Latest News from Open Source Magazine

Current Craze in the Open Source World: Responsive WordPress Themes

Fri, 11 May 2012 04:45:00 EDT

Responsive WordPress themes are the current craze in the open source world. But are they a true requirement or just a bunch of hype thrown out to sell more premium themes to unsuspecting buyers? Do WordPress users really need to consider upgrading their existing themes to one that is responsive and mobile friendly? At firstRead more

ACIS – ESaaS Best Practices

Thu, 10 May 2012 17:00:00 EDT

ACIS are a specialist in the Microsoft FAST Search engine, and offer technical and consulting expertise that enables it to be used for the best practices described in our white paper – Microsoft Cloud 2.0 – FAST Social Computing. Their SPM module enables FAST to be used in a ‘Hybrid SaaS‘ manner – In short one version of FAST can serve many different agencies via a form of a multi-tenant architecture, like the Government of Ontario here, which also explains how they use it to improve citizen service access via the various agency portals. Critically they all share one common index, enabling them to implement a streamlined ‘No Wrong Door’ policy, meaning no matter which site you use to ask the question, you’ll always get an answer, and one that is consistent across departments!

Cloud Expo New York Speaker Profile: Mark Hinkle – Citrix Systems

Mon, 07 May 2012 03:00:00 EDT

With Cloud Expo 2012 New York (10th Cloud Expo) now under six weeks away, what better time to introduce you in greater detail to the distinguished individuals in our incredible Speaker Faculty for the technical and strategy sessions at the conference... We have technical and strategy sessions for you every day from June 11 through June 14 dealing with every nook and cranny of Cloud Computing and Big Data, but what of those who are presenting? Who are they, where do they work, what else have they written and/or said about the Cloud that is transforming the world of Enterprise IT, side by side with the exploding use of enterprise Big Data – processed in the Cloud – to drive value for businesses...?

Leveraging Open Source and Avoiding Risks in Small Tech Companies

Fri, 04 May 2012 10:00:00 EDT

Today’s software development is geared more towards building upon previous work and less about reinventing content from scratch. Resourceful software development organizations and developers use a combination of previously created code, commercial software, open source software, and their own creative content to produce the desired software product or functionality. Outsourced code can also be used, which can contain any of the above combination of software. There are many good reasons for using off-the-shelf and especially open source software, with the greatest being its ability to speed up development and drive down costs without sacrificing quality. Almost all software groups knowingly, and in many cases unknowingly, use open source software to their advantage. Code reuse is possibly the biggest accelerator of innovation, as long as open source software is adopted and managed in a controlled fashion.

WANdisco uberSVN 12.4 Open ALM Platform Arrives

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 05:45:00 EDT

Apache Subversion commercial services company WANdisco has announced that with the release of uberSVN 12.4, the open ALM platform is now officially out of beta. This week marks another milestone for uberSVN: it has now been twelve months since the Subversion-based platform was first launched. “uberSVN has had a fantastic first year. Not only have we won industry awards and accolades from the IT media, but we’ve had an overwhelming positive response from the community – all while the product was still in beta,” said David Richards, CEO and co-founder, WANdisco.

ISVs Accelerate Their Products with BIRT and ActuateOne

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 17:00:00 EDT

ActuateOne, built on open source BIRT technology, is the leading embedded business intelligence solution for independent software vendors (ISVs) looking to maximize their product portfolios and meet evolving user needs. For over ten years ISVs have leveraged Actuate and BIRT technology to add value to their applications by introducing features and functionality such as dynamic visualizations, interactive content delivery, data analytics and dashboarding. Download this informational white paper and find out how to: Choose the right BI solution to meet user demand Add interactive functionality, customizable dashboards and rich visualization capabilities to increase the adoption of your product

Forrester Wave: Open Source Business Intelligence

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 16:00:00 EDT

Open source software and BI are two related market segments where Forrester sees continually increasing interest and adoption levels. BI specifically continues to be one of the top priorities on everyone’s mind. Comparing open source BI technologies is often an apples-to-oranges comparison: 1) not all vendors include the same functionality in the free community versions of the software versus commercial open source versions that carry license and/or support cost, 2) some tools offer full BI suites, while others offer just reporting and analytics. Download Forrester’s evaluation of open source BI vendors and learn why Actuate BIRT led the pack due to its richness of reporting functionality.

