Here are a few Open Source Technologies to watch out for in the year 2012.

1. Hadoop

Big Data has really gone BIG this year. Hadoop and NoSQL are just about household names in the tech world.
Everyone is jumping on the big data bandwagon. Not just Web 2.0 type of companies like Facebook and Twitter, but 2012 will be the year that big data comes to the enterprise. All of this big data will drive more NoSQL in the cloud, in the enterprise and everywhere in between.

2. Andriod

Android is ranked as being the top mobile platform over the next 24 months. This open source platform based on Java and XML offers a much shorter learning curve, and this contributes to its popularity with IT professionals. iOS remains strong in the U.S. and other developed countries.

3. Alfresco, Drupal, Liferay

Open Source CMS continues to dominate the market.

2012 will see major market share being grabbed by the Open Source CMS systems such as Drupal, Alfresco, Liferay, Joomla!, DotNetNuke etc.

4. WordPress

WordPress’ meteoric rise is far from over. WordPress 3.3 just managed to release near the end of the year, and WordPress 3.4, 3.5 and 3.6 are likely to release in 2012. WordPress has tried to make it easier for developers to use the CMS with each release, and we can expect great things from it this coming year.

5. Google Chrome

Google Chrome has now surpassed Mozilla Firefox in usage and it is likely that it will keep growing. For good or bad Google is continuing to push the envelope of web applications. Native Client, which allows one to write code for web apps in native languages such as C++ is maturing and can greatly improve web app performance. Google’s Dart might also make it into the browser in some from in 2012.

6. HTML5, CSS3

A number of standards are emerging that make 2012 an interesting year for web standards. The Mouse Lock and GamePad APIs aim to improve the state of web games. As usual we will see a number of new standards make it into browsers, especially with the upcoming release of Internet Explorer 10, Firefox 10 to 18, Chrome 17 to 24.

CSS3 has added a number of new specifications; CSS3 Exclusions allow styling arbitrary shapes around which text can flow; CSS3 Regions allow text to flow between multiple isolated sections of a page; CSS3 Flexible Box make it easier to develop user interfaces; and CSS3 Paged media allows pagination for better access than scrolling on devices; and more.

7. jQuery, Node.js

If you’re a web developer it’s a given you’ve heard of jQuery. JQuery Mobile is a jQuery-based framework for developing websites that work well on mobile. The framework makes it easy to create good looking, touch-friendly websites for mobiles without even needing to touch JavaScript or CSS. It can automatically enhance your HTML site if you give it a few hints. jQuery Mobile had its first major 1.0 release just recently and 2012 should see more releases now that the basic stuff is done. Combined with Apache Callback above, it is a great tool for making simple web applications.

JavaScript being the only supported client-side web programming language has gained considerable popularity, such that not it is possible to write not only client side web applications, but using Node.js it can also be used for the server-side logic. Node.js allows the server-side of web applications / sites to be written in JavaScript, and runs on Google’s V8 JavaScript engine with added libraries to extend its functionality. With Microsoft’s support behind it, Node.js is now also available on Windows and even on Windows Azure, and more exciting developments are likely to lie in 2012.

8. OpenStack

While Amazon Web Services get increasingly popular, they are still a closed solution and not suitable if you want to run your own personal cloud. That is where OpenStack, an open alternative to Amazon, steps in. OpenStack lets you create your own cloud infrastructure and manage it like you would Amazon’s. You can also offer you cloud infrastructure to others, like Rackspace does. Currently it offers compute, storage and imaging solutions.

9. Ubuntu, Linux Mint

Ubuntu 12.04 will be an important release for a number of reasons. First, it’s the first long term release since their new desktop environment Unity, so significant work will go into it to stabilize and refine it. Secondly, it will be the first long term desktop release from Canonical to get a 5-year support period, up from 3 years. Canonical is also working on mobile / tablet versions of the OS, which should also see some activity in 2012.
Linux Mint 12 has already shown that it’s possible to have a good compromise between the old Gnome 2 and the new Gnome 3 user experience. Now they have gone their own way with their own replacement for Gnome Shell. As Gnome 3 matures and becomes more capable, it will be interesting to see the direction Mint takes. It has already attracted a large number of Ubuntu users who were unhappy with the new Ubuntu UI.

