Open source's next frontier | CNET News.com

Open source's next frontier | CNET News.com

pen-source software, increasingly popular with budget-conscious companies, is beginning to expand into a new area: The lucrative infrastructure-software market dominated by industry giants such as Microsoft.

Individual open-source database and other applications are already popular. Now two open-source projects have launched efforts to assemble "stacks" of software applications that offer an open-source equivalent to commercial software from Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, BEA Systems and others.

Last week, a company called Gluecode began selling technical support and maintenance services for a package of infrastructure tools from the Apache Foundation, which oversees and develops some of the most popular open-source software. The package includes portal and database software, and an application server.

News.context

What's new:
Open-source projects from the Apache Foundation and the ObjectWeb consortium are creating a full suite of open-source server software components, a field dominated by industry heavyweights such as IBM and Microsoft.

Bottom line:
Open-source represents a fraction of the overall infrastructure software market and products require significant integration. But some companies are stepping in to provide commercial support and challenge the incumbents, if even only on the low end.


Then ObjectWeb, a French nonprofit consortium of companies and research bodies launched six years ago, said it will release the eXo Platform. The package includes a corporate Web portal and a content management application, in addition to the connectivity, grid computing and enterprise messaging software the consortium already offers.