UnoEuro Selects Open-Xchange for Mobile Webmail and Collaboration

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 10:28:00 EDT

Open-Xchange, the supplier of email and collaboration software for cloud providers, on Wednesday announced an agreement with UnoEuro - a leading Scandinavian provider of cost-effective hosting and email services. In the coming months, UnoEuro will consolidate and replace its existing webmail services with Open-Xchange. At no additional charge, UnoEuro customers will get modern, easy-to-use integrated email, calendar and contact management. This cloud-based application can be accessed with any standard web browser on a PC, iPad or smartphone. Later this year, customers will be able to upgrade easily from webmail to take advantage of mobility support and more advanced collaboration features in Open-Xchange. Personal contacts from social networks like Facebook, LinkedIn or Xing can be easily added to the unified Open-Xchange address book making those contacts instantly available on any device. By deploying the Open-Xchange in-application upsell mechanism, customers of UnoEuro's standard hosting packages will be able to easily test-drive and upgrade to premium features, such as state-of-the-art mobility solutions for iPhone and Android smartphones.

Open Cloud Battle Hots Up: Eucalyptus Snags $30M

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 09:00:00 EDT

"Over the last year, Eucalyptus has solidified its lead as the most widely deployed private cloud software platform and the leader in hybrid architectures," said Mårten Mickos, CEO of Eucalyptus Systems, as Eucalyptus today announced an oversubscribed $30 million Series C round of funding led by Institutional Venture Partners (IVP). "We are rapidly expanding operations to meet the needs of advanced cloud deployments by customers and partners worldwide. This funding will help us move even faster in a rapidly growing cloud market," Mickos added.

NetArt Chooses Open-Xchange to Enter into Cloud Application Business

Fri, 06 Apr 2012 16:00:00 EDT

Open-Xchange, the supplier of business-class email and collaboration software for cloud providers, announced an agreement with NetArt -- a provider of domain name registration and web hosting in Poland -- to bring cloud-based communication and collaboration to more than 500,000 users. NetArt will be offering Open-Xchange webmail on its service, nazwa.pl, providing end users with the most powerful email service available today. At no additional charge, nazwa.pl customers will get modern, easy-to-use integrated email, calendar and contact management. This cloud-based application can be accessed with a standard web browser (without installing software) and a PC, iPad or smartphone.

Opening up the Open Source Landscape

Wed, 04 Apr 2012 09:00:00 EDT

The open source landscape has evolved into a complex maze of licenses and business models. To make matters more confusing, any simple meaning of the phrase “open source” has become lost amid a sea of ambiguous and arcane terminology. As a result, many software developers fail to recognize the potential benefits of innovative models of software distribution and source code disclosure. Copyright law entitles programmers, like authors and artists, to exclusive control over the distribution and sale of their intellectual property, which includes source code. The value of source code is well recognized, but for competitive reasons software developers often are reluctant to include source at a reasonable price, if at all. Holding a diametrically opposite point of view, the Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) community contends that source code generally should be freely available, modifiable, and redistributable.

opentaps Open Source ERP + CRM Update

Wed, 04 Apr 2012 07:00:00 EDT

The first proof of concept application is now available. This new application is based on Apache Geronimo 3, OSGi Blueprint, and openJPA server side and HTML5/Javascript/CSS client side technologies. Facebook integration is built into the application: You can try the opentaps v2 Notes application at notes.opentaps.com or see a YouTube video for the new opentaps [...]

OpenNebula: Open Source Cloud Management

Tue, 03 Apr 2012 07:00:00 EDT

What Is OpenNebula ? It is cloud management solution – industry standard open source cloud computing tool to manage the complexity and heterogeneity of distributed data center infrastructures. OpenNebula is a fully open-source management toolkit for on-premise Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) cloud computing. OpenNebula can be primarily used as a virtualization tool to manage your virtual infrastructure in the data-center or cluster, which is usually referred as Private Cloud. OpenNebula supports Hybrid Cloud to combine local infrastructure with public cloud-based infrastructure, enabling highly scalable hosting environments. OpenNebula also supports Public Clouds by providing Cloud interfaces to expose its functionality for virtual machine, storage and network management.

Closer Look at One NoSQL Database – MongoDB

Thu, 29 Mar 2012 08:00:00 EDT

Among the new crop of NoSQL database products, MongoDB ranks quite high, in my opinion. The company that produces MongoDB is 10Gen, a venture backed new start-up since 2008. But its rapid growth over last 4 years bears testimony to its technical strength. MongoDB’s name comes from the middle five letters of the word “humongous”, meaning big data. It is an open-source, document-oriented storage which is schema-free and can entertain dynamic queries with full indexing. The programming model is BSON – binary encoding of JSON (Javascript Object Notation), a lightweight text-based open standard designed for data interchange. Douglas Crawford of Yahoo invented JSON in 2006.