10. Apache Flex

Flex is Adobe’s solution to developing applications for the web, desktop and mobile using a declarative UI development language (MXML) and scripting language ActionScript 3. The content then runs in Flash or AIR. Adobe recently decided to shift development model from being driven by Adobe to one developed by the community under Apache.

2012 should be an interesting year for Flex, not only because it will be its first year outside Adobe, but also because Adobe plans to overhaul the compiler, and it is researching on making it possible to convert ActionScript code to JavaScript for making HTML projects.

Jenkins is used to build, configure, test, validate, deploy and promote most of our solutions and frameworks in InfoAxon development environment.

Many plugins has been used (thanks to Jenkins community to provide such huge library of plugins). Some important plugins used are -

1. Build Promotion plugin (http://wiki.jenkins-ci.org/display/JENKINS/Promoted+Builds+Plugin) – for deploying and promoting builds to QA, UAT, LIVE server automatically.
2. JIRA plugin (http://wiki.jenkins-ci.org/display/JENKINS/JIRA+Plugin) – for automatically updating JIRA tickets whenever a build has been made.
3. NAnt plugin (http://wiki.hudson-ci.org/display/HUDSON/NAnt+Plugin) – in order to compile and use Microsoft .NET applications as well.
4. Visual Sourcesafe plugin (http://wiki.hudson-ci.org/display/HUDSON/Visual+SourceSafe+Plugin) – to retrieve code base from VSS database.
5. SSH Publisher plugin (http://wiki.jenkins-ci.org/display/JENKINS/Publish+Over+SSH+Plugin) – to publish and deploy build artifacts on another server over SSH. Heavily used for Promotion purpose.
6. Violations Plugin (https://wiki.jenkins-ci.org/display/JENKINS/Violations) – to report and display all code level rule violations.

The Project Dashboard shows (snapshot below) all information related to the particular job.

The Build Dashboard shows (snapshot below) information relevant for that particular build. You can see all the JIRA tickets are automatically linked here.

Build Promotion screen helps you to promote/deploy any build to any server such as Development server, QA server, UAT server or LIVE server.

Automatic checking of Best Practices Adherence, Coding mistakes, Potential Bugs etc are done by PMD, Checkstyle, Findbugs etc. All these tools are integrated in the project Ant build script (code segment below) – thus each time build is executed, these checkings are performed automatically, and alerts us in case of any issues.

<target name="sonar">
<property name="sonar.sources" value="............." />
<property name="sonar.projectName" value=".........." />
<sonar:sonar key=".........." version="............" xmlns:sonar="antlib:org.sonar.ant" />
</target>

<target name="checkstyle">
<cs:checkstyle config="checkstyle.xml" failureProperty="checkstyle.failure" failOnViolation="false" xmlns:cs="antlib:com.puppycrawl.tools.checkstyle">
<formatter type="xml" tofile="checkstyle_report.xml"/>
<fileset dir="..........." includes="**/*.java"/>
</cs:checkstyle>
</target>

<target name="findbugs">
<findbugs home="${findbugs.home}" output="xml" outputFile="report.xml" jvmargs="${jvmargs}">
<sourcePath path="..........." />
<class location="............." />
</findbugs>
</target>

The Violation screen displays the list of code rules violations in the current build.

We use Sonar to analyze the quality of the full source code.

Thus the full Continuous Integration eco-system in InfoAxon development environment provides us full flexibility and automatic execution on the compiling, debugging, testing, code validations, deployment, promotion tasks.

InfoAxon has been adopted a few more activities in the Development and Maintenance of an Open Source Framework or an Open Source integrated stack which are probably different from a standard bespoke project.

