- Pimp my datacenter wrap-up: Photos and words II
- Pimp my datacenter wrap-up: Photos and words
- Best of open source software awards: Storage
- Best of open source software awards: Security
- Best of open source software awards: Productivity applications
- Best of open source software awards: Platforms and middleware
- Best of open source software awards: Networking
- Best of open source software awards: Enterprise applications
- Best of open source software awards: Collaboration
- Best of open source software awards: Development tools
August 12, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Pimp my datacenter wrap-up: Photos and words II
The Pimp My Datacenter project wasn't confined to increasing the cooling in the room. Everything from rack management to the locks on the door was upgraded to the latest and greatest technology. One of the major areas of upgrade was the electrical system. We put together a slide show with narration from Brian Chee to show you the highlights of more power in the datacenter.
Posted by Curt Franklin on August 12, 2008 05:11 PM
August 11, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Pimp my datacenter wrap-up: Photos and words
It's been a while since the first Pimp My Datacenter article ran, but there's more information to come. To begin, take a look at some of the images from the air-conditioning installation.
Posted by Curt Franklin on August 11, 2008 03:00 PM
August 05, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Best of open source software awards: Storage
The InfoWorld Bossies are chosen annually by Test Center editors, analysts, and reviewers. The winners represent the best free and open source software we've used. As always, our picks for the best of open source storage was led by senior analyst Mario Apicella.
Got an open source favorite we missed? Please send us a note.
Network Backup
Amanda
Amanda provides a way to back up a variety of enterprise data sources and applications, supporting multiple flavors of Unix and Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X. Amanda can encrypt data in transit from client to server, or encrypt data at rest on tape or disk or both simultaneously. Because the software doesn't use proprietary device drivers, it can work with any device supported by the host operating system. And it stores information via native dump or tar utilities, allowing it to be reconstructed even without the Amanda client.
Storage Server
FreeNAS
Even as the capacity of physical disks soars, storage vendors continue to charge a small fortune for network filers. An open source alternative on the lower end is FreeNAS, which has support for CIFS, NFS, rsync, SSH, iSCSI. and FTP, as well as software RAID. It can handle several authentication methods (including local, Active Directory, NIS, and RADIUS), and sports a Web GUI, all while taking less than 32MB after installation. This means you can use it on USB keys and portable hard drives. It’s also available in the form of a VMware appliance.
Online Backup
Free Online Backup
At the office your backup procedures protect users’ data from disk drive crashes and other disasters, but can you offer the same reassurance when your users are traveling? Free Online Backup promises a similar level of protection through the use of a simple script that identifies which files have changed and beams them to the corporate network. The backup target is an FTP server that you must provide. As long as Web access is possible, mobile users can capture data changes and store them safely behind the corporate firewall while on the road.
File Management
WinMerge
If you ever need to find the differences between two apparently identical files or seemingly cloned directories on a Windows system, WinMerge can be a huge timesaver. WinMerge binary comparison can tell if two files are identical regardless of their format. Moreover it can pinpoint differences, line by line, for test files such as scripts, program code, and system logs. The clarity of its instant reports and the ability to swiftly move the focus of the comparison up and down the directory tree should satisfy even the most demanding critics.
Disk Monitoring
Smartmontools
Disk drives have been around for more than 50 years, and so have data errors. That’s where the SMART Monitoring tools, or smartmontools for short, come to the rescue. These two tiny applications, Smartctl and Smartd, can interact with the SMART (Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology System) features of modern drives and controllers, and extract a reassuring “all’s well” or confirm the suspicion of degraded media and error conditions. More important, smartmontools can alert admins to creeping damage before data corruption occurs. Available for just about any OS, these tools are a great complement to servers’ built-in features.
Storage Administration
StorageIM
This beta version of StorageIM offers an easy to install and easy to use client capable of discovering and reporting the status of machines compliant with the CIM and SMI-S management standards. StorageIM will automatically install a MySQL database to store details of each discovered device and an Apache server to support the administrative GUI. At this stage StorageIM may not provide an answer to all storage management questions, and it could benefit from an online help system, but the developers are accepting suggestions on features to include in future versions.