OpenNebula 3.4 Bringing Contributions from RIM, Logica and Terradue

Sat, 17 Mar 2012 13:00:00 EDT

Ruben S. Montero, Chief Architect of OpenNebula, has published a "sneak peek" of the upcoming version of OpenNebula (3.4 codename Wild Duck), which brings important contributions from the OpenNebula user community, specially from Research in Motion (support for qcow datastores), Logica (extended support for EC2 hybrid set ups) and Terradue 2.0 (VMWare based datastores). This new release is focused on extending the storage capabilities of OpenNebula. Wild Duck will include support for multiple Datastores. A Datastore is any storage medium (typically SAN/NAS servers) used to store disk images for VMs.

An Overview of Riak: an Open Source NoSQL Database

Wed, 14 Mar 2012 13:48:00 EDT

Riak is a document oriented open-source database system. It is shaped by the Amazon Dynamo document and provides a decentralized key-value store that supports standard Get, Put and Delete operations. Riak is a distributed, highly scalable and fault-tolerant store with map/reduce, HTTP, JSON and REST queries making it ideal for web apps. And, of course, Riak is NoSQL. To understand why Riak is so powerful we need to know some theory. Let’s take a look at Amazon Dynamo. In Amazon Dynamo documentation we have 3 terms that describe distributed store behavior: N, R and W. N is the number of replicas of each value in store. R is the number of replicas needed for read operations. W is the number of replicas needed for write operations. Riak’s goal is to transmit N, R and W logic to an application. That’s why Riak can adapt application requirements.

Microsoft Contributes Mayhem Interconnectivity System to Open Source

Fri, 09 Mar 2012 06:30:00 EST

Microsoft Research has this week donated its Mayhem simple scripting system for non-programmers to The Outercurve Foundation -- a non-profit group focused on software IP management and project development governance. Adrian Bridgwater

Overview of Open Source Content Management Systems

Wed, 07 Mar 2012 09:00:00 EST

In the last article in this series we covered WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, Magento, and b2evolution, five leading Content Management Systems. In this article we talk about the next five: Xoops, Seotoaster, e107, Concrete5, and Typo3. 6. Xoops Xoops (eXtensible Object Orientated Portal System) is an open source and ideal tool to develop small to large [...]

Integrating Open Source Monitoring with Monitis

Sat, 25 Feb 2012 11:00:00 EST

In this post, we’re going to examine two popular open source monitoring methods and their integration with the Monitis platform. The first open source monitoring method we’ll discuss is Nagios — which allows you to monitor any network service with the use of plug-ins.

M3 Timers – Improved Server Monitoring

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 03:56:00 EST

During the lifespan of M3 (Monitis Monitor Manager) there has always been something lacking – timers. M3 execution procedure was outlined in this previous article. The execution mentioned in the latter was a one-time-execution, whereas server monitoring requires periodic invocation of monitors in order to actually provide counters over time, graphing performance. The periodic invocation method suggested up until today was to integrate M3 with crontab. Crontab, in a nutshell, is a Linux/Unix service for periodic invocation of executables. Implementing M3 with crontab properly meant M3 would run every X minutes, producing a Monitis counter update every X minutes, should everything run properly. In the following article I’ll outline the changes done to support timers in M3.

HP Commits to webOS Release Schedule

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 06:45:00 EST

Seems just the other day – actually it was two weeks ago – that we divined that HP, imagining blowing Google away, would pull out the stops to get the webOS that it bought, put in a tablet that failed in the market, dropped, then open sourced – life’s funny like that – in shape to publish the code in stages. And what do you know – surprise, surprise – HP Wednesday committed to a timetable for getting the thing out in steps by September under the lenient Apache 2.0 license. HP is making much of the fact that it materialized the roadmap 47 days after it said it would open source webOS. God knows whether HP or anybody else will ever really exploit the thing. For HP it depends on the auspices – like two bald eagles seen circling Google or Apple talons extended.