Continuous Integration has been one of the major component in the development practice within InfoAxon. And as part of the Continuous Integration process we expect to perform a lot more tasks, such as -

• Automatic or Scheduled build trigger
• Getting the right or latest source code from code repository
• Validate the code against configured rule set
• Compile and build the code
• Build the target database
• Run automated Unit Test scripts
• Generate Documentations
• Deploy the binaries and other files
• Update Jira Tickets
• Promote the build to QA server, UAT server, Staging server etc – as and when required
• Tag the build in source control repository
• Archive and Store Build Artifacts
• Notification of build activity
• etc

Technologies Involved

For achieving the above activities in a collaborative and automated way, we have chosen to use a number of open source tools, technologies and frameworks.

• Jenkins – as the Continuous Integration Server
• Sonar, PMD, FxCop – for Code validation, quality and profiling
• Ant / NAnt – for build scripts
• JUnit, NUnit, Selenium, TestLink – for Unit, Regression Testing, Test Cases
• Jira – as the Ticket Management system
• JavaDoc, NDoc – for the Code Documentations

As maintenance of Open Source products and frameworks grew more complex, our CI environment has also became one big eco-system with Cruise Control being replaced with Jenkins.

Final installment of this series will demonstrate how we are using these technologies together in our CI ecosystem.

As per Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous_integration), the recommended practices in a CI environment are -

1. Maintain a centralized Code Repository
2. Automate the Build – no manual interventions
3. Make the build self-testing
4. Everyone commits to the baseline everyday
5. Every commit to the baseline should be built
6. Keep the build fast and quick
7. Test in a clone of the Production environment
8. Make it easy to get the latest deliverables
9. Everyone can see the results of the latest build

The pros and cons of having a CI server is well known and published. As Wikipedia says “Many teams using CI report that the advantages of CI well outweigh the disadvantages“.

There are several popular CI softwares have mushroomed looking at the demand, adaptation and usage of CI processes in software organizations. Wide spreading of Open Source softwares has made this demand even more increasing.

Some of the popular CI server softwares are (not in any particular order, choosen randomly):

1. Apache Continuum
2. Bamboo
3. Cruise Control, Cruise Control.NET
4. Hudson / Jenkins
5. Team Foundation Server
6. etc

Each of these systems has their own advantages and disadvantages (hell, is it new? It is same as any other software system). An Organization must choose the one that suits the scenario most.

Currently we are using Cruise Control server for Continuous Integration purposes. However, we are in process of replacing this with a more powerful, robust and flexible CI system.

Part-2 of this series will spell out our ever increasing demand for a CI system, analysis of our expectations, goals, implementation models etc.

Google definitely is going into the market big time, and with huge investments and long term planning.

First, they might have missed the first bus of Social Media to Facebook (and Twitter etc), but Google+ (https://plus.google.com/) is a serious threat to Facebook. By July 24, it had already touched 25M worldwide active users – the rate is much higher than Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn. Mr Mark Zuckerberg is feeling the heat.

Second, they made Andriod almost the one-stop shop for Smartphone OS, second to only iOS, which is not Open Source. Windows, RIM and Symbian seems to be lagging far behind.
Now, they can build an integrated and super powerful device with Andriod and Motorola Hardware. Another driver of purchasing Motorola is to increase its patent portfolio and resolving the Patent woes on Andriod ecosystem. Motorola holds 17,000 issued patents worldwide and has another 7,500 patents in progress. Google and Andriod will use these to compete with Apple, Microsoft, Nokia, Samsung and others.

This move can also give Google TV a fighting chance since Motorola is one of the biggest players in the set-top box space.

It will be quite interesting to see which Andriod version is shipped as Open Source and available for players like Samsung, HTC, Dell, Sony Ericsson and other Andriod vendors. We should not be surprised if the market sees launch of a new smartphone from Google with a special version on Andriod bundled and packaged with Motorola hardware – which looks more like the latest iPhone!!!

Another affect on the market is, the shares of Nokia and RIM has jumped up all of a sudden, everyone expecting same acquisition move by companies like Microsoft.

Chapter 1, Getting Started
Chapter introducing alfresco with brief demonstration of the alfresco Explorer application. Get alfresco downloaded and installed in your machine, and finally be acquainted with the default distribution and architecture of alfresco.

