The Enterprise Open Source Blog

Selecting Your Open Source Support Vendors (And What Their Business Model Means to You)

Posted by Kim Weins on February 17th, 2012 in Open Source Trends, Support

The vast majority of enterprises use open source software as a significant and growing part of their IT portfolio. And most enterprises work with one or more open source vendors to get commercial grade open source support for the open source software they use. In order to select the right open source vendors, it’s important to understand their business model and how that model impacts you.
The four most common types of open source support models and the implications for enterprises:

Preparing For Your First Cloud App

Posted by Rod Cope on February 10th, 2012 in Support, The Cloud

There’s a lot of confusion out there around the so-called “cloud app”. What is it, just another term for “SaaS”? Or does it refer to running your own application in a public cloud? As with many phrases that include the ubiquitous word “cloud”, it can mean just about anything. In the context of this post, “cloud app” refers to an application you’re running in a public cloud, such as Amazon AWS or Rackspace Cloud.

Before you put an application in a public cloud, ask yourself the following 4 cloud app preparation questions:

Why to Encourage Software Developers to Debug and Extend Open Source

Posted by Nicholas DiPiazza on February 8th, 2012 in Support

So let’s say your company Acme Inc. hosts several software applications that are based on open source technologies. Your development team seems to be pretty skilled at writing code, and for the most part utilize these open source libraries effectively.

For example, you have a Jboss Application Server hosting your web application (an open source application server), use Maven to manage your dependencies, JMeter to test your software, and so on. All sorts of open source software elements are scattered about.

At this point (whether you realize it or not) – you utilize open source technology heavily and rely on it for your company’s success.

But then during the testing of a production release, you encounter a software bug in your open source library that is a blocker (a “blocker” is a term used to describe a bug that prevents key functionality in your application). In a panic, every one of your developers struggles to find a way to get your release to come out on time.

Thankfully, one of your rock star developers pulls down the source code for the open source library from the internet, gets a build working on this development environment, identifies the issue in the code, fixes the problem, repackages the library, and the updated version of the library is used. Problem solved, disaster prevented, release is on time!

Proprietary Software Support vs. Open Source Support – Common Misconceptions

Posted by Nicholas DiPiazza on January 27th, 2012 in Support

Many people in the business world prefer to use proprietary software instead of open source software due to the misconception that proprietary software is better supported than open source software. After several years of supporting both open source software and proprietary software, it becomes clearly evident that just because you pay for proprietary software does not mean that supporting that software is any easier; in fact, there are plenty of reasons why supporting open source software is actually easier.

Let’s identify the set of steps you would take to handle a support issue for proprietary software.
First, you would have a system administrator consult the software documentation to learn more about the issue at hand to find a solution to the problem. If the administrator cannot resolve the issue with the use of documentation, then do one of the following:

Why Enterprises Need and Value Pre-Paid Technical Open Source Software Support

Posted by Jesse Hood on January 11th, 2012 in Open Source Trends, Support

Pre-paying for open source software technical support and consultative expertise might sound crazy to some of our readers, but it should sound like a very smart and safe business decision. As an industry indicator of the growing need for commercial support on open source software OpenLogic’s support team saw a 39% increase from 2010 t0 2011 in the total number of support incidents submitted during the last calendar year.

I have the pleasure of working with many different client organizations to help them determine if, when and what service level of commercial open source support is right for them. Every time we discuss the options our conversation is a little different from the last, and rightfully so. Evaluating the organizational need for open source technical support depends significantly on where, how, why and when the open source is going to be used. These considerations all most likely revolve around some amount of a formalized open source strategy or open source software policy.

Just about anyone these days will echo the comment, “Nothing is ever really, truly free anymore.” If you agree with this statement to some extent, the rest of this article will summarize a few key reasons why OpenLogic’s enterprise customers purchase (and continue to renew) a subscription for pre-paid support and/or consulting.

Open Source Support: Gaps in Internal Expertise

Posted by Aaron Mandelbaum on December 26th, 2011 in Support

The need for Enterprise Level open source support continues to rise, as does the adoption of OSS in the enterprise. The interest of cutting costs and accelerating development is tops of everyone’s mind as we head into 2012, and an uncertain economy. Budgets are tight and goals are as aggressive as ever for what is sure to be an exciting year with the inclusion of cloud technology in most IT budgets around the globe.

Chances are you’ve found that money can be saved, without compromising functionality, by replacing commercial software with open source. However, with the replacement of commercial software, can come concerns about your team’s open source expertise and preparedness.

There is a responsibility facing enterprises to produce higher yields from the resources that have been allotted, and adoption of OSS is the answer many are looking to for that reprieve. However, use of such software can also expose a company to unexpected and unacceptable obligation and risk depending on the terms of the license that governs its use and distribution.

Open Source Software in Cars: Five Best Practices for Compliance

Posted by Kim Weins on December 19th, 2011 in Governance, Legal & Compliance, Open Source Trends, Scanning & Provisioning, Support

For auto companies that are using or want to use open source software, it’s important to build open source compliance processes into your development and procurement processes.

You’ve probably already heard that GM’s Chevy Volt has over 10 million lines of code – 2 million more than a fighter jet. What you may not know is that the Volt includes a lot of open source software – and the open source code used is available on the oss.gm.com website to fulfill the requirements of the GPL and LGPL licenses.

But the use of open source in cars doesn’t stop there. GENIVI, a non-profit industry alliance that includes members like BMW, Delphi and GM working to create an open source development platform for In-Vehicle Infotainment (IVI). In addition, several Android-based IVI systems have been announced and more are coming soon. The use of open source also extends to the many car-focused mobile apps for both Android and Apple platforms.

I spoke at the recent Automotive Linux Summit in Japan and shared five tips to help you ensure you are complying with the open source licenses that you use:

Tomcat Support for an Old Web Application

Posted by Nicholas DiPiazza on December 9th, 2011 in Support

In my experience, people having issues with Tomcat web applications are usually experiencing new issues, from old applications, and are definitely some of the hardest to resolve.

The Issue
Let’s say you work for the Acme Company, and your company hosts a web site based on the open source Apache Tomcat web container. Customers can log in and order Acme products (hopefully Wile E. Coyote has Wi-Fi access) and internally, Acme business applications might use web services provided from the Acme web application.

Things have been running smooth for more than a year. Minus a few errors here and there, the site has been running exceptionally well for a long time. But then BAM! Suddenly, one day, your web application experiences a major issue. The web site is too slow. Users are not able to log in anymore. Or maybe the site goes down every so often and requires a reboot.

Whatever the problem is, surely Acme’s CEO, CIO, and any other business partners, are barking fire and demanding that someone resolve the issue quickly and promptly.

Overcoming Challenges with Enterprise Tomcat Deployments: An Introduction to Tcat Server

Posted by Josh Larson on May 2nd, 2011 in Support

Our next webinar — on Wednesday, May 11 — is rapidly approaching. This will be a joint webinar between OpenLogic and one of our partners, Mulesoft.

How Do You Stay On Top of Open Source Releases and Security Patches?

Posted by Greg Bell on December 9th, 2010 in Support

There’s no shortage of reasons to use open source software for your mission-critical projects, but one of the benefits of open source that sometimes gets overlooked is the frequent release schedule — open source projects typically fix bugs and release new features much, much faster than commercial software companies. However, this “release early and often” approach can make it difficult to stay on top of the most recent open source security updates and version releases.