Top 10 Open Source eCommerce Software (Joomla and Drupal)

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 06:30:00 EST

This is the second of two articles about open source ecommerce software that we hope will help web developers and system administrators in selecting what is best for their needs. The first article Top 10 Open Source eCommerce Software (Joomla and Drupal) reviewed: HikaShop, SimpleCaddy, OpenCart, redSHOP and RokQuickCart. The following article details our own analysis of the last 5 vendors in our article series. Founded in 2005, the company VirtueMart has developed a free and open source shopping cart software as an extension for Joomla. Formerly known as mambo-phpShop, VirtueMart is a popular Joomla extension written in PHP, within a MySQL database environment.

Open-Xchange Adds Chief Operating Officer

Wed, 11 Jan 2012 07:03:00 EST

Open-Xchange, the supplier of business-class email and collaboration software for cloud providers, has announced the appointment of Carsten Dirks as chief operating officer (COO). Responsible for engineering, professional services, support, key account management and administration, Dirks joins a company that grew to more than 42 million users in 2011 - an increase of 75 percent over the prior year - with plans to increase to more than 80 million in 2012. "We have enormous growth potential as our products serve the increasing demand for communication and collaboration software delivered via the cloud," said Rafael Laguna, CEO, Open-Xchange. "In combination with the mobile and web-based computing opportunities, Open-Xchange is growing to support the market demand. Carsten will help us move ahead from our pole position in this market to further grow our business with our worldwide partner ecosystem."

Powering the Cloud with Open Source

Fri, 30 Dec 2011 07:00:00 EST

“CloudStack grew out of Cloud.com. It’s an open source product, and as the product gains maturity and gains market share we have started to see real contribution coming back,” observes Shannon Williams, President and Vice President, Market Development, Cloud Platforms at Citrix Systems, in this SYS-CON.TV interview with Cloud Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan at the 9th International Cloud Expo, held Nov 7-10, 2011, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA. Cloud Expo New York, June 11–14, 2012, at the Javits Center in New York City, New York, and Cloud Expo Silicon Valley, November 5–8, 2012, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA, will feature technical sessions from a rock star conference faculty and the leading Cloud industry players in the world.

OpenOffice.com Lives

Fri, 30 Dec 2011 05:00:00 EST

The Apache Software Foundation, where Oracle sent OpenOffice in June after it adjured the stuff, said Tuesday that it will put out OpenOffice 3.4 in the first quarter whose code will all be under the Apache license, resolving lingering incompatibility issues. It used what was ostensibly an open letter to the Open Document Format community to distance itself from the new German Team OpenOffice.com fork and its fund-raising attempts and warn it about misusing its trademark including “OpenOffice.org and all related marks.”

Forrester Wave: Open Source Business Intelligence

Sat, 17 Dec 2011 13:00:00 EST

Open source software and Business Intelligence are two related market segments where Forrester sees continually increasing interest and adoption levels. BI specifically continues to be one of the top priorities on everyone’s mind. Comparing open source BI technologies is often an apples-to-oranges comparison: 1) not all vendors include the same functionality in the free community versions of the software versus commercial open source versions that carry license and/or support cost, 2) some tools offer full BI suites, while others offer just reporting and analytics. Download Forrester’s evaluation of open source BI vendors and learn why Actuate BIRT led the pack due to its richness of reporting functionality.

Open-Xchange Plans to Double Again to 80 Million Users

Wed, 14 Dec 2011 07:45:00 EST

Open-Xchange, the supplier of business-class email and collaboration software for cloud providers, announced on Tuesday it expects to again double its number of users -- reaching 80 million paid mailboxes by the end of 2012, making it among the world's largest providers. The company is a pioneer in enabling service providers to offer a Software as a Service (SaaS) solution to their customers - from consumers to businesses of all sizes - and is now entering its fifth year since the introduction with 1&1 in Europe and the U.S. Open-Xchange gives service providers of all kinds and sizes the ability to compete with global and local cloud mail offerings. In 2011, Open-Xchange announced agreements with 15 partners in North America, Europe and Asia growing to more than 42 million users -- an increase of 75 percent over the prior year.Its software reaches end customers through partners worldwide that include web hosting companies, telecoms, cable carriers, system integrators, value added resellers and distributors.