Posted by Doug Dineley on August 5, 2008 12:07 PM
August 05, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Best of open source software awards: Security
The InfoWorld Bossies are chosen annually by Test Center editors, analysts, and reviewers. The winners represent the best free and open source software we've used. Our choices for security were led by contributing editor Victor R. Garza, with a contribution from senior analyst Mario Apicella.
Got an open source favorite we missed? Please send us a note.
Application Security
AppArmor
The choice here is between two strong contenders, AppArmor and SELinux. Last year we picked SELinux, included in Red Hat and a favorite with the security community. This year we’re going with AppArmor, due to its superior ease of use and, well, momentum. AppArmor continues to be bundled with Suse and has caught on with Ubuntu and Mandriva. AppArmor protects applications through the use of mandatory access controls: permissions set by the underlying system – not by users – that prevent coding flaws or bugs in applications from being manipulated for malicious purposes.
Penetration Toolkit
Metasploit Framework
When we first saw Metasploit back in 2004 at the DefCon hacker conference, we knew it would become a staple for security professionals the world over. And sure enough, Metasploit has become the de facto standard attack and penetration toolkit. Extremely extensible, and constantly updated to home in on the latest server and host vulnerabilities, Metasploit has the right stuff to test the perimeter of your network for holes, or determine whether your SQL or Web server or Unix, Linux, or Windows host can be compromised. If you have important systems to protect, point Metasploit at them yourself before someone else does.
Windows Password Cracker
Ophcrack
An admin shouldn’t be in the business of cracking passwords but this can be the only options when employees leave and take their password with them. Ophcrack is capable of loading passwords’ hash codes directly from a Windows (XP or Vista) machine or from a file. The application includes large rainbow tables to scan with those hash codes, promising to return a missing password with impressive accuracy. Ophcrack also installs on Linux/Unix and Max OS X; a LiveCD version runs directly from the medium, no install needed. Perhaps Ophcrack won’t be the most used tool in your drawer, but it is one that can save the day.
Network Firewall
SmoothWall Express
Any router with a permit or deny, accept or reject rule set can serve as a firewall. SmoothWall Express, which combines a hardened Linux kernel, intrusion detection, and an IPSec VPN, goes much further than that. It's not as powerful or feature packed as its commercial big brothers from the same company, but it is straightforward to configure and gets the job done. While we’re on the subject of firewalls… If you need help with firewall rule sets, take a look a Firewall Builder. It simplifies the configuration of iptables, Cisco PIX and ASA firewalls, and access control lists for other Cisco routers with a GUI front end.
Network Intrusion Detection
Snort with BASE
Snort is our favorite window into seeing unwelcome activity on our network, whether it be port scans, stealth attacks, buffer overflows, or a variety of other meanspirited hijinks. A new beta, SnortSP (Snort Security Platform), introduces a shell-based user interface, native IPv6, MPLS and GRE support, and a multi-threaded execution module to enhance the Snort product line. Add BASE (Basic Analysis and Security Engine), and you have a Web-based front end to query and analyze Snort alerts as well as a role-based user authentication system to control user access to Snort data.
Security Log Analysis
Splunk
We like AWStats for general log monitoring, but AWStats doesn't do security log analysis – for that we use Splunk. If you haven't heard of Splunk, stop reading and check it out: it is simply unmatched as a security log analysis tool. Grab traps, alerts, and syslog and SNMP data, and once you have the data, Splunk lets you graph and search it quickly via a simple, browser-like interface. In addition to helping you spot potential threats and dangerous trends, Splunk can aid compliance efforts, get alerts on thresholds you set, and generate nice reports of your findings.
[Editor's note: Since we published Monday, it's been pointed out that Splunk is in fact not open source. A free community edition is available, but source code is not. We apologize for our error.]
Disk Encryption
TrueCrypt
TrueCrypt puts not only open source competitors but even commercial counterparts to shame. Supporting Windows, Linux, and OS X, this on-the-fly disk encryptor is flexible and transparent, able to create a virtual encrypted disk or encrypt an entire disk partition or removable USB drive. TrueCrypt also offers pre-boot authentication for Windows, and provides ingenious ways of hiding encrypted volumes so that they can't be found. It’s a tool for the truly paranoid, and we like it that much more because of it.