Chapter 2, Creating and Organizing Contents
Understand how to use alfresco as the Content Management System, how to upload or create contents, how to apply tagging or categorization of content, understand content metadata, use the document versioning capability of alfresco.

Chapter 3, Securing and Searching Contents
Be familiar with another important aspect of the Content Management System – Security. Understand how to secure your contents and folders. How to create users and user groups – and assign permissions for who can do what. You will also know about the search capabilities offered by alfresco, how to search contents and how search works in alfresco.

Chapter 4, Rules – the Smart Spaces
Learn how to make your alfresco repository dynamic, how to implement your business requirements that works automatically in the repository. You will understand how to create and apply rules in the repository; you will also be familiar with different actions that can be performed via a rule.

Chapter 5, Administering Alfresco
Chapter with recipes for administering alfresco, demonstrating how to manage users, user groups, create taxonomies, manage content categories. You will also be aware of how to use the alfresco Node Browser to view and search contents stored in the repository. You will also know how to manage your alfresco explore r dashboard.

Chapter 6, Customizing Alfresco Web Client
Alfresco offers customization of the Web Client application via a number of XML configuration files. This chapter elaborates various recipes for changing the view and appearance of the web client, customizing the application as per your requirements etc.

Chapter 7, Alfresco Content Model
Designing and modelling the content properties and architecture is one of the important requirements in a Content Management System. Alfresco offers pretty much dynamic capabilities for designing the content models. Using these recipes you will be able to understand the core architecture of alfresco content models, create your own custom content models, use your custom models in the alfresco explorer application.

Chapter 8, Alfresco JavaScript API
Alfresco offers the repository functionalities in form of JavaScript APIs. In this chapter you will understand the API structure and available features offered. Several example recipes would help you implement various functionalities. You will also learn how to write and execute scripts, how to debug scripts written using the APIs.

Chapter 9, Freemarker Templates
Freemarker Template is the presentation layer technology used in alfresco applications. The recipes of this chapter would help you understand the technologies and model behind the Freemarker templates in alfresco. Several template examples are included for commonly used functions such as displaying folder contents, showing workflow tasks, showing contents recursively, displaying content properties and details etc.

Chapter 10, Web Scripts
Alfresco Web Scripts provide RESTful APIs of the repository services and functions. The chapter elaborates all related concepts, knowledge and how-to recipes that would help you writing, deploying, debugging, using web scripts. You will also know the usage of default web scripts library that come with alfresco. Several sample web scripts are included, for example sending emails using templates, searching and displaying documents etc.

Chapter 11, Working with Workflows
Workflow implementation is one of the major requirements in a Content Management System in a business. This chapter would help you understand alfresco business process engine in detail. You will understand how the workflows are implemented in alfresco repository along with various components of the workflow engine. Several detailed examples and recipes are included to guide you create custom workflows, custom task models, specific resource bundles, customizing the web client to render the custom tasks and workflows properly. You will also be able to use the alfresco workflow console interface which is useful for debugging the task execution within the BPM engine.

Chapter 12, Integrating with MS Outlook and MS Office
Alfresco can be used from several other applications and interfaces. Being a content management system it is quite important to have the alfresco repository accessibility from some popular content authoring applications such as Microsoft Office. This chapter helps you integrate the alfresco repository with MS Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Recipes are also included for communicating with repository directly from any standard email client application such as MS Outlook.

Chapter 13, Configuring Alfresco E-mail and File Servers
The alfresco repository can act has file servers as well and you can expose the repository using several other standard protocols such as FTP, CIFS, WebDAV etc. These recipes are step-by-step guide to configure these protocols and using the content repository from different systems. From this chapter you will also be able to use alfresco as email server, and emails sent to some specific address will be landed directly into the repository.

Chapter 14, Building Alfresco
Until now you have used Alfresco as the binary bundle provided and downloaded. Now you can compile and build alfresco source code also. Recipes in this chapter will guide you to get the source from alfresco source code repository, compile and build the source code. You can modify Alfresco source code as your will; of course as per Alfresco license, you should contribute your changes back to alfresco community.

The book is a collection of knowledge articles and recipes stating and demonstrating the most important, useful and imperative concepts and functionalities of Alfresco.