HP to Open Source webOS

Mon, 12 Dec 2011 09:15:00 EST

Unable to turn a buck on the thing after killing the tablet and smartphones it was meant to power, HP said Friday that it’s going to open source webOS, the mobile operating system it got last year when it bought Palm for a sweet $1.2 billion. It claims there is still an “opportunity to significantly improve applications and web services for the next generation of devices.” It’s speculated that some Android OEMs might adopt it as a hedge against possible legal calamity since webOS is believed to have a stronger patent defense against Apple and Microsoft than Android, which is also open source, and because of Google’s impending $12.5 billion acquisition of Motorola Mobility, a potentially Google-favored rival. Whether webOS could give Android a run for its money at this point is debatable.

Drupal, Joomla and Wordpress - What Will You Choose?

Fri, 09 Dec 2011 07:08:00 EST

Some questions can never be answered; they can only be debated but we never get the solution to it. The same is the case for CMSs; people for years have been trying to find out which one is best for them and which is good to manage a website. Open source CMSs have had great success and demand for many years because they're easy to work with and are also flexible. But open source development offers you multiple choices when it comes to a CMS. So there is the age-old confusion of which one to choose. Even though you can't decide which one is the best, you can definitely pick the one that suits your needs the best. There is no Content Management Solution that is the best so you settle with what you are comfortable using. However, I am writing this so you will choose WordPress and you should choose WordPress as your CMS. It provides loads of extensions, add-ons and plug-ins, themes and templates, etc., that are easily customizable and easy to use. Scalability is amazing; help and support are top class; there's a strong user community; integration and other systems all make WordPress a formidable choice to be used as a CMS. It powers many great websites all over the world and this CMS is totally customizable and can be tweaked according to your needs.

Open-Xchange and Openprovider to Offer Hosted Business Email

Tue, 06 Dec 2011 14:18:37 EST

Open-Xchange, the supplier of business-class email and collaboration software for cloud providers, announced on Tuesday an agreement with Openprovider to be the exclusive distributor of Open-Xchange in The Netherlands. Openprovider will make hosted Open-Xchange available to resellers, ISPs (Internet Service Providers) and small web hosting companies. Openprovider partners now are able to provide collaboration and mobility services to consumers and small- and medium-size enterprises (SMEs). In the SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) model, customers subscribe to the application instead of purchasing it, typically on a monthly basis. In this pay-as-you go approach, SMEs are afforded an easy-to-use, low-cost service.

CFEngine Moves to the US

Mon, 31 Oct 2011 04:15:00 EDT

CFEngine AS, the Norwegian outfit with the popular eponymous open source configuration and compliance management widgetry for automating distributed infrastructure, has moved its sales operation to Palo Alto in hopes of turning its freeloading Fortune 1000 accounts into paying customers. Its first job will be to identify the big companies using its free software that haven’t taken a subscription yet. Its cross-platform commercial stuff, just upgraded to CFEngine 3 Nova, costs $250 per server. The new rev is supposed to give system administrators more control over constantly changing, increasingly complex IT infrastructure.

How Does the DoD Fight Terrorism Despite Budget Cuts?

Fri, 28 Oct 2011 11:00:00 EDT

United States military contractors are under unprecedented pressure to find ways to cut costs for their federal government customers despite the interest in developing new technologies to fight the war on terrorism. Gone are the days when contracts would swell exponentially without any regard for initial quote figures or recourse from their customers. The federal deficit debt-reduction plan, which includes massive defense spending cuts, recently put the contracting community on notice that it has to change the way it does business, become more accountable for cost overruns and find ways to do more with less. Those who don't meet this mandate will find themselves on the outside looking in. Getting the military contractor community to radically change the way it does business is akin to trying to turn around an oil tanker with an oar. It’s a daunting challenge, but not an entirely impossible one. The answer may be easier to find than many would expect: open source technologies. By using open source software (OSS) and Government off-the-shelf (GOTS) technologies, contractors can offer quality products and services that are significantly more flexible and cost-effective than proprietary systems, and can be reused indefinitely and shared with other federal agencies without additional cost.

Openwave and Open-Xchange Partner to Deliver Advanced Email

Thu, 13 Oct 2011 06:00:00 EDT

Openwave Systems Inc., has announced an agreement with Open-Xchange, the supplier of business-class email and groupware for cloud providers, to integrate Open-Xchange's email technology into its Openwave Rich Mail product. Open-Xchange has grown to more than 40 million users worldwide in 2011, which represents an increase of nearly 70 percent from last year. The agreement extends Open-Xchange´s reach from hosting providers to telcos, carriers and cable providers. Four customers representing regions from all over the world have already selected the integrated solution. Most recently, Openwave entered in to an agreement with one of the largest telecommunications companies in Western Europe for Openwave Messaging products including Openwave Rich Mail, which is expected to serve millions of email users.

