Virtusa, an IT services company founded in 1996, was using proprietary version control and collaboration systems to develop software for its clients until Sri Lankan founder Kris Canekeratne decided that a custom solution built on open source components was a better fit for internal use. As a result, the company ended up saving millions of dollars on licensing fees and acquisition costs. (more…)
August 8, 2008
June 21, 2008
May 6, 2008
Consultant hopes open source apps will “snap together” someday
DPCI, a technology consulting firm based in New York City, specializes in providing custom content management solutions. DPCI uses open source software and recommends it to clients who need powerful, flexible content management solutions, but face budget challenges in a belt-tightening economy. President and founder Joe Bachana says he discovered the merits of building a business on open source first through personal experience. (more…)
May 2, 2008
Enterprise lessons from open source success
I wrote a special report for SDTimes on open source development methodologies. They’ve published it as a special report, both at the Web site and in their print edition. (PDF)
March 7, 2008
Red Hat High campers are bridging the digital divide
One of the things Red Hat CEO Matthew Szulik loses sleep over is the digital divide, especially when it comes to children. He wanted to do something about the disparity in the availability of computing resources and skills between social classes, so he set aside corporate funds to create Red Hat High, a week-long technology summer camp for eighth- and ninth-grade students.
March 4, 2008
For Terracotta, a year of open source has been good for business
Terracotta makes a Java clustering solution that it calls “drop-in” technology. Terracotta is unique, says Amit Pandey, chief executive officer, because it makes a way to offload temporary but important information that has traditionally been stored in expensive databases. In an effort to increase interest in the product, about a year ago Terracotta decided to open its source code and start giving the product away. According to Pandey, since Terracotta’s entrance into the community, “we’ve seen only goodness.”
February 27, 2008
Rouse’s ousts SCO for OSS
At Rouse’s Supermarkets in Louisiana, it was just another July day in 2004. Customers placed their summer grocery selections on the conveyor belts; cashiers scanned them and collected the amount due using their touch-screen terminals, just like always. But underneath the hustle and bustle at the checkout lanes, a silent revolution had taken place. Even though their PC-based cash registers seemed the same, the operating system that all the technology rested on had changed from SCO Unixware to Linux. (more…)
February 11, 2008
Financial group trusts Linux platform to protect customers assets
Western & Southern Financial Group provides insurance and investment advice for businesses and consumers. The conservative nature of the business means that Western & Southern needed the most secure and reliable infrastructure available. After years of running the Sybase database on Sun’s Solaris servers, IT Systems Manager Paul Jackson recognized the need to get the platform “up to speed.” When he checked on the cost to replace the proprietary hardware and operating system the company had relied on for so long, it was so expensive that he began looking for another solution. (more…)
January 12, 2008
November 12, 2007
Open source entrepreneur turns his hobby into an Inc. 500 enterprise
iFAX, a commercial company that is built on open source fax server software HylaFAX, was recently included in Inc. Magazine’s 2007 list of the top 500 fastest growing companies in the United States. iFAX founder Darren Nickerson says one of the keys to iFAX’s success has been its commitment to the open source community behind HylaFAX. “Our success is tied to the openness of the software.” (more…)
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