The Enterprise Open Source Blog

JBoss, Tomcat, Apache—-Oh My!

Posted by Rebecca Shockey on May 2nd, 2012 in Open Source Management, Support

JBoss, Tomcat & Apache are 3 of the most popular open source packages being used in the enterprise and have been for quite a while. Enterprises tend to have a high level of comfort using them in their development and other non-production environments. But as soon as you bring up the idea of open source software in production a funny thing happens. You can hear brakes squealing, sirens going off, and see panic set in with business leaders in your company. Then the questions start. What if it breaks? Who is on the hook at 2 am? Is it secure? Is it as good as commercial software? What about indemnification?

Open Source Support: A Need Or a Want?

Posted by Greg Bell on April 27th, 2012 in Support

Seth Godin blogged the other day about how wants can turn into needs when people have all their basic needs met, and it got me to thinking about how different organizations with similar open source usage models can have very different perceptions about the necessity of open source support. Why do some companies approach open source support as a luxury — nice to have, but not worth prioritizing until a problem occurs — while others place it firmly in the need column?

OpenLogic Announces Availability of Pre-Configured and Custom Stacks in Amazon Marketplace

Posted by Aaron Mandelbaum on April 20th, 2012 in Open Source Management, Open Source Trends, Support, The Cloud

BROOMFIELD, Colo. April 20th 2012—OpenLogic, Inc., provider of enterprise open source solutions for the data center and the cloud, today announced that its open platform as a service, CloudSwing, is now available on AWS Marketplace. OpenLogic CloudSwing is a Platform as a Service (PaaS) that provides complete choice around infrastructure, components and programming languages. In addition, CloudSwing provides easy configuration, cost tracking, application monitoring and enhanced enterprise grade security for public or private clouds.

Open Source Software Management: A Recap of the Top Articles

Posted by Aaron Mandelbaum on April 16th, 2012 in Governance, Legal & Compliance, Open Source Management, Open Source Trends, Scanning & Provisioning, Support, The Cloud

Pin It  Open Source Management: Dealing with New OSS Releases The first quarter of this year has be a busy time in open source management. JBoss has had two releases in the 7.1 series, the Apache web server has had two releases in the 2.4 series and Ruby on Rails has had two releases in [...]

Open Source Software Management: A Review of Wazi Articles

Posted by Aaron Mandelbaum on April 11th, 2012 in Governance, Legal & Compliance, Open Source Management, Open Source Trends, Scanning & Provisioning, Support, The Cloud

Open Source Software Management: A Review of Wazi Articles
The 5 most recent articles published on http://olex.openlogic.com/wazi/

Choosing the Right Type of Open Source Support

Posted by Greg Bell on April 9th, 2012 in Support

Open source software is used by organizations both large and small for everything from desktop applications to mission-critical infrastructure, but many enterprises have inconsistent open source support coverage or lack technical support coverage altogether. Just as most companies won’t use commercial software without technical support coverage, it’s important to evaluate technical support needs and options for any open source used in the enterprise. For some companies it makes sense to rely on internal expertise for open source support, while others require commercial-grade support coverage for some or all of the open source software they use.

In this post I’ll outline the key issues you should consider when evaluating support options for the open source deployed in your organization. I’ll also link to a resource that can help you work through the pros and cons of each option.

Supporting Open Source-Based Apps in the Cloud

Posted by Rod Cope on April 4th, 2012 in Open Source Management, Open Source Trends, Support, The Cloud

Your choice of public vs. private cloud and IaaS vs. PaaS providers can have a dramatic impact on your ability to support your open source-based applications in a 24×7 production environment.

Open Source Software Support: How Well Are You “Minding the Gap”?

Posted by Aaron Mandelbaum on March 28th, 2012 in Support

More and more enterprises are using open source software projects such as Linux, Apache, Tomcat, MySQL, and ActiveMQ as a significant and growing part of their IT portfolio. Some enterprises work with one or more open source vendors to get commercial grade, open source support, for the OSS they use.

However, there are also a substantial amount of open source users that view support as an after thought and find themselves scrambling for a solution at the 23rd (or 25th) hour. Just last week we began our quarterly Open Source Benchmark Report survey focusing on the support aspect of open source software usage.

One question we included in the survey was, “What is the biggest OSS challenge facing you in 2012?” The answers covered a wide range, but there was one consistent theme: when it comes to support, time is of the essence and time needs to be accounted for when obtaining support.

In our Predictions and Trends for Open Source in the Enterprise report, that we concluded at the end of 2011 and published earlier this year, there were a few stats that jumped out to me relative to this discussion;

Open Source Management: Take the Open Source Maturity Quiz

Posted by Kim Weins on March 16th, 2012 in Governance, Legal & Compliance, Open Source Trends, Scanning & Provisioning, Support, The Cloud

Open source management is increasingly becoming an important point of discussion as today’s companies are using open source software more widely in their IT infrastructure. So much so that Gartner expects open source to make up 30% of enterprise IT portfolios in 2012.

Open source software can provide both cost and innovation benefits, but in order to user OSS successfully, companies must have an open source management capability. OpenLogic defines four stages of Open Source Maturity that measure your company’s open source management capability.

The four stages are: Prevent, Manage, Promote and Transform:

Establish an Open Source Governance Process to Improve Open Source Support

Posted by Greg Bell on March 14th, 2012 in Governance, Support

I’ve been blogging a lot lately about the benefits of open source governance – as well as suggesting ways to get started on your open source policy and create an open source governance training program – but one thing I haven’t yet talked about is the relationship between open source support and governance. In many respects, open source governance and support are two sides of the same coin, but interestingly many of the organizations we speak to about open source support haven’t yet established formal governance processes.

In this post I’ll make the case that a formal process for open source governance can greatly improve the efficacy of your open source support procedures, and likely even save you money in the long run.