Gateway Security
Untangle Gateway Platform
If you’re looking for a bundle of tools to do it all, take a look at Untangle. A popular VMware appliance, Untangle protects against viruses, spyware, phishing, spam, and other threats and nuisances, bundling the likes of ClamAV, Snort, SpamAssassin, OpenVPN, iptables, and other open source goodies with its own scanning engine. Running on a single server, Untangle includes updates to the applications, various signatures, filters, and category lists along with nice reporting.
Posted by Doug Dineley on August 5, 2008 12:06 PM
August 05, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Best of open source software awards: Productivity applications
The InfoWorld Bossies are chosen annually by Test Center editors, analysts, and reviewers. The winners represent the best free and open source software we've used. Our choices for productivity applications were led by contributing editor Mike Heck, with an assist from the "Office killer," senior analyst Curtis Franklin Jr.
Got an open source favorite we missed? Please send us a note.
Sound Editing
Audacity
Audacity can handle up to 16 channels at once (with the right hardware) and dubs over specific tracks to create multi-track recordings. Basic editing is straightforward, and the usability extends to advanced features, which range from a drawing tool to alter individual sample points to the envelope tool for smoothly fading volume up or down. If you want to do more, Audacity’s effects let you change pitch, remove background noises, and alter frequencies with an equalizer – which is aided by a spectrogram mode for visualizing frequencies.
3D Modeling
Blender
Blender is a consummate example of the influence and opportunity for open source. Backed by a truly global developer and user community, the 3D modeling and rendering suite runs on Windows, Linux, OS X, Irix, and FreeBSD – a breadth of platform support unmatched by commercial offerings. It lacks some of the features and polish of commercial counterparts, but its pluggable raytracing engine offers zippy rendering. Microsoft’s Caligari trueSpace – just made freely available (though not open sourced) – is the only worthy rival.
Web Browser
Mozilla Firefox
Easy and extensible, Firefox has set new standards for the Web browser with the recent 3.0 release. The new look is more streamlined, less clunky, and the active elements such as the newly retooled location bar offer a new way to work with the Web. Security is not only far better than any other browser, but also less intrusive than you might expect. And the ease-of-use additions, such as the ability to save a session on exit and the wonderfully implemented full-page zoom, are instant winners.
Image Editing
GIMP
Just as Adobe Photoshop owns the commercial space for graphics creation, GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) is the top choice for photo retouching and image composition on X Windows systems. GIMP gives you a wealth of functions that nearly match high-cost applications. Complex tasks such as correcting perspective and color are effortless. Other advanced functions include clone (to get rid of unneeded details) and touchup using the healing feature. The software supports both common file formats and unusual ones (including multi-resolution Windows icons).
Productivity Suite
OpenOffice.org
OpenOffice.org is the granddaddy of Microsoft Office alternatives. Its open-source roots show in a set of features and functionality that is perfectly at home in the multi-platform, equation-heavy atmosphere of research and academe. For businesses, the only features that seem significantly lacking are those for collaborating with multiple authors. If you're looking for a single set of productivity apps that can work on a wide variety of operating systems, then OpenOffice.org is a well-supported, mature solution.
PDF Creation
PDFCreator
At last count, we discovered more than 50 open source or free options to create PDF portable documents. Some are available within other products including OpenOffice.org. If you want a Windows standalone application, PDFCreator should handle the job; it creates PDFs from any program that’s able to print. Plus, you can merge multiple files into one PDF, encrypt the resulting file, and adjust other settings, such as disallowing printing. The software also generates images of documents along with native PostScript files. And for large organizations, PDFCreator plays nice on Terminal Servers.
Posted by Doug Dineley on August 5, 2008 12:05 PM
August 05, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Best of open source software awards: Platforms and middleware
The InfoWorld Bossies are chosen annually by Test Center editors, analysts, and reviewers. The winners represent the best free and open source software we've used. In platforms and middleware, our choices can be credited to contributing editors James R. Borck, Victor R. Garza, Rick Grehan, Martin Heller, Randall Kennedy, Neil McAllister, and Paul Venezia.
Got an open source favorite we missed? Please send us a note.
Server Operating System
CentOS
FreeBSD and OpenSolaris always enter the discussion, but our number one open source operating system has to be Linux… and our server has to be CentOS. In a nutshell, CentOS is the source code of Red Hat Enterprise Linux provided under a different label, without the maintenance and support of Red Hat, and consequently, without the cost of a Red Hat support contract. For Linux admins who don’t need that support, and there are more than a few, CentOS amounts to a free and unadulterated version of RHEL, and users can count on updates that follow quickly in the wake of Red Hat’s changes.
