Head Resist

The open source symposium was held at Taj Residency, Bangalore on 17th and 18th October, 2006. The event was conducted by Red Hat, sponsored by AMD and the research data was based on IDC’s research and surveys. The speakers talked about the trends in the industry, the business and revenue model of Red Hat, how open source can be applied to architecture, software, middleware and hardware.

Right now the open source developer participation from APAC region and India in specific is miniscule. They spread some awareness about Red Hat open source platform and threw some light on how to participate in the open source community and how we all can benefit from this model.

According to IDC’s recent research, enterprise adoption of open source has grown manifold; companies worldwide are increasing investment in open source technologies. Today enterprises have started benefiting from the quality, license cost savings and flexibility of open source. Beyond profit margin of open source adoption, there was also discussion about backing open standards, contributions for open source community.

Some of the interesting topics are given in detail below:

The Power of Choice: Open Source Architecture

The long term vision of Open Source Architecture is built on open standards and interoperability. The Open Source architecture delivers a suite of standards based technologies and services, allowing open source and traditional software applications to be co-existed and can be deployed on reliable, secure, scalable and highly performing platforms. To the enterprise, it is the power to assemble and dissemble the architecture, software, middleware, hardware and applications that fulfill the goals of the business.

Open Source Software (OSS):

With OSS, the code is protected by a special license GNU General Public License (GPL) that ensures everyone has access to code. That means no one company can fully own it. You can see the code, change it and learn from it. Bugs are more quickly found and fixed. And when customers don’t like how one vendor is serving them, they can choose another without overhauling their infrastructure. No more technology lock-in. No more monopolies.

The marriage between SOA (Service oriented architecture or software as a service) and OSS though not revolutionary because of the weight of the IT legacy, is surely evolving gradually. The CEO’s and CIO’s are not happy with the vendor lock-in and the tight integration of their architecture and the prize they pay. This problem is very well addressed by SOA and OSS.

The second day was Red Hat Developer Day; it was aimed to bring together Linux developers and users to help grow open source technologies. Red Hat provides a platform for improving development, techniques, tools and standards through the sharing of technical knowledge and expertise. These efforts are to encourage open source development in India. Red Hat is initiating the Red Hat Developer Program, a community development program in India through Red Hat 108. Red Hat 108 is a community of and for open source developers.

The other topics covered are:-

Virtualization:

Virtualization means the operating system is isolated from the hardware it’s running on. Several operating systems can run on one machine, and different workloads can be easily combined and moved. With virtualization, you can:

Move workloads from server to server.

Change hardware without retesting software

Allows isolation of failures and control access to data.

Manipulate to maximize processing power and capacity

Have a safe, secure space for testing.

Virtualization technology can help lower costs by optimizing and increasing utilization of computing systems. They declined to comment about the licensing of the operating system. They can charge per operating system (if 3 operating system instances are run on one machine, they can charge for 3 licenses) or per hardware (this is independent of how many operating system you have installed in a pc).

Red Hat’s acquisition of JBoss:

This move is strategically poised to improve the presence of Red Hat in the middleware. They wanted to deliver a full server application stack. JBoss provides a very rich set of applications, J2EE server, portal, development IDE, transaction management etc. This gives Red Hat a middleware stack that beats their competition by thousands of dollars. JBoss makes more sense here and it will become their de facto application server. They will be able to do some really tight integration and give their customers an out-of-the-box J2EE solution that should perform really well. It is still not known whether JBoss will be bundled with Red Hat as of now.

SystemTap

SystemTap, a Red Hat utility allows developers and administrators to write scripts for deep examinations of Dynamic Linux Kernel activities. Data may be filtered, extracted, and summarized quickly to enable diagnoses of complex problems.

JBoss Operations Network (JBoss ON)

JBoss ON is a console based advanced management platform for inventorying, administering, monitoring, and updating JEMS applications. Jboss ON is an agent-based platform that is deployed locally.

The most important JBoss ON Modules are:

Inventory, allows you to catalog IT assets spanning platforms (Linux, HP/UX, Solaris, Windows, AIX), servers (Apache Web Server, Apache Tomcat, JBoss AS), and services (EJB, Message Driven Beans, data sources). Assets can be added manually or auto-discovered providing enhanced visibility over your critical business applications including their versions and dependencies.