The book is designed purely for Alfresco Developers and System Integrators – from beginner to advanced level.
 
 
 
 
 
 

• If you are a software developer, interested in content management systems, want to work in alfresco or already experienced in alfresco, you need very objective set of instructions on how to perform certain tasks in Alfresco.
  Alfresco 3 Cookbook is a developer’s friend to start working on alfresco quickly, getting complete understanding, writing custom implementations and achieving the expertise very easily.
• As alfresco administrator and architect, you will know how to compile, deploy, install, configure and customize alfresco.
• If you are a system integrator, you will be able to establish alfresco as a corporate enterprise content management solution.

The book is written for software developers who needs to know more on Alfresco, write applications and extensions on alfresco, very quickly, in order to implement their own ECM system.

The book is structured as a collection of recipes for real-world problems and requirements. Each recipe includes the problem/requirement definition, step-by-step instructions to fulfill the requirement (How to do it) and a complete analysis (How it works) of the solution. Corresponding screenshots and complete code segments are also included.

Step-by-step instructions are given on how to compile, build, deploy, install and configure alfresco.

As a developer or architect you can follow the guidelines, implement the scenario by yourself, understand how it is working and finally gain expertise on mostly all aspects of alfresco development and customization.

I would like to thank PucktPub for publishing.the book.

Here are the people whose contribution has made the book a success. I sincerely thank all of them and appreciate all their help and efforts.

Reviewers

Piergiorgio Lucidi
Adit Patel
Khazret Sapenov
Snehal Shah

Acquisition Editor

Steven Wielding

Development Editor

Alina Lewis

Technical Editor

Gauri Iyer

Copy Editor

Leonard D’Silva

Project Coordinator

Shubhanjan Chatterjee

Proofreader

Mario Cecere

Indexer

Tejal Daruwale

Graphics

Nilesh.R.Mohite

Production Coordinator

Adline Swetha Jesuthas
Arvindkumar Gupta

Cover Work

Adline Swetha Jesuthas

To some the word “Platforms” and “Platforming” open source can be confusing and vague. This is more so because when one searches for open source in Google we get 1000′s of “Open Source platforms” that provide different functionality. Obviously the terms can become very confusing and vague. I had a choice to stick to a term though and try to express clearly the inner workings of an open source integration model that leads to Open Source Platforming.

We would also like to make it clear that the entire concept of “Platforms” and “Platforming” makes much more sense for an Independent Software Vendor (ISV) or SaaS providers launching new innovative services over the web. SaaS service providers are increasingly looking at delivery of their platforms built on top of open source software.  It is in this context we wish to explain Open source Platforming.

SaaS Service Providers need to think Platforms with Open Source

Traditionally many SaaS providers have attempted an IT strategy often driven around a family of products and technologies (Microsoft, SAP, oracle and others). While this works for many, for others there is a huge interest in what open source has to offer. The entire excitement of the last decade of taking open source software, playing with it and achieving a desired result through a nice little application for your project has reached another dimension. Today open source software drives programmable software platforms on which today’s services are running. This trend can easily be seen in the amazing interest and growth of the SaaS (Software as a service), PaaS (Platform as a service) and IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) models becoming common place.

It is also becoming amply clearer that open source will play a big part in achieving more and more creation of software service platforms that run on the cloud options that are becoming available. In this decade an astonishing amount of open source software will come together, get integrated into amazing success stories.

The only problem is that its use mostly is fragmented within the enterprise and kind of fits into a world of proprietary systems around. Thus open source for many becomes a story of “incomplete but exciting” pilots and “i implemented open source too” stories.

But how do SaaS Service Providers leverage open source and see the real benefits just as with a platform for application development or frameworks provided by the proprietary vendor.