Enterprise Service Bus
JBossESB
Part of the JBoss Enterprise SOA Platform that combines process orchestration supporting BPEL and jBPM, security and registry services, and the Drools rules engine, JBossESB bolsters integration and service mediation with transformation and content-based routing, business rules and policy management, and both service- and human-based workflow. There’s room for improvement in areas like adapters and change management, and some of the SOA suite’s functionality currently requires third-party add-ons. But JBoss plans to fill out the package with its own efforts, and the group is already busy working on its messaging underpinnings with JBM 2.0 performance enhancements in development.
Database
MySQL
While SQLite3 is extremely convenient for development and testing databases, and PostgreSQL has powerful Generalized Search Tree indexes and is very close to being enterprise-ready, MySQL is the choice for many Web sites thanks to its excellent read performance, transparent support for large text and binary objects, and incredibly easy administration. Stored procedures, functions, triggers, and updateable views were added to MySQL in version 5, overcoming the largest technical objections to its deployment at many sites. MySQL also has a large, helpful user base, and some poster-child deployments including eBay, Yahoo!, and Craigslist.
MySQL Administration
phpMyAdmin
If you want to manage MySQL over the Internet, then phpMyAdmin is your tool. Designed for the creation and administration of MySQL databases, it covers the gamut from mundane MySQL administration tasks and managing users and permissions to executing SQL statements and more advanced SQL management. It can also gather server and database statistics. For PostgreSQL, phpPgAdmin is a Web-based administration tool that does similar wonders for the administrator.
Small-Footprint OS
Puppy Linux
Puppy Linux packs a remarkable amount of capability into a small area. The current release, 4.0, is available in a bootable ISO image that's less than 90 megabytes. It easily fits on -- and can boot from -- a USB pendrive. It can also boot from CD-ROM or of course a hard drive. It's a fine candidate if you want to run Linux within a VM (like VirtualBox) on your Windows system. Puppy loads entirely into RAM, so applications execute with surprising speed.
Data Migration
Jitterbit
For data migration headaches, we used to keep a bottle of our favorite over-the-counter painkiller handy. And then we found Jitterbit, which makes short work of moving data from one format to another, even where very large datasets are concerned. The UI is simple, portable “Jitterpaks” encourage sharing mechanisms among users, and a testing tool lets you know immediately whether the current settings for a source, an operation, or a target are valid or invalid. Add it all together, and Jitterbit easily moves ahead of other open source products in the space.
Desktop Operating System
Ubuntu
With Ubuntu 8.04, aka Hardy Heron, the best Linux desktop gets even better. Between a new kernel, a new version of the Gnome desktop, improved windowing and graphics layers, and a number of default configuration tweaks, nearly everything about Hardy Heron feels snappier and more responsive than the previous version. Windows and menus feel less sluggish, disk access is improved, and programs launch more quickly. The OS even boots faster. Throw in the new, Windows-friendly installer, and Ubuntu becomes especially attractive to novice Linux users.
Desktop Virtualization
VirtualBox
A modular VM solution that lends itself to integration and customization, VirtualBox supports Windows, Mac OS X, and various Linux distributions as hosts while providing a VMware-like laundry list of supported guest OSes. With version 1.5.0, VirtualBox introduced seamless windows, a knock-off of the Coherence and Unity features of Parallels and VMware Fusion, respectively. The VirtualBox implementation, however, represents the first time the capability has been available under both Windows and Linux.
Server Virtualization
Xen
The pundits like to say that virtual machine monitors, or hypervisors, are becoming a commodity, and Xen is the reason why. Now a mature Version 3.2, the server virtualization platform for Linux supports a wide range of hardware and 32-bit and 64-bit Windows, Linux, Solaris, and BSD guests, providing a wealth of options for server consolidation. Xen is even pushing into advanced VMware territory with live VM migration, a feat unavailable to users of Microsoft’s Hyper-V.
