Open source picks some new fights
Published: 22 Nov 2004 15:45 GMT
Open-source software, increasingly popular with budget-conscious companies, is beginning to expand into a new area: The lucrative infrastructure-software market dominated by industry giants such as Microsoft.
Individual open-source database and other applications are already popular. Now two open-source projects have launched efforts to assemble "stacks" of software applications that offer an open-source equivalent to commercial software from Microsoft, Oracle, BEA Systems and others.
Last week, a company called Gluecode began selling technical support and maintenance services for a package of infrastructure tools from the Apache Foundation, which oversees and develops some of the most popular open-source software. The package includes portal and database software, and an application server.
Then ObjectWeb, a French non-profit consortium of companies and research bodies launched six years ago, says it will release the eXo Platform. The package includes a corporate Web portal and a content management application, in addition to the connectivity, grid computing and enterprise messaging software the consortium already offers.
Though it's too soon to tell just how much these new stacks will shake up the multi-billion-dollar market for back-end software, it's clear there's a growing number of open-source alternatives to commercial software makers' most profitable products.
There's more to come: The Apache Foundation and ObjectWeb are constructing a growing number of Java server software components to rival proprietary applications.
The good news, according to Anne Thomas Manes, an analyst with the Burton Group, is that for almost every major software need, from databases to business applications, there's now an open-source alternative. The bad news? Get ready to do some work yourself.
"You can reconstruct the same thing based on open-source technology, but the challenge is that you have to integrate it yourself. A fair amount of systems integration is necessary to come up with an integrated environment," Manes says.
The benefits of open source include cost savings -- buyers typically pay only for support, not for the software itself. There's also little of the haggling over long-term licences and upgrade rights that comes with commercial software from Microsoft and other companies. Additional applications are easy to plug in as companies grow. And, if needed, the source code is readily available.
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