At InfoAxon we believe this is possible with a combination of:

1. Identifying the right use cases and problems that Open source alternatives can solve (as Open source is not answer to all your problems just as any other proprietary technology is not)
2. Knowing and picking the best that open source has to offer
3. Apply reference architectures and integrations that are common and open standard for a domain
4. Understand how the chosen open source technologies will be applied within a reference architecture
5. Wherever possible, through use of pre-packaged integrations and connectors between individual open source projects intelligently
6. Having the right relationships with Open source integrators and strengthening the community and contribution culture with them
7. Use the pervasive social coding and release management movements such as Source Forge, Git Hub and empower their own internal development teams
8. Choose a partner that goes a long way and ensures success

SaaS Transitioning through Open Source

SaaS Service Providers investing in open source as a development strategy firstly need to establish clearly how they wish to use open source to convert their business ideas into the market offering. Some SaaS providers may already have a legacy software product that is on premise and now need to transition to a SaaS based architecture on the cloud. While others may have a new idea funded by the existing business and are looking for a cost effective way using Open source to create their new SaaS based services. SaaS based platforms developed on open source will require:

1. Clear direction on how to implement a multi-site, multi-tenant architecture using open source software and presentation frameworks
2. Assurance that the open source components have been well integrated with SaaS driven reference architectures
3. Internationalization and Localization using open source components integrated together. Services provided on the platform will require specific localization and need to cater to international audience needs.
4. Engrained service oriented architecture that exposes services for developers, an ecosystem of programmable APIs and components that can easily be distributed and therefore make the SaaS platform extend further.
5. Configuration tools that help configure business rules or process flows and add new business logic and data instead of customization every time a certain aspect of the solution changes.
6. Faster delivery with a highly iterative process similar to the frequent software release model for open source software. Multiple open source software components have to come together in a enhanced release process.
7. Collaborative and social features that aid content or Knowledge Management environment allowing creation of a collaborative environment using Web 2.0 features. This aids easier adoption of SaaS services to a wider audience.
8. Enhanced integration of security protocols and frameworks that provide impeccable data security

Selecting the right open source frameworks is the next step. Often this is also the step where the Platforming thinking must first take place. Downloading an open source software may be easy but “Choosing” the right one is difficult. Companies like InfoAxon have over the years created their own library of pre-packaged software tool kits which we use to solve common problems. This knowledge already provides information about open source software feasibility and fitness to purpose. We call it OSSExpert Tool Kit.

Reference architectures act as “underbody and suspensions” on which the new applications can easily be built for a particular domain can then be built either based on previous IT architecture maps created by the company or using reference models developed by the SI vendor. Instead of implementing the reference architectures from scratch one can use system integrator skills and experience where the reference architecture models may already exist. Redhat also provides reference architecture for application development, middle ware and other monitoring tools over an open source Linux infrastructure.

Similarly InfoAxon has developed reference architectures for common use cases such as:

1. Content & Knowledge Management
2. Business Intelligence
3. Reporting (Management and Detailed data reporting)
4. Data Warehouses
5. Enterprise Search
6. Social Networking
7. Electronic Forms

That can be used for use cases to enable service provider needs.

We work with ISVs & Service Providers in various verticals helping them quickly launch innovative solutions / services powered by our white labeled open source platforms, delivered on-demand (SaaS), on-premise or embedded.

These Platforms provides following business value:

1.      Delivers new vertical specific solutions / services quickly

2.      Offers Choice & Flexibility

3.      Eliminates per user License Costs

Once the Platform is in production environment its 24X7 Support becomes essential. Dedicated support is required in areas such as configuration management, update & release management, bug fixing, and solution lifecycle support & management.

InfoAxon provides an enterprise-grade lifecycle support & maintenance for open source Platforms within the production environments. Our experience comes from engineering and technical expertise derived through years of working with the open source community projects, open source technologies and infrastructure such as databases, middleware, operating systems and wide range of enterprise productivity applications.

Platforming Success in Social Housing Delivery Platform

The above approach has been used by InfoAxon quite effectively (even to our surprise!!!). There are two key stories to share around Platforming open source.