Posted by Doug Dineley on August 5, 2008 12:03 PM
August 05, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Best of open source software awards: Networking
The InfoWorld Bossies are chosen annually by Test Center editors, analysts, and reviewers. The winners represent the best free and open source software we've used. Our choices in networking software were led by contributing editor Victor R. Garza, with help from contributing editors Rick Grehan, Matt Prigge, and Paul Venezia.
Got an open source favorite we missed? Please send us a note.
IP Telephony
Asterisk
More and more companies count on Asterisk to provide their most mission-critical application – dial tone. Asterisk has what you'd expect from an enterprise-worthy VoIP system, and integrates with other tools to allow for clustering, failover, IPv6 support, and a range of other functions. Asterisk operates as a back to back user agent, managing all aspects of a VoIP call, where some of its contenders deal only with VoIP signaling.
Asterisk is not without rivals – notably OpenSER (recently renamed Kamailio), FreeSWITCH, and CallWeaver – but it’s still our champ.
Log File Analyzer
AWStats
The list of capabilities in AWStats is what you'd expect from a mature log analysis tool. It reads the logs of Apache, IIS, and other Web servers, not to mention streaming, mail, and FTP servers. For Web logs, the GUI presents statistics for visit duration, domains, and countries of visitors, most viewed, entry and exit pages, OS and browser enumeration, popular search engines used, and the ever present errors. No matter what kind of log you’re looking at, understanding what's going on at a glance is important and AWStats delivers.
Wi-Fi Network Scanner
InSSIDer
The only way to secure a wireless network connection is to create a VPN tunnel or use some of the more advanced Wi-Fi encryption methods, staying away from the hole-ridden WEP and using WPA2. NetStumbler used to be our tool of choice for profiling a wireless network, but NetStumbler has stumbled. Today we favor inSSIDer. Although it does require Vista or Windows XP SP2 to run, inSSIDer provides signal strength information and the ability to group wireless devices by SSID, channel, RSSI, and MAC address, using most any wireless network card.
Server Monitoring
Nagios
There’s no shortage of open source server monitoring products out there, but we like Nagios for getting the job done. Nagios can easily be set to monitor server system logs, state of the processor, disk usage, and the like. Nagios monitors protocols such as SMTP, POP3, HTTP, ICMP, SNMP, and FTP, and can handle remote monitoring via SSH or SSL. It even supports external environmental probes. Something you want to monitor that isn't supported? A plug-in can be easily written using common scripting or programming languages.
Wireless Network Interface
NDISwrapper
Suppose you've purchased a wireless network card (PCMCIA or USB) for your laptop, and you decide to make the switch from Windows to Linux. Of course you want to use your wireless card, but you're not sure you can locate a Linux driver for it. What do you do? The open source Linux driver NDISwrapper tricks a wireless card into thinking it’s running on Windows, so you can run the card's Windows drivers on Linux. Many Linux distributions include NDISwrapper as a standard component, so check you distribution before going to the NDISwrapper download site.
Router, Firewall, & VPN
Vyatta
Linux has had fast, kernel-level packet forwarding, routing, firewalling, and NAT capabilities for a long time. But these are controlled through different user-space applications, such as iptables, resulting in far-flung configuration files and complex syntax – a far cry from Cisco’s single-file configuration and relative ease of configuration. Vyatta ties it all together behind a custom shell that essentially puts an "IOS" into Linux. Logging in to a Vyatta router can closely resemble the console of a Cisco or Juniper router, with basic commands such as "show ip route" performing exactly the function you would expect.
VoIP Monitoring
Wireshark
Old favorite Wireshark has grown far past its simplistic roots, expanding its analysis capabilities into areas that cause network admins the most pain these days, including VoIP and wireless troubleshooting. No protocol analyzer comes close to the flexibility, extensibility, and user base that supports this stellar project. Wireshark’s visual display of low level communications is a must for finding and eliminating problems that are annoying, troubling, and specific to VoIP. Once VoIP traffic is filtered for analysis, monitoring SIP conversations is a piece of cake. This tool is one that should always be with you.
Network Monitoring
Zenoss Core
Zenoss Core provides a cheap yet scalable and easy-to-use replacement for legacy management architecture. Its key strength is a unified design that collects many types of information from numerous sources and displays them in an intelligent way. While many monitoring products feel like an amalgamation of several different pieces of software that have been stapled together, Zenoss stands apart with a unified, object-based repository and a tightly integrated set of tools and reports.