Samsung Plans to Open Source Smartphone Platform

Fri, 23 Sep 2011 08:00:00 EDT

Wall Street Journal reports that smartphone maker Samsung could be looking to open source its Bada OS within the next year. Seeking to imitate Google android's thriving developer ecosystem, Samsung might want to shine the light on its homegrown mobile software platform by bringing in external developers and device makers. It apparently also has plans to expand bada's reach into television sets and tablet devices in the future. Global Internet information provider, comScore says (reporting key trends in the US mobile phone industry during the three month average period ending July 2011) that Samsung is now the leading handset maker in the US thanks to the popularity of its android phones. Google's open source mobile operating system, Android continued to gain steam reaching 41.8 percent market share. With Google announcing that it is buying Samsung's key competitor Motorola, speculation abounds that Google might end up giving preferential treatment to Motorola and keeping the latest versions of its mobile platform away from its other android OEMs. Samsung is probably looking to create an open and viable alternative in Bada to reduce its dependency on the android devices that it is best known for.

Open-Xchange Enhances Integration with Parallels Automation Software

Thu, 22 Sep 2011 12:02:32 EDT

The Open-Xchange 4PSA OXtender for Plesk (www.open-xchange.com/en/solutions/4psa-oxtender-for-plesk.html), a software connector that makes deployment and billing of Open-Xchange simple for service providers and customers using Parallels Plesk Panel and Parallels Automation, now also supports Parallels Business Automation Standard. Parallels Business Automation Standard is the first available hosting automation software that manages all business aspects of shared hosting, VPS hosting, and dedicated hosting from a single management system. Integration of Open-Xchange with Parallels industry-standard control panel and hosting automation software, enables web hosters and their resellers to enter into the business application market with Open-Xchange. Hosting providers can easily replace the Standard Plesk Webmail in existing shared hosting environments with the feature-rich AJAX interface of Open-Xchange and deliver business-class email and collaboration features.

New OpenNebula Working Group on Cloud Interoperability and Portability

Tue, 20 Sep 2011 06:30:00 EDT

OpenNebula has just announced the creation of a new Working Group on Cloud Interoperability and Portability. The aim of this working group is to discuss open standards and their implementation in projects that make use of OpenNebula clouds. Inter-project collaboration especially in the realm of support for open standards such as Open Cloud Computing Interface (OCCI), Cloud Data Management Interface (CDMI), and Open Virtualization Format (OVF), and development of standard APIs with interoperability among different ecosystem modules will be the focus of this working group. OpenNebula has emerged as a viable open source alternative to commercial cloud management solutions. A number of companies are adopting OpenNebula in their IT infrastructure. Not only that, it is also been actively promoted by the European Commission as the basis for numerous cloud computing related research. There is a real need for interaction and exchange of ideas between such projects and the industry partners alike. The OpenNebula Interoperability Working Group has been established to facilitate such an exchange.

Exist Celebrates 10 Years of Software Engineering Innovation

Mon, 19 Sep 2011 10:21:00 EDT

Exist Global, pioneers in Open Source software engineering in Asia Pacific, commemorated its 10th anniversary with co-founders Winston Damarillo, Willex Perez, and Junnie Arreza joining CEO Jerry Rapes in a toast to honor 10 extraordinary years of software innovation and the next 10 years of success. "Exist has had an amazing global trajectory since 2001," said Winston. "Our head count, roster of clients, industry network and service portfolio have expanded tremendously." Exist began with venture-funded start-up clients and 7 employees. Today, it runs the most modern development centers in Manila and Cebu with 180 technologists, serving world's leading companies in Healthcare, IT, Telecoms and Finance. In addition, Exist has established itself on the forefront of bleeding-edge technology development -- globally recognized innovators and producers of almost 3 dozen Open Source contributors.

Platfora Wants to Make Sense Out of Hadoop

Mon, 19 Sep 2011 06:15:00 EDT

Platfora, a Hadoop analytics start-up, has gotten $5.7 million in Series A money from Andreessen Horowitz and the CIA’s venture arm In-Q-Tel. The fledging is trying to make pretty, understandable graphs out of big petabytes-size Hadoop data. Its product, which will compete with Datameer’s, won’t be available until next year. It says Hadoop lacks the interactivity and sophisticated reporting capabilities needed by business users. It’s aiming to work with existing Hadoop clusters, including Cloudera, MapR and Amazon EMR, among others, and automatically turn the questions business users pose into dimensional and predictive dashboards, reports and insights.

