Open Source Alternatives
Written by Christian Gravelle
To buy, or not to buy?
To buy or not to buy, is that really the question? Or Maybe, "How much are you willing to buy?" would be more appropriate. Given today's IT "penny pinching", businesses are looking towards increasingly popular open source projects to help reduce IT costs. While open source software (OSS) is growing in popularity, realistically, customers are not abandoning commercial software altogether, but are trying to find a balance between the two.
Many individuals are familiar with the term open source, thanks to the ongoing success of both the Linux Operating System and the Apache Web Server. The Apache Web Server, for example, is used to run 66.75 percent of active web sites around the world, compared to about 25 percent currently running Microsoft's IIS (Netcraft LLC - February 2003).
Open source is becoming more prevalent and is being adopted at a greater rate. There are many reasons cited for companies, government institutions, and academia to adopting open source software. There are arguments against, and there are arguments for open source implementations in the enterprise. The purpose of this article is not to provide arguments to support either side, but rather to provide an introduction to the plethora of open source projects available to support real business, both on the desktop and the server while also considering new and emerging technologies.
| NOTE: While not all open source software is free, it generally does not require ongoing license fees and royalties, and overall will generally cost less than commercial products. Also, while software licensing costs are reduced through open source software, it does not reduce the costs associated with adequate planning and project management. |
Open Source on the Desktop
As one of the most notable open source projects, Linux has had trouble finding its way onto the average users desktop as an operating system. In the opinion of some, Linux has not yet reached the point of user friendliness that would allow it to replace the likes of Microsoft Windows on the desktop. This however, is currently changing (see aside below). Regardless of this fact, customers are not limited in their ability to utilize open source products on the Windows desktop.
| Saying that Linux has not yet reached the point where it can replace Microsoft Windows will inevitably ruffle feathers. As already stated however, this will change. There have been many efforts to provide an easy to use graphical user interface (such as KDE and GNOME) for Linux or related distributions such as the former Corel Linux or the current Lindows (www.lindows.com) and Lycoris (www.lycoris.com). Similarly, 2003 saw the first Desktop Linux Summit (www.desktoplinuxsummit.org), a conference devoted to Linux on the Desktop, held in San Diego CA on February 20th and 21st. If MacOS X is any indication of what the future holds for graphical users interfaces built on a Linux style core, the future certainly looks friendly. |
In business, some of the most popular commercial applications include the traditional Microsoft Office applications for word processing, spreadsheet creation, visual presentations, etc. Similarly, Corel's WordPerfect Office is increasing in popularity due to its significantly lower price compared to equivalent Microsoft packages. Still, given the prices of these commercial applications, there are many increasingly popular open source projects intended to replace such applications. The following is a list of some notably popular OSS office suites or applications.
- Probably one of the most popular free office suites available, OpenOffice (www.openoffice.org) runs on the Windows, Linux, MacOS, and Solaris platforms. Once known as StarOffice, OpenOffice is now the free, open source version of StarOffice which is still available inexpensively from Sun Microsystems. This suite includes Writer for word processing, Calc for spreadsheets, Impress for multimedia presentation creation, and Draw, a drawing application. Due to third party licensing, those who opt for the commercial version of StarOffice will find the addition of Adabas P, a database application (not unlike Microsoft Access), L&H International Correct Spell Electronic Thesaurus, the ability to save to PDF, additional fonts, clipart, templates, file filters, and more
- Specifically targeting Microsoft Word is AbiWord, a cross platform word processor which is able to read and write most documents in Word's *.doc file format. While it does not provide a feature for feature comparable product, it averages only 5MB to download, provides a similar look and feel to Word, and runs on Windows, MacOS, Linux, Solaris (and other UNIX variants like HP-UX, IBM AIX, etc), QNX, and BeOS platforms.