Posted by Doug Dineley on August 5, 2008 12:02 PM
August 05, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Best of open source software awards: Enterprise applications
The InfoWorld Bossies are chosen annually by Test Center editors, analysts, and reviewers. The winners represent the best free and open source software we've used. In the enterprise software categories, our leading light was contributing editor James R. Borck, with help from contributing editors Victor R. Garza and Mike Heck.
Got an open source favorite we missed? Please send us a note.
Content Management
Alfresco
Virtually identical to Alfresco Enterprise, Alfresco Community is available under an open source license (only lacking formal support). In both cases you get a product that addresses the four major ECM activities: image management, document management, records management, and Web content management – all sitting on top of Alfresco’s JSR 170 content repository. Beyond often surpassing commercial offerings’ features, Alfresco is truly easy for end users, who access content in much the same way as a shared drive. Developers get a jump-start with pre-configured templates. And the system’s distributed architecture is tailor-made for building scalable, fault-tolerant applications.
Enterprise Resource Planning
Compiere
Compiere delivers a good, general-purpose ERP package along with basic CRM functionality. You get financials, HR/payroll services, procurement and inventory management, as well as general sales and good reporting. Compiere recently improved both security – now showing data-level granularity – and the user experience, with a browser-based UI and stronger search facilities. The features still fail to rise to the heights of, say, NetSuite, and some important new features are only available in the Professional Edition. But if you’re seeking an open source ERP alternative with broad functionality – look no further.
Project Management
dotProject
You’ll find several credible open source desktop replacements for Microsoft Project. We like the cross-platform GanttProject and OpenProj along with Windows-based Open Workbench. Yet for a completely open, collaborative project management solution, take a look at dotProject. The system emphasizes a clean and simple user interface that provides quick access to multiple projects, tasks, and associated files. A summary page gives users a snapshot status of all projects. You also get a Gantt timeline and various reports – plus calendar, discussion forums, and a contact database.
Application Monitoring
Hyperic HQ
There are many server- and vendor-specific application performance monitoring tools, but if you want to see everything from one dashboard view, Hyperic HQ is the place to watch. It can monitor and manage numerous flavors of server hardware, operating systems, and application software, as well as networks and virtualization environments, providing granular control on thresholds and alerts, remote control, and management via the Web. Hyperic HQ can also monitor logs, help with security issues, and track inventory changes. We especially like the ability to track historical changes in our environment, whether network or otherwise.
Business Process Management
Intalio BPMS
Intalio BPMS combines a J2EE/JBI-based BPEL 2.0 process engine with an Eclipse-based designer for modeling business activities, while the Intalio Tempo workflow runtime (based on the BPEL4People spec) rounds out the offering with Ajax-driven XForms on the Orbeon engine. The toolkit does a good job of introspecting back end resources and makes quick work of exposing Web services. End users gain good Web-based access to task management duties. Work remains to be done, but all told, it’s a respectable effort.
Reporting
JasperReports
JasperReports represents one of the most sophisticated reporting engines on the market – commercial or open source. With features for conditional/burst printing, large job support, and the ability to combine multiple report types in a single job, JasperReports handles both visually rich printed reports and drill-down, online reporting. The feature set is further enhanced by the iReport tool, which works with other JasperSoft products and provides graphical SQL/MDX (OLAP) query building and live data previews across almost any enterprise data source.
Enterprise Portal
Liferay Portal
There are a number of well-known open source portal solutions, including JBoss, Metadot, and MindTouch Deki. But when looking for enterprise strength, Liferay Portal stands apart. To start, it’s easy to customize and handles large organizational structures, such as giving each business unit a unique look and security permissions. For users, the GUI offers conveniences such as drag and drop portlet positioning. And Liferay ships with more than 60 JSR-168 compliant portlets covering everything from administration and content management to community features and personal tool. A Web services portlet lets you access information from other systems.
E-Commerce
Magento eCommerce
Don’t be fooled by the version 1 label on Magento’s eCommerce platform. This PHP-based package brings power and flexibility to catalog and customer management, providing unified administration over multiple storefronts and support for multiple currencies and languages. Hierarchical navigation allows shoppers to sift goods, while rules-based promotion tools and proactive alerts rival the real-time order management capabilities of many commercial products. Magento lacks the performance and breadth of the Apache Open for Business project, which builds in Java-based ERP and CRM features, but is far easier to install and manage.