A leading UK based Social Housing organization leveraged Open source Platforming approach to implement a social housing platform with a custom developed choice based letting engine integrated into open source pre-integrated platform in flat 6 months. The overall project involved using pre-integrated platform that comprised of pre-integrated open source components such as:

1. Integrated Portal framework with multi-tenant and multi-site configurations with fully customizable sites driven by CMS
2. Pre-integrated content management system for Interactive TV and browsers
3. Jaspersoft reporting engine integrated within the platform stack providing reporting
4. Apache FOP PDF converter pre-integrated into the platform stack providing Social Housing adverts
5. Orbeon and Chiba Open source XForm technology pre-integrated into the stack to create Social Housing Online Register applications
6. Service Oriented Architecture using technologies such as JBOSS and Hibernate to expose business logic to presentation layers

Reference Architecture was created around EJB 3.0 Java implementations to leverage the JBOSS application server capabilities of handling large transactions, exposing business services as Web services and Security implementations around JAAS protocols.

Today it has been 5 years in full production implementation with about a quarter of million social housing applicants, 3 million hits a day and handling till date more than 50 million social housing bids.

It is important to note that the overall cost of the platform was significantly lower compared to similar packaged products that had much reduced set of features. For us this is shining example of what can be done if open source is integrated with a view of developing a ISV/SaaS platform.

Platforming Success in Knowledge Management Platform for International Development Communities

Another more recent Platforming experience we have had is in enabling International Development communities share ideas and knowledge using a Knowledge Management platform. Large international development organizations have wide geographical reach and wish to bring together knowledge of development practitioners, consultants, NGOs, donor organizations etc. The choices were between choosing a proprietary platform versus an open source integrated platform. InfoAxon developed the open platform that developed with SaaS deployments in mind.

The platform allows our customer:

1. Multiple countries in Country Knowledge spaces
2. Multiple community knowledge spaces within each country
3. Profile based spaces
4. Advanced Knowledge search with scored cross references between
5. Integration with Mailing list software to capture tacit knowledge within email discussions
6. Moderation interfaces

The pre-integrated platform comprises open source integration of:

1. Liferay as a portal framework extended to provide abstract knowledge spaces that can take shape to different knowledge contexts in which information is presented (Country, Community, Global etc.)
2. Apache Jackrabbit content repository provides the underlying knowledge repository storing information in smart nodes
3. REST based framework that exposes a suite of content based services exposed to the presentation layer
4. Mailman to manage back end mailing list based communication. Mails to and from community subscribers are routed through moderation loops and stored in the content repository
5. BIRT for in-built reporting and business intelligence features

The above examples show that SaaS service providers and ISVs can greatly benefit from the open source Platforming approach and create innovative solutions through partnerships with organizations such as us. The results are truly remarkable and bring the innovation and flexibility of open source to the fore.

There are some interesting whitepapers available on how Open Source Platforms is benefitting Enterprise and Service Providers which I would like to recommend for deep knowledge on Open source Platforming.

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:

1. You download the software or more than one open source solutions.
2. You open them up and install and configure.
3. You get excited and run down to your IT manager suggesting what a great alternative it can become.
4. You get some small budget sanctioned to implement the project. You look for the the easiest target that will subject to your nice ideas around open source project.
5. 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:

1. Users use it and want more ; Where are the features that the world is talking about now?
2. 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
3. You end up with performance problems or scaling issues and look for a consultant
4. 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
5. 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.
6. You quit your job and then someone either takes it over or the entire implementation stagnates
7. The system is never fully adopted within your business and ultimately fails

Off course with smart IT capability you can win and avoid all the above trouble. Again with a support vendor for open source software you will get 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.

Platforms Vs Applications

Open source has “commodotised” 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 commodotization 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. However 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. 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 is:

1. Content Management
2. Collaborative document management with integrated web front end portals
3. Social Network based Corporate Intranets that host multiple user applications
4. Vertical SaaS (Software as a service) solutions
5. Business Intelligence and Dashboards
6. 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.

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 resources and have testable architectures that can be used to develop innovative domain specific solutions.

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.

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.

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.

In the next part of this article we discuss how the Platforming actually occurs and what Platforms InfoAxon has developed using this approach. In further articles we will discuss how our platforms are helping our customers achieve dynamic solutions that continually evolve.

For more details on InfoAxon’s ‘Open Source Platforming’ and to download the white paper click here