- For those businesses or individuals who may have already, or are considering braving the installation of Linux as their desktop platform, both GNOME and KDE also offer integrated office suites as Microsoft Office alternatives. Both GNOME and KDE started as projects to provide Linux with a graphical user interface (GUI) similar to Microsoft Windows or the MacOS, and have expanded to incorporate common office suite applications. While GNOME may currently boast more applications than KDE, GNOME Office incorporates popular third party open source applications - such as AbiWord - rather than creating its own, as does KDE.
| GNOME Office (www.gnome.org/gnome-office) |
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| KOffice (www.koffice.org) |
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Admittedly, these alternatives may not be an equal match to the feature functionality provided by commercial applications such as Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel, however they do not come at the same cost either. That being said, eighty percent of Microsoft Office users generally do not use eighty percent of the feature functionality available in Office applications. In short, any alternative must be evaluated to ensure the required capabilities are available.
Open Source on the Server
While desktop computing is undoubtedly a big part of business, there are many other applications that play key roles here as well. Generally, these are targeted more towards the technical users and incorporate items such as database systems, application servers, messaging, and workflow. Even more so than open source on the desktop, open source on the server is an extremely large area and one that continues to grow in interest globally.
Starting from the basics, it is highly unlikely that any company would be without a database of some sort. Even as simple as a contact database in Outlook or Microsoft Access, databases of all sizes contain valuable information used day to day. While it is unlikely that larger enterprises requiring complex functionality - such as high availability clustering through shared-disk and shared nothing architectures, data partitioning, external file storage, and workload management - will consider switching to open source databases, it may be a viable option for the SME. Some popular OSS database projects include mySQL (www.mysql.org) and postgreSQL (www.postgresql.org).
Similarly, application servers are increasingly becoming a necessity for business. Originally used for the dynamic creation of Internet web pages, application servers have evolved as part of the core infrastructure for today's connected applications. Without getting into the many languages that can be utilized to create online applications, application servers come in many different forms from those included with the Microsoft Windows Server OS or add-ons to Web Servers, to stand alone products providing advanced feature functionality. Some examples of open source application servers include PHP (www.php.net), Tomcat (jakarta.apache.org/tomcat), JBoss (www.jboss.org), JOnAS (www.evidian.com/jonas), and Enhydra (www.enhydra.org).
A few other examples of open source projects that support today's businesses might include:
- OpenLDAP (www.openldap.org) is an open source implementation of the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP). LDAP is based largely on the Directory Access Protocol (DAP), which was designed for communication between directory servers and clients compliant to the X.500 standard. LDAP is a simpler alternative offering similar functionality that is more suitable to the Internet.
- Nagios (www.nagios.org), an application that provides network monitoring and information about system or resource status across an entire network. It can also be configured to send alerts and perform other actions when problems are detected.
- Amanda (www.amanda.org), which stands for Advanced Maryland Automated Network Disk Archiver, was developed to provide a network-based enterprise backup utility including features previously available only in expensive commercial packages. Amanda is not the equal of the best commercial backup software, but it can be useful for a variety of computing environments.
- Octopus (octopus.enhydra.org), a Java-based Extraction, Transformation, and Loading (ETL) tool, connects to any JDBC data source to perform a transformation defined through an XML file.
- JaWE (jawe.enhydra.org), a graphical Java workflow process editor that supports the WfMC specifications.
- JORAM (www.objectweb.org/joram), incorporates a Java implementation of the Java Message Service (JMS) providing Message Oriented Middleware (MOM) supporting point to point and publish-subscribe messaging models.
- Anteil's CRM software (www.anteil.com) provides a modular architecture that allows customization of feature functionality to include capabilities such as contact management, sales opportunity management, campaign management, event management, sales forecasting, sales force automation, and more.
- osCommerce (www.oscommerce.org), an out of the box e-commerce package that supports many of the capabilities found in commercial packages such as user accounts, shopping carts, catalogs, email notifications, order histories, best sellers list, "what other customers have purchased" (related to current product), payment and shipping modules, tax zones and rates, and language localization.
Today, businesses have an abundant number of choices when it comes to utilizing open source software to support the core infrastructure. While the above list is short and only provides a couple of examples, it does illustrate the reach of some of the open source alternatives available on the market today. Respectively, customers should investigate these alternatives to commercial applications as, in many cases, it is likely that an open source alternative exists.