Business Intelligence
Pentaho Open BI Suite
Open source BI options are pretty slim pickings, but the contenders are top notch. We lean to Pentaho over JasperSoft in recognition of its fleet of well-crafted modules for reporting and dashboards, data integration (via the Pentaho Kettle ETL integration engine), data analysis (thanks to the Mondrian 3.0 OLAP server), and advanced data mining (with the addition of the Weka project. End users like the browser-based, self-help wizards that simplify creating and generating reports, and there are good tools for automating delivery via e-mail and portal access and formatting to HTML, Excel, and PDF.
Customer Relationship Management
SugarCRM
We’re still sweet on Sugar, which is hands down the most complete and commercial-grade free and open source CRM solution. A flexible Ajax-driven browser interface is backed by an offline client and plug-ins for Microsoft Outlook. Version 5.1 (currently beta, due in July) supports smartphones and PDAs with a pared-down Web GUI and nice search options that get data into the hands of mobile users quickly. A wizard-driven interface takes much of the setup work out of generating complex reports, while Excel integration complements a nice set of dashboards. Sugar just gets more refined with each new release.
Posted by Doug Dineley on August 5, 2008 12:02 PM
August 05, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Best of open source software awards: Collaboration
The InfoWorld Bossies are chosen annually by Test Center editors, analysts, and reviewers. The winners represent the best free and open source software we've used. Our choices in collaboration were spearheaded by contributing editor Mike Heck, with help from contributing editor Victor R. Garza.
Got an open source favorite we missed? Please send us a note.
Social Networking
Elgg
You won’t find an open source version of MySpace, but even at the current .92 version, Elgg comes darn close. So why would you even want to create smaller communities? Simple: While Elgg lets corporations, governments, and schools quickly establish blogs, the system’s collaborative features encourage building communities of users with shared interests. Other Elgg fine points include podcast support, file repositories, user profiles, RSS aggregator, and branding features. Significantly, the software integrates with other IT systems and provides OpenID authentication. Developers can add specific functions using an open API.
Wiki
MediaWiki
The appeal of MediaWiki, the original application written for Wikipedia, goes far beyond the trademark look, navigation, and page editing – though there’s clearly value in using software that most users already know. Administrators should find MediaWiki simple to install, upgrade, and maintain. Customization is trivial using different skins or altering style sheers. Content contributors benefit from time-saving features, including automatic table of contents generation. And the system can do more by installing multimedia features and extensions; some of these let you write mathematical formulas or quickly build timelines.
Mail and Calendar
Scalix
If you’re looking for an open alternative to Microsoft Exchange, Scalix just slightly edges Zimbra as a enterprise-class e-mail and group calendar solution (though we still feel Zimbra is more innovative). ‘Enterprise’ is the watchword here, since Scalix does a fine job using Linux clustering and failover features for maximum uptime. Scalix’s AJAX console makes administration a snap, while the included Scalix ActiveSync lets wireless devices connect directly to the server for push e-mail, contact, and calendar updates.
Remote Control
Virtual Network Computing
Lightweight, fast, and portable, VNC is more useful now than ever for remote system management and application sharing. The free version of VNC doesn't support Microsoft Windows Server 2008, Vista, or Mac OS X, but it does support most other Microsoft Windows platforms as well as many flavors of Unix and Linux. Editions such as TightVNC and UltraVNC add capabilities such as file transfer, desktop video scaling, SSH, and encryption. For Mac OS X, there’s Chicken of the VNC.
Blog Publishing
WordPress
Since its humble beginnings in 2003, the WordPress blog application has been downloaded about 10 million times. A five-minute installation and more than 1,300 plug-ins help explain why. These latter enhancements bolster WordPress’ already great built-in usability, standards compliance, security, and tidy aesthetics. WordPress is easily molded to handle most anything from simple bogs to sophisticated e-zines. User registration, the commenting system, workflow, password-protected posts, and static pages round out the main attractions. There’s even an open source app to write and edit WordPress blogs from your iPhone or iPod Touch.
