White Paper

Beyond Open Source Customizations

– “Platforming” Open Source

Shubham Nagar

Chief Executive Officer

InfoAxon Technologies Ltd.

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www.infoaxon.com

Beyond Open Source customizations – “Platforming”

Open Source

So you have downloaded the most famous open source software community version and here you are all excited with it. The

hype is built and vendors that can help support are searched frantically. If you have a brilliant IT team and hopefully you have

someone championing this within your business. However what are your chances of success? What will this evangelism lead to?

Businesses do not react to technology trends as individuals do. Every business therefore looking to implement open source will want an assurance, coverage of risks and potentially not compromise with any lack of functionality provided by the open source

software.

How then the open source innovation can be ushered in within an enterprise? Is it worth attention?

The basic premise of this article is whether for organizations adopting open source customizing the open source software is enough or whether there is a need to look beyond and do simple things and appreciate simple process and solution approaches

that are part of any IT solution. For success to be achieved with open source one has to go beyond the realms of being able to play with the source code and ensure that the overall solution has been put in place.

We now detail further what it means to go beyond Open Source customization.

Open Source Customization – The simple story

The typical story of open source within an enterprise follows many times this flow:

You download the software or more than one open source solutions.

You open them up and install and configure. You get excited and run down to your IT manager suggesting what a great alternative it can become.

You get some small budget sanctioned to implement the project. You look for the easiest target that will subject to your nice ideas around open source project.

The scape (or scope) goat is ready and you implement the project and show case this after prodding through community

and finding your answers and eventually getting some sort of the system up there.

Now the trouble begins:

Users use it and want more; where are the features that the world is talking about now?

You want to give more so you hunt for more. There is either an option of developing it all yourself or finding some new smart plugins

You end up with performance problems or scaling issues and look for a consultant You then get some good minds together and ensure that solve the problem for now; But it

reappears in a different form and you customize further

Ultimately you have your own fork, your own patch work of open source code which only you will touch and not even the open source vendor that provided the software in the first

place through the community. You quit your job and then someone either takes it over or the entire implementation

stagnates

The system is never fully adopted within your business and ultimately fails

Support vendor for open source software can give better interaction and understanding but will your software become institutionalized like any good piece of software does. How best then to depend on open source for your organization.

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Platforms Vs Applications

Open source has “commoditized” the applications market. One after the other we find

several open source alternatives going stronger and stronger. However this trend

appears something refreshingly new the fact remains that most software has been built as applications till date and its simply getting “freer” and “open” to develop. We

are seeing a mega trend towards commoditization of standard applications.

Amidst this the software industry is growing at an amazing speed and churning out

software products or SaaS enabled services one after the other. Moreover the value of IT is shifting increasingly towards services and solutions instead of the core

product technology often locked with the product itself.

Some areas where this strategy has shown particular use are:

Content Management

Collaborative document management with integrated web front end portals

Social Network based Corporate Intranets that host multiple user applications Vertical SaaS (Software as a service) solutions

Business Intelligence and Dashboards E-Commerce platforms

The good news is that Open source can be used to build the right platforms as the basis to integrate other open source applications.

Therefore here is the healthy balance. Platforms can be built using open source and integrating them well and for platforms to

succeed innovative applications that are either already open source or integrate with other open source can lead to a very

interesting model indeed.

One of the ways this has started to happen is by developing Vertical market or organization specific platforms using open source by integrating as a matter of practice. “Platforming” is such a practice.

It is also becoming clearer

that organizations need to

think of their IT strategy as

“Platforms” since

applications and products

come and go but having a

“Platform” at the centre of

business operations within a

particular domain will help

faster development of

services

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What is “Platforming”?

“Platforming” Open source is akin to creation of an open source eco system within a business

domain leading to a launch pad for new services exposed to customers, employees, or associates.

With Platforming of open source it is possible to implement open source more aligned to the

business goals instead of driven as a technology project. Using the right system integrator

partner that understands Platforming it is possible to bring together open source components in such a way that innovative software as a service models are possible within the enterprises.

In particular service providers (for e.g. SaaS service providers, Cloud service providers) benefit greatly from this approach.

With Platforming it is possible to standardize interface and boundaries, use less resource and have testable architectures that can be used to develop innovative domain specific solutions.

Power of coming together – “Platforming” Open Source

Open source choices have to “come together” in such a way that it can take the shape of a

lasting IT Platform within your business and even when the first phase of adoption is over

(mainly ruled by hype) it actually sticks and is used by all.

This is not easy but increasingly to implement open source is the right way.

Typically if you want to use open source at an IT strategy level you would find that open

source itself requires integration with other open source software. Just to set the context here

that we are talking of open source implementations that are up the stack and not really at the operating system or database level. We are talking about applications here since most

business opportunities that exist today are up the stack or with open source within a cloud.

Not many realize that

amazing number of popular

brands such as Facebook,

Twitter and several others

have been built brick by

brick in this manner. They

don‟t tell you but this is

exactly what they have

done with superb piece of

engineering thrown behind

it.

Carefully chosen best-of-breed open source components based on many different criteria: maturity, readiness for production, features, extensibility, quality, adoption and the strength of their communities can help not only pick up the right ingredients but also bring them together.

About InfoAxon Technologies

InfoAxon is a leading provider of enterprise services and business

solutions powered by open source. We design, architect and support

complete “Enterprise Solution Platforms” using Open Standards, Web 2.0

next generation technologies and Open Source Frameworks providing

end-to-end solutions to business problems.

India‟s First Global Open Source Integration Company

We are India's First Global Open Source Integration Company providing business solutions in areas of Content & Knowledge Management,

Web2.0 Collaboration and Business Intelligence powered by our

unique open source „Platforming‟ expertise.

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