Exist Celebrates 10 Years of Software Engineering Innovation

Thu, 15 Sep 2011 00:26:00 EDT

Exist Global, pioneers in Open Source software engineering in Asia Pacific, commemorated its 10th anniversary with co-founders Winston Damarillo, Willex Perez, and Junnie Arreza joining CEO Jerry Rapes in a toast to honor 10 extraordinary years of software innovation and the next 10 years of success. “Exist has had an amazing global trajectory since 2001,” said Winston. “Our head count, roster of clients, industry network and service portfolio have expanded tremendously.” Exist began with venture-funded start-up clients and 7 employees. Today, it runs the most modern development centers in Manila and Cebu with 180 technologists, serving world’s leading companies in Healthcare, IT, Telecoms and Finance. In addition, Exist has established itself on the forefront of bleeding-edge technology development -- globally recognized innovators and producers of almost 3 dozen Open Source contributors.

Spanish Web Hoster Acens Enters Cloud Application Market

Thu, 08 Sep 2011 06:15:00 EDT

Acens, one of Spain's largest web hosting service providers, will bring its customers cloud-based business email and collaboration capabilities from Open-Xchange. Open-Xchange, a supplier of business-class email for cloud providers, on Wednesday announced an agreement with Acens, one of Spain's largest web hosting service providers, to bring cloud-based business email and collaboration capabilities. Acens will replace its Atmail-based webmail system with Open-Xchange providing all 300,000 email accounts with the full webmail, mobility and teamwork capabilities of Open-Xchange. The implementation is scheduled to be completed this fall.

Hyper-V Reportedly Picking Up Speed

Sun, 14 Aug 2011 09:00:00 EDT

Microsoft is closing in on VMware for virtualization market share, according to a Stratus Technologies-ITIC survey that found Hyper V use increased over 20% in 12 months. In its spring 2010 survey, 78% of the 243 respondents said they were using VMware while 38% said Microsoft Hyper-V (numbers don’t equal 100% because some respondents use multiple vendors’ products). In the 2011 survey of 250, the gap had closed to 59% for VMware compared to 53% for Hyper-V. Citrix XenServer users doubled year over year from 9% to 18%. Ninety-four percent of respondents have virtualization somewhere in their infrastructure. Seventy-four percent said they currently run business-critical applications on virtual machines and have plans to increase the number of these applications in the next 12 months.

Valve, JAAS and Filter in Tomcat

Sun, 14 Aug 2011 06:15:00 EDT

Tomcat is a widely popular lightweight application server. When securing Tomcat web applications, Valve, JAAS and Filter are used in various scenarios. The challenges for developers are when to use each of these methods and how to integrate them together if more than one method is chosen. For example, the WebSeal agent discussed in the article [1] uses Valve. If a customer needs to integrate WebSeal and its own JAAS-based authentication module, they will need to know how to configure Tomcat to use both the WebSeal Agent Valve and the JAAS module and how to pass information between them. In this article, we will explain the concepts of Valve, JAAS and Filter, and their relationships such as the order that they get called. Through an example application, we will explain how you can use them together and pass information among them for an authentication process. How to configure and run the example application using Tomcat 7 will also be discussed.

Open-Xchange Integrates with cPanel

Tue, 09 Aug 2011 11:01:47 EDT

Open-Xchange, the supplier of business-class email and groupware for cloud providers, joins forces with cPanel, a leading provider of hosting automation tools, to enable web hosts and service providers to offer advanced email and teamwork capabilities to their hosting customers. The integration of Open-Xchange into cPanel's industry-standard control panel will be previewed to the service provider industry at HostingCon in San Diego, August 8-10. "Communication and collaboration tools are leading the way to Cloud applications for consumers and SMEs (small- and medium-size enterprises). Providing customers with an expanded messaging experience, helps web hosts to grow their profitability and deepen customer relationships," said Antonio Piraino, vice president and research director, at Tier1 Research.

Adobe Blinks; Builds Product on HTML5

Fri, 05 Aug 2011 09:00:00 EDT

Adobe is in the process – as it put it – of recognizing HTML5, the modern answer to Adobe’s sacred, Apple-loathed Flash plug-in, as something serious. It’s started to preview a free new design web motion and interaction design tool called Edge for editing animations and interactive web page elements based on HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript.