Posted by Doug Dineley on August 5, 2008 12:00 PM
August 05, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Best of open source software awards: Development tools
The InfoWorld Bossies are chosen annually by Test Center editors, analysts, and reviewers. The winners represent the best free and open source software we've used. In application development, our choices were spearheaded by contributing editors Rick Grehan and Martin Heller.
Got an open source favorite we missed? Please send us a note.
Object Database
db4o
db4o began life as a Java database library, but its designers have since created parallel editions for the .NET languages. In 2005, db4o implemented Native Queries, which allow you to express queries as Java (or .NET) methods. Recent additions to the library include Transparent Update and Transparent Activation, which more completely automate object persistence. The engine itself deduces how much of a persistent object's members must be read from and written to storage, simplifying coding and providing better memory management. Also new in db4o is support for Microsoft LINQ.
Version Control
Git
Distributed version control has become a major need as development teams have become more geographically distributed. Originally the brainchild of Linus Torvalds and currently maintained by Junio Hamano, Git is the revision management tool of choice for several prominent open source projects, including the Linux kernel, X.org Server, One Laptop per Child (OLPC) core development, and the Ruby on Rails Web framework. The Git engine is at least an order of magnitude faster than other revision control systems for large projects, and it has strong support for branching and merging.
Web Client Library
HttpClient
HttpClient is an open-source Java HTTP client library begun in 2001. Formerly a component of Jakarta Commons, it is now being maintained by the HttpComponents project. Though there's nothing earth-shatteringly new about HttpClient, it is as useful as ever. Particularly helpful are property settings that let you configure HttpClient to dump detailed 'on the wire' data to System.out. If you're a Java programmer with a complex application staring at you, swing by the HttpClient-3.x site and you'll have your client application done in no time.
Parallel Programming
Intel Threaded Building Blocks
The effective use of multi-core processors is one of the more difficult and pressing problems facing software developers today. Over the years, there have been many proposals to address parallelization, many of which involved new languages. Intel Threaded Building Blocks (TBB) is a portable template-based C++ library that implements a higher-level, task-based parallelism that abstracts platform details and threading mechanism for performance and scalability. The very interesting Microsoft Parallel Extensions to the .NET Framework, which implement task-based parallelism through a class library, are not open source.
Business Rule Management System
JBoss Drools
Drools is a worthy rival to leading enterprise competitors Blaze Advisor and JRules, but is available free under the Apache open source license. It combines a very fast runtime engine, a full-featured rule repository, excellent Eclipse-based developer tools, and support for Excel-based decision tables, allowing rules to be written and maintained by business analysts. The developer group is large, and the project moves fast. Drools even has one feature the market leaders lack: the ability to import rules from almost any other BRMS.
Rich Internet Applications
Open Flex
InfoWorld has given high marks to Adobe Flex Builder 3.0, which is a commercial product. We would also like to honor Adobe for open sourcing the Flex SDK (although not the Flex Builder IDE) under the MPL model. This opens the door for open source tools and applications targeting the Flex framework, which in turn is one of our favorite ways of producing Rich Internet Applications. Competitors to Flex include OpenLazlo and better performers such as Curl and Silverlight 2.0, but those last two products are not open source, even though they may be used for free in some scenarios.
JavaScript Framework
Prototype
Prototype, originally the work of Sam Stephenson, is the foundation on which several of the other open source Ajax frameworks, including Scriptaculous and Open Rico, have been built. In turn, the popular Ruby on Rails server framework uses Prototype and Scriptaculous in its Ajax layer. Using Prototype makes writing JavaScript more object-oriented and flexible than “bare” JavaScript, and makes manipulating the Document Object Model (DOM) considerably easier and less prone to breakage. Prototype also adds concise, powerful methods to JavaScript while insulating your own JavaScript code from browser dependencies.
Web Services Test Tool
soapUI
Few SOAP testing tools are as easy and powerful as soapUI. It is available either as a standalone product or as a plug-in for Eclipse, IntelliJ, and NetBeans. Install soapUI's Eclipse plug-in into the Eclipse IDE, and you have a powerful SOAP debugging and testing toolkit. All you need to do is import the WSDL from the target server, ask soapUI to build test SOAP requests, and turn it loose. Various views let you dig into the wire transactions of the SOAP requests and responses, modify test requests, examine responses, and quickly isolate the SOAP server's problems.
Posted by Doug Dineley on August 5, 2008 08:00 AM