efficient ad-hoc queries on up to a year’s worth of email log data. Our staff uses this data to analyze and report on statistical information, and we also give our clients the ability to query their own logs to diagnose mail delivery issues. It was important to find a database that could deliver the high performance we required, but affordability and ease of administration were also of vital concern. These considerations prompted us to seek an open source solution.

Enterprising Pizza POS Software Solutions

Mon, 15 Nov 2010 12:50:52 EST

When the time had come for pizza chain Pizza Nova to upgrade their IT, they tapped restaurant point of sale software developer Volante Systems and their Java based, Pizza POS solution to do the job. And it runs on Linux, too. Leading Canadian pizza chain Pizza Nova has been satisfying hungry appetites with authentic Italian cuisine since 1963. When the time had come for an IT upgrade, they hoped to improve communications, increase efficiencies and save money at the same time. To acheive all this, they tapped restaurant point of sale software developer Volante Systems and their Pizza POS solution to do the job.

Case Study: Delivering Rich Analytics to Mobile Customers

Tue, 11 May 2010 12:18:00 EDT

Headquartered in the United Kingdom, Bango provides technology that powers commerce for businesses targeting the growing market of Internet-enabled mobile phone users. Bango’s products collect payment from mobile users for online content and services, and provide accurate analytics back to mobile carriers and content providers about marketing campaigns and user behavior. Numerous brands, as well as thousands of smaller content providers and developers, use Bango products to more effectively run their mobile businesses. Bango Analytics is delivered as a hosted online solution, offering data collection, campaign tracking, page tracking and other services for mobile carriers and content providers. In addition to online data such as page views and clicks, Bango tracks mobile-specific information such as device model, manufacturer, and user identity data. This enables its customers to better understand subscriber behavior, optimize mobile marketing campaigns and drive higher advertising rates, all in real-time, unlike other analytics solutions.

Commercial and Open Source Options: A Strategic College-Wide Initiative

Thu, 11 Jun 2009 15:30:00 EDT

With over 50,000 pages, Wellesley’s website serves as the primary informational source for prospective students and their families and for students, faculty, staff and alumnae. So, over a year ago, the college’s president and entire senior staff launched a strategic overhaul of their website that would reflect the college’s overall message, experience, community, and goals.

Simplify the Use of Sudo

Mon, 02 Mar 2009 12:37:00 EST

Being in the security business, I am constantly surprised by how many companies continue to rely on security practices that they know to be poor. Organizations, large and small, make excessive use of the root user account to perform routine maintenance on their UNIX and Linux computers. Even though companies often chose UNIX or Linux for better security, they employ practices that seriously undermine this advantage.

Case Study: Content Management System vs. Wiki for Community Websites

Tue, 30 Dec 2008 07:00:00 EST

Wikis are a great software tool for collaboratively creating and editing content. They seem to be an obvious choice for building a community Web infrastructure. Yet they have serious drawbacks that made JBoss.org choose a Content Management System (CMS) instead of a Wiki to build its new community website. JBoss.org's website currently serves 20 million page views per month and hosts over 40 community projects within that website.

Using Mule as the Foundation for New SOA Infrastructure

Wed, 26 Nov 2008 09:45:00 EST

Over the course of the past few decades, the consumer media industry has evolved from a slow-moving oligopoly dominated by a handful of vertically integrated networks to a highly fragmented and competitive marketplace of content creation, publication, and distribution players. This disaggregation of the industry value chain, in combination with the proliferation of content sources, channels, and media formats has created a daunting logistical challenge for anyone attempting to deliver content to the consumer in the right format, at the right time.

Optaros Creates Dynamic Online Community for Chicago Public Radio

Sun, 25 Nov 2007 13:00:00 EST

Chicago Public Radio (WBEZ 91.5 FM Chicago, WBEQ 90.7 FM Morris, and WBEW 89.5 FM Chesterton) is a community-supported, non-commercial public service broadcasting institution for 7.7 million people throughout Chicago and surrounding regions. Chicago Public Radio produces, acquires, and distributes engaging, thoughtful, and entertaining programs of depth, breadth, diversity, and substance. The organization prides itself on helping listeners learn about issues and ideas that affect the community, the nation, and the world. The institution has more than 120 employees across multiple offices in greater Chicago.