Regarding Usability and Polish
A regular concern for those initially considering open source alternatives is its perceived complexity versus, for example, the more familiar graphical user interface of Microsoft's Windows. Given the vast number of open source projects under development, there are inevitably a number that are unpolished or difficult to implement. This is no different than commercial software that is under development. In the commercial case however, only developers and testers see these unpolished versions. There are many cases where open source software is polished and user friendly. For example, phpAdsNew (www.phpadsnew.com) is an open source, feature rich ad server that provides a very polished and professional interface for installation and administration.
Similarly, many small businesses looking for an alternative to Microsoft Windows Server software can find numerous Linux distributions built for ease of use and installation. For example, the SME Server (www.e-smith.org) distribution installs in just 15 minutes, provides hard drive mirroring for fail over, firewall and virtual private networking (VPN) capabilities for security, printer and file sharing for client systems including Linux, Microsoft Windows and the Mac, all through an easy to use web based interface for administration.
For groupware functionality similar to Microsoft Exchange, companies could add IBM's Lotus Domino (commercial software). Utilizing either Lotus Notes or Microsoft Outlook (requires the free Microsoft Outlook Connector) on the client provides access to your e-mail, calendar, address book, and task lists from the Domino Server. This is a perfect example of combining open source with commercial applications to reduce license costs.
Inevitably, no matter the platform and applications chosen for a business implementation, there is a learning curve with respect to education, user acceptance and usability. Similarly, there is no argument that a well designed and polished graphical user interface help to reduce this learning curve and increase user adoption. While it is true that in the past, open source was tailored for the technical user, today's open source solutions are increasingly user friendly, with tomorrows applications looking even more so.
Emerging technologies
Open source is continually gaining momentum as an alternative to today's well-established commercial applications. While there are end user open source applications available today, many open source solutions are for infrastructure support, or are frameworks for building new applications. In fact, many of these frameworks have resulted from developers' dissatisfaction with what is commercially available, where they are in turn building their own solution for use in a larger project. Two increasingly popular and perfect examples of this are technologies coming into fruition today, wireless connectivity and Web Services.
The marketplace for wireless and pervasive computing devices has exploded over the past few years with new offerings becoming increasingly inexpensive. Enterprises are utilizing these devices to connect remote employees to the same information traditionally available through client PCs and terminals. Unlike client PCs however, pervasive computing devices are significantly limited in screen size, computing power, and bandwidth capabilities. Many developers have simply tried squeezing existing applications to allow them to be pushed down to these devices. For example, many have attempted to utilize the Java 2 Micro Edition (J2ME) to recompile Java applications written for the Java 2 Standard and Enterprise Editions (J2SE and J2EE respectively) to meet the requirements of these devices.
While there is no doubt that this technique may be working, developers for the Enhydra application server have started a new initiative. Their intention is to build, from the ground up, an embeddable micro application server specifically for these devices. Rather than the simple relaying of HTTP messages, this micro application server would allow wireless pervasive computing devices to interact with enterprise servers through the Java Messaging Service (JMS) or even utilize Web Services.
Unfortunately, it is beyond the scope of this article to get into the details of Web Services. In short, Web Services provides a conceptual architecture or framework for accessing distributed applications across the Internet. For a brief introduction and history with regards to web services, please see the article "Web Services: Are IBM and Microsoft friends or foes?" Suffice to say, that similar to industry giants building platforms for the creation of Web Services, there are numerous open source projects dedicated to the same, incorporating popular programming languages such as SOAP::Lite for PERL (www.soaplite.com), NuSOAP for PHP (dietrich.ganx4.com/nusoap), and multiple Java implementations. In fact, there is even a project, called mono (www.go-mono.com), underway to provide an open source implementation of the Microsoft .NET Development Platform on Linux, including the C# language.
In the past, open source was once known for being well behind commercial software development. Recently however, this gap has closed significantly, and the future of open source applications promise to be more competitive. Today, open source can provide a number of the necessary tools required to run a business both on the desktop and within the core infrastructure. Depending on the size of the business, the technical capabilities of the IT team, or the size of the budget, open source has advantages and disadvantages that must be weighed accordingly.
Obviously, there are a vast number of open source projects available to choose from. The most successful of these are those that are horizontally targeted to the widest possible audience. In some cases where highly specialized software is required, there may not be an open source alternative. Given this, open source will not replace commercial software in its entirety, but given today's budget conscience companies, it may fill a larger shoe than previously thought.
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