Data Integration Study Compares ETL with Next Generation Technologies

Fri, 29 Jul 2011 10:53:49 EDT

While ETL continues to be the predominant data integration technology in use today, the sheer size and complexity of today's information and application systems require new levels of innovation that lower costs, deliver rapid time to value, and put more control into the hands of business users. A new study by IdealNet, a professional business expertise and technical services company, takes a look at the data integration technology curve, from the 1980s to present day, examining first, second and third generation solutions. It also compares first generation tools such as conventional ETL with newer open source and data virtualization technologies, and includes recommendations as to which technologies would be most appropriate based on an organization's data integration requirements. The results of the study are captured in a video, titled "An Analysis of Data Integration Technologies." Some of the key findings: · Informatica is the leading provider of ETL, clearly defines ETL for batch oriented bulk file transfer · Talend and Pentaho are the open source leaders with associated ETL and BI strategies · ETL is limited in scalability – each connection is essentially standalone · Queplix 3rd generation product – leading data virtualization solution, better suited to integrate 2, 3, 4 or more sources · Unique advanced data virtualization platform provides greater capability, lowers costs To learn more, see http://bit.ly/qY0RFx. Tweet This: Data Integration Study: ETL vs. Next Generation Technologies - http://bit.ly/qY0RFx For parties interested in Queplix, data integration, data management, data quality, data virtualization, data integration software, master data management, MDM, business intelligence, informatica

Social Coding and uberApps for App Dev in the Enterprise

Thu, 28 Jul 2011 09:00:00 EDT

With the opening of WANdisco’s uberApps Store, we felt it was a good time to have a chat with David Richards, WANdisco President & CEO. Subversion has over 5 million installations in everything from one person all the way up to the world's largest development teams with over 40,000 users. Our business model is similar to Red Hat's where we make our money from the top of the pyramid where companies need enterprise-class performance, scale and availability. We also offer a security and access control add-on that gives the kind of audit reporting that Sarbanes-Oxley requires. And we offer professional support for the pure open source Subversion product that gives enterprise the peace of mind...

Jenkins Now Available on uberSVN

Wed, 27 Jul 2011 17:04:00 EDT

WANdisco, the leading provider of Apache Subversion-based software and services for the enterprise, today announced that it has partnered with CloudBees to offer Jenkins - the number one open source continuous integration (build) server - with WANdisco's free, open uberSVN application lifecycle management (ALM) platform for Apache Subversion. Project managers can download Jenkins, together with enterprise support, from the new WANdisco uberApps Store, which offers one-stop shopping for application lifecycle management solutions.

Top 10 Reasons to Choose an Open Source Application Integration Solution

Fri, 22 Jul 2011 12:06:00 EDT

Why choose an open source ESB? To learn more about the value open source brings to application integration, download the whitepaper, “Top 10 Reasons to Choose an Open Source Application Integration Solution.”

Jaspersoft Picks Up Another $11 Million

Mon, 18 Jul 2011 04:45:00 EDT

Jaspersoft, the open source BI house, has gotten $11 million in new “strategic” capital financing. It’s coming from existing investors Red Hat, SAP Ventures and new investor Quest Software, along with the participation of all its existing major investors including Doll Capital Management, Morgenthaler Ventures, Partech International, Scale Venture Partners and Adams Street Partners. Jaspersoft’s already seen at least $32.5 million, with the last VC infusion maybe being a $12.5 million E round; it never did say. The money is evidently supposed fuel its “aggressive” product roadmap, global expansion and potential strategic acquisitions.

Likewise Names Leading Open Source Voice as CTO

Thu, 07 Jul 2011 16:03:31 EDT

Likewise, a software platform provider for identity, security and storage, announced today the promotion of Gerald (Jerry) Carter to Chief Technology Officer, starting immediately. Carter has been developing, writing about, and teaching on open source since the late '90s at events such as LISA, LinuxWorld Expo, SANE, SambaXP, OSCON, and the SNIA SDC. He was a member of the Samba core development team from 1998-2009 and has authored both "LDAP System Administration" and the third edition of "Using Samba," as well as for O'Reilly Publishing. "Jerry has been such a vocal advocate of the open source community and a driving force of the great differentiation of Likewise technology - an open source, not just free product," said Barry Crist, CEO, Likewise. "As we begin to open more expansive channels in the storage arena, Jerry's expertise in building Likewise Storage Services will become increasingly valuable."