While moving to open source software may seem to be a most cost effective solution, it may not entirely be so when you start to look at the additional cost for external support, security consulting and other cost that are associated with an open source platform but are not core to the product.

Here at the Channel Tech Center we are proponent’s of all open source software (and we even run on it), but we definitely want to let every one know, there is a lot to consider before you go open.

Open source solutions usually are more then one open source product (think plug-ins), each having different licensing, update and support models. Making things more murky, some of these add-on products have commercial license models that business must purchase.

It becomes important to understand the license your solution uses and how that can affect your business. Some license insists that you give any code that you change (to improve or change the open source code for your specific needs) back to the community. This makes it hard to keep a competitive advantage secret. While other licenses let you keep code edits to yourself.

Open source software more often then not is not production ready and needs a lot of customization for your specific needs. If you have an in house development staff, this may not be much of an issue, but if not, you better budget out for your enhancements, support, and general customizations.

If you choose to hire permanent development and support staff, hiring a developer or two (from $60k – $90k plus benefits) may be a surprise that you just didn’t count on.

Of course you could always outsource development using services such as odesk.com, where developers from all over the world bid on your work for as low as $5 an hour, but beware of time zone differences and the general premise of “you get what you pay for”. Even then, you will need to invest substantially more then is often associated with an open source solution.

So, do you think that open source software is ready for prime time as company solutions? Let us know in the comments.

Price: Begins at $5/user/month for hosted version; $1095/yr for 25 users for server-based software version
Requirements: Works on a wide variety of browsers and operating systems. We tested it on IE 7, Firefox 3 and Mac Safari 4 in October 2009.

OpenXchange Inc.
303 South Broadway
Tarrytown, New York 10591
914 332-5720

http://ox.io

What does this mean to the business user? Well lots! Many internal small to mid sized business portals in addition to many commercial websites are hosted on one of these three platforms. Now you can cut your development expenditures and increase efficiency (and tracking capabilities) by using the pre-made plug-in to connect to a local installation of OpenSSO.

Open SSO can connect to existing directories as well such as LDAP, Active Directory, and of course, Sun Directory, so you don’t have to recreate your user base in multiple data stores – which is also helpful in streamlining your support structures.

Now if you have multiple sites internally or you’re a commercial sites network, you can give your users the ease of logging in once as your surf from site to site.

Of course I have to mention that Wordpress MU has had single sign on built in for some time, but the ability to easily carry over credentials from your site to your sister or partner site could be game changing.

Have you played with OpenSSO lately? Leave me a comment with your experiences.

In what could prove to be a major opportunity for solution providers, Red Hat and Microsoft have delivered on promise to enable each other’s operating systems to function as guests on top of their respective virtual machine platforms.

For solution providers, this creates a significant opportunity in terms of driving additional levels of server consolidation for their customers. Rather than just being confined to consolidating servers that have a common operating system, solution providers can now more easily help customers consolidate both Windows and Linux server operating systems on the same multicore processor servers.

Red Hat executives say they plan to roll out a virtualization management framework later this year that will allow solution providers to enable customers to not only manage virtual machines running on top of its Linux distribution, but also any guest operating system as well. Microsoft, meanwhile, has already committed to making its own systems management framework capable of managing non-Windows environments as clients.

The agreement between Microsoft and Red Hat has significant implications for Novell. For a while Novell enjoyed a unique status in terms of being the only Linux partner that Microsoft has agreed to work with. And while the respective management frameworks offered by Microsoft and Novell are better integrated with their respective operating systems; that may not be a strong enough argument to get customer to give up their Red Hat distributions in favor of Suse Linux from Novell.

In either scenario, consolidating Windows and Linux servers on same platform not only creates a services opportunity for channel partners of both companies, it also provides a worthwhile reason to think about a server upgrade where one new server could easily replace anywhere from five to 10 existing physical servers.

When RHUB Communications entered the hotly contested Web conferencing market in 2005, research indicated that there was a need for an on-premise solution that required little or no IT support. As such, RHUB gladly took on the challenge of meeting the market’s demand by entering the industry with an on-premise “plug and play appliance”. Since the code for Web conferencing was already running as a SaaS system, and the development environment was based on Windows 2K, the natural first step was for the company to find a Windows based hardware platform for delivery.