Administration provides a single location for performing key control functions such as start, stop, and re-start across the entire JEMS platform. Administration functions can be applied to a single application or across an enterprise cluster. Operations can also be scheduled for later dates, on-demand or on a recurring basis. This module also allows you to roll-back to previous versions if necessary.

Monitoring provides extensive monitoring capabilities for the JEMS platform along with supporting components such as operating systems (Windows, Linux, and UNIX), Apache Tomcat, Apache Web Server and any JEMS-based applications. The Monitoring Module continuously builds and updates a model of behavior of every measurement being collected. This allows you to define alerts relevant to the actual behavior of your infrastructure. Baselines are also utilized to identify out of band problems. This allows you to quickly identify resources within your infrastructure that require attention as well as get a historical view of what was happening at the time of the fault.

JBoss portal:

JBoss Portal has a business friendly open source license that makes it free to download, use, embed, and distribute. JBoss Portal provides a framework for centralized and secure access to applications and information, which fosters collaboration, streamlines business processes, and reduces costs. Since JBoss Portal is based on open standards, it can incorporate components into the Portal as standardized and reusable Portlets.

The symposium also included topics about Red Hat Road Map, Lowering TCO and Increasing ROI with JEMS (JBoss Enterprise Management Suite), Security and ID Management, Red Hat Cluster Suite and Red Hat Global File System.

Magento is the new improved e-commerce platform that gives a superior force to web traders to get rid of obstacles in the way of business process implementations. With downloads surpassing the magical figure of 600,000, Magento is easily the fastest growing commercially available tool for online business solutions.

We at Maven Infosoft have solid expertise in working with all leading e-commerce and portal-building platforms and have managed and implemented heavy-duty enterprise-level content management systems. We can safely assert that Magento has outshone all of them.

There remain a few uncertainties, as with any growing and emergent platform, in the design and development capabilities that Magento has to offer. The high competence level required means that it is not for all and sundry. Having said that, Magento is by far the most adaptable and compliant e-commerce program to hit the online trading market.

In many ways, Magento is not a typical open source solution. It is free to download and use. It does give you the ability to create customize themes and module extensions. It has all the potential for swell in usage and gain in popularity. However, it has a dedicated company supporting its growth. Magento is the product of Varien, an e-commerce design house that seems to benefit from Magento by offering traditional web agency services.

Magento is based on a theme based framework with individual layouts, templates and skins, which in turn has greater look and feel customize capability. Once you get the hang of it, creating stores in Magento turns into a piece of cake. Unlike shopping carts and content management systems devoid of themes, this framework elevates Magento to a different level.

The comprehensive features available reflect long years of e-commerce experience. Features such as advanced pricing rules, product image zoom, side-by-side comparison and inventory management indicate the strong relevance to marketing functions and requirements. Other features that we approve of are:

Ready to go iPhone theme

Single page checkout

Availability of real time rates from UPS, FedEx and the US Postal Service

Great analytics and reporting

One administration panel and product catalog to manage multiple websites/stores

Customer reviews

Flexible coupon rules for flexibility of campaigns

Layered and faceted navigation for filtering

Google Website Optimizer integration

URL rewrites

Newsletter management

Easy integration of third party tools using Web API

Choice of more than 50 payment gateways

Option to up sell during checkout

Self-generating site maps

Full support for digital and downloadable products

RSS feeds for customers and administrators alike

Though Magento does have simple usage rules including easy handling of the administration interface, it does require developers to have fundamental skills in PHP, MySQL, SOAP, XML, XHTML, Apache and CSS. This is indeed the case for most shopping carts or platforms, but Magento is much more application oriented. Even a standard implementation will have you accessing files and programming code that other simpler platforms do not ask for.

All said and done, Magento is an outstanding tool for online commerce and web marketing. It is no less than a boon for leading Internet retailers.

If you are looking to design and develop Magento ecommerce store for your business, Maven Infosoft is a one stop helping point for all your requirements.