BitLeap Offsite Backup

Mon, 02 Apr 2007 17:00:00 EDT

Learning how to solve existing problems is one of the keys to developing a successful product. Learning when to turn to the open source community to facilitate innovation is another quality that more and more companies are beginning to realize. The BitLeap story provides a real-world example of how new companies can innovate with open source and thereby create something new and useful.

Fujitsu Siemens Simplifies the Complexities of Software Testing

Sat, 17 Feb 2007 12:00:00 EST

Customers have high expectations that their software solutions have been stress-tested thoroughly in advance for every conceivable combination of events that might occur in production and that vendors who put out buggy products are exposed quickly.

University of North Carolina at Charlotte Capitalizes on More Bang for Fewer Bucks

Fri, 16 Feb 2007 12:00:00 EST

For the University of North Carolina at Charlotte (UNCC), using technology to further the education of its 21,000 graduate and undergraduate students is nothing new. In 1983, UNCC became the first U.S. university to electronically categorize its library, and for the past 10 years the school has offered numerous degree programs online.

Bringing Thousands of Workers Together with an Open Source Intranet Solution

Fri, 12 Jan 2007 09:00:00 EST

When obstacles such as poverty, lack of education or disabilities keep people from finding jobs, Goodwill is there to help. We do that by selling your donations of clothing and household goods in local Goodwill stores and using the revenue to fund our job-training programs in your community. Last year, more than 846,000 people benefited from Goodwill's career services - we helped someone find a job every 57 seconds of every business day.

The Open Source Solution for ERP and Integration

Mon, 08 Jan 2007 13:45:00 EST

The Marena Group in Lawrenceville, Georgia, has always followed its own path and bucked convention. A maker of compression garments for athletic and post-surgical use, the company exports approximately half of its domestically produced goods to overseas markets - a true exception in the garment field. The company has also followed its own instincts in the area of information technology and has readily embraced open source products.

The Borealis Press Gains OSAS, Keeps Macs

Mon, 06 Nov 2006 11:00:00 EST

Mention the state of Maine, and most people envision things like lobsters, lighthouses, and lumber mills; 'publishing shop' probably wouldn't spring to mind. Yet in the sleepy hamlet of Surry, along a picturesque inlet not far from Bar Harbor, The Borealis Press greeting card and gift business thrives. Content to be far removed from the publishing centers of New York and other metropolises, The Borealis Press produces unique and humorous cards for holidays and special events as well as related journals, refrigerator magnets, note cards, and other specialty gift items. The company's products are found in numerous bookstores, gift shops, stationery stores, and boutiques around North America and beyond. It operates from a former general store built in the 1890s, with overflow storage in off-site warehouses.

OpenVista at Midland Memorial Hospital

Tue, 17 Oct 2006 15:00:00 EDT

This year, Midland Memorial Hospital in Midland, Texas, became the first community hospital in the country to adopt Open Source-based electronic health records (EHR). The implementation reflects the emergence of Open Source alternatives in healthcare applications as well as the growing movement to computerize patient medical records to reduce costs and improve patient care.

Download Movies With Movielink/Optaros and Reduce Risk

Tue, 08 Aug 2006 14:00:00 EDT

Movielink (www.movielink.com) is an online movie download service offering U.S. broadband customers an extensive selection of recently released films and classic movies covering every genre for rent or purchase. Movielink, LLC was founded in 2002 as a joint venture of five major studios, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Universal Studios, and Warner Bros. Studios. Movielink content offers are drawn from the current releases and vast libraries of those studios as well as those of Walt Disney Pictures, Twentieth Century Fox, and leading independent studios.