To get things started, RHUB decided to focus on small and medium sized businesses using the indirect sales model.  Since the user environment was typically going to be a small office, the hardware platform was developed with specific characteristics in mind, like:

• An appliance that’s small in size
• A solution that makes no noise, therefore fan-less
• A solution that is on 24 x 7 and therefore uses very little power

RHUB sourced several x86 based platforms running embedded XP as the operating system for testing. The requirements quickly lead to a low power Geode or Via based system. Then, a unit was selected and a channel development effort was undertaken. Early feedback about the approach was very positive, but the early channel partners indicated a need for a lower priced, entry-level product.

RHUB’s research showed that the low power x86/Embedded XP platform would not meet the cost objective for the entry-level product. The only platforms available that could meet the cost objectives were either based on XScale or ARM processors. An ideal hardware platform was found utilizing the XScale processor. This platform met every requirement for the user with the advantage of very low power consumption (less than 5 watts). However, the hardware platforms would not support embedded XP in any fashion. The OS was far too large for the memory and flash available on the XScale platform and the added cost of the Embedded XP OS was a significant factor.

RHUB also wanted to deliver enterprise level units in a typical 1U form factor so an investigation of a Linux solution was undertaken. The development team was very pleasantly surprised to find a total Linux solution that not only enabled deployment on the XScale platform but also allowed a completely compatible code base for the 1U platform.

An Embedded Linux development effort was undertaken. The effort lasted about 4 months and involved building an absolute minimum OS environment, not just for size issues but to also insure no “backdoors” were open. RHUB wanted the on-premise appliance approach to offer users additional access security over SaaS models as one of the advantages of the approach but also wanted to make sure that the RHUB appliance could not be used for unauthorized network access.

Much of the effort was expended in just sizing the kernel. The resultant OS, including libraries ended up about 100 times smaller than the Embedded XP environment.  In addition, the cross compile effort was straight forward enabling a consistent code base.

Table 1: OS hardware requirement comparison

In addition to the size, performance and compatibility advantages of this approach, the engineers were pleased with the network support software such as DHCP and LDAP client available with Linux. The primary function of the appliance is a network device so rich networking libraries were important. Compared with the Microsoft networking libraries, the Linux networking libraries are easier to use and very stable.

The final product, called TurboMeeting, was readied in about one year from the initial development effort and the new hardware platform met every market and channel requirement. The Linux implementation was surprisingly stable and the code base between the embedded version and the 1U version was virtually unchanged (other than cross compiling).  Auto update was added to TurboMeeting about 6 months after launch. The TurboMeeting appliances have been in the field for about 2 years and have had 6 updates. All updates have been completely transparent to the customer and there were no changes required to the Linux core libraries in that time period.

More About RHUB’s TurboMeeting

RHUB adopted a “meetings accessible for all” approach by developing a web conferencing and remote access appliance called TurboMeeting that you pay for one time – and then forever you own it and control it. In addition, as one of the most comprehensive on-premise solutions in the market, TurboMeeting is the first solution to deliver four complete collaboration technologies in one appliance – allowing customers to not only do web conferencing, but to also conduct webinars, deliver remote support to clients, and to have remote access to personal PC capability – all with one box.

Moreover, RHUB’s TurboMeeting technology delivers the first “Guaranteed Attendance with No Download” Web Conferencing and Remote Access appliance in the marketplace, meaning the attendees are guaranteed access to your meetings and that no downloads of any kind are required with our view-only solution.  Unlike WebEx and GoToMeeting, NO monthly subscription fees are required with TurboMeeting – once you pay for it, you own it and control it.

Finally, with TurboMeeting, IT security is greatly enhanced since the data shared via the web conferencing solution is actually protected inside of the corporate firewall, instead of data being shared “on the outside” and unprotected across the Internet. TurboMeeting also delivers two layers of protection – both Data Transmission and Access Security, and, no additional IT Resources and/or IT maintenance cost is required for deploying this solution.

Learn more at www.rhubcom.com

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Embedded Linux Enables Low Cost Deployment for Web Conferencing Company (30)