Maven Infosoft is one of the initial starters who work on Magento since its first version. The expertise of Magento developers at Maven Infosoft, serves Magento customers to meet their Enterprise requirements.

Maven Infosoft provides services for enterprise Magento theme development, enterprise Magento template design, Magento extensions like Vendor module, Purchase module, accounting module and Magento payment extensions like iVeri, Paymentec, Safepay, Secpay, Secpay 3D secure, DIBS DirectPay, Cardinal Direct, Cardinal 3D secure.

As Magento is free open source application, Maven Infosoft also provides free Magento theme, free Magento templates, and free Magento extensions to help Magento grow in terms of ecommerce application.

Like Magento, Maven Infosoft is helping internet business to grow further to reach new heights.

For more information please refer http://www.offshoresoftwaredevelopmentindia.com/php-mysql-pgsql-programming/magento-customization-solutions.html

Or drop us an email at info@offshoresoftwaredevelopmentindia.com.

Address:-

Offshore Software Development India

406, Shiromani complex,

Nr Nehrunagar cross road Nehrunagar,  

Ahmedabad 380015, India.

Ph: 91-79-65457841

info@offshoresoftwaredevelopmentindia.com

Author Name: – Anand Pandya

Resource: – http://www.offshoresoftwaredevelopmentindia.com/blog/

Proprietary software  vs     Open source software

Proprietary software is computer software on which the producer has set restrictions on use, private modification, copying, or republishing. Similar terms include “closed-source software” and “non-free software”. Proprietors may enforce restrictions by technical means, such as by restricting source code access, or by legal means, such as through copyright and patents.

Open source software (OSS) began as a marketing campaign for free software. OSS can be defined as computer software for which the human-readable source code is made available under a copyright license (or arrangement such as the public domain) that meets the Open Source Definition. This permits users to use, change, and improve the software, and to redistribute it in modified or unmodified form. It is very often developed in a public, collaborative manner. Open source software is the most prominent example of open source development and often compared to user generated content. A report by Standish Group says that adoption of open source has caused a drop in revenue to the proprietary software industry by about $60 billion per year.

It may be argued that open source software has, in recent years, begun to move into the mainstream marketplace previously dominated by “shrink-wrapped” products such as Microsoft’s Windows operating system and Office productivity suite. The most often cited examples of alternative open source applications include the Linux operating system , the OpenOffice suite (formerly Sun’s Star Office, www.openoffice.org) and Mozilla’s Firefox web browser (www.mozilla.org).

The web browser market is entirely dominated by Microsoft, with its Internet Explorer accounting for between 90-95% of the most popular browsers over the last couple of years It is difficult to say what the future holds for open source software. On the one hand, the financial might and marketing scruples of the proprietary software giants, such as Microsoft, would seem to suggest that open source alternatives will remain just that ¬ an alternative to the dominant proprietary offerings. On the other hand, the increased interest in, and awareness of, open source can only bode well for its future proliferation

 

Open source has become a very internal part of several levels of IT in the recent years.Many of the companies are using open source software but when it comes to hiring an open source developers, most of them stay away from it. This might be because the companies do not really put any value to the open source applications and eventually no value is placed on the people who code the open source applications.

However, there are certain important considerations to take into account for actually hiring open source developers. Here are some of the reasons that can prove to be well rewarding by hiring the open source developers.

First of all, you can see the potential of the candidate beyond their resumes. Since the applications the candidates work upon are open, you can easily get an idea about the skills and knowledge of coding of the candidate. This will also provide you with immediate understanding of programming of your interviewee.

Secondly, the open source developers need to be on their toes all the times as they might need to mend the intentionally broken Microsoft programs. The companies like Microsoft continuously upgrade Windows and so the person really needs to be on the toes to overcome those new changes and yet perform coding in a proper way.

Thirdly, the open source developers are generally passionate about their work and therefore, hiring them would be to hire a passionate employee who is efficient and has the drive to work and go an extra mile too.

It is needless to say that the presence of the open source developer will enable you to enjoy the benefits of the open source support as well. You also get to have the support of the entire open source community by hiring one open source developer and thus, your problems can be sorted out easily.