Platforms an eBusiness Can Implement - A Brief on Open Source Technologies
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The most important issue to consider here is that not everything is free in open source implementations. One way or another, it may reduce a little scalability. We also will not be able to get the best support for some of the open source technologies.
Any open source product is revised and updated very quickly (some are even faster than Microsoft). Within a span of months, we would see tiny changes in the versions (ex: Fedora). But, some of the most promising technologies from open source (like PHP) etc. are quite stable for implementation.
But to use open source exclusively as a platform, you must consider how strong it is as an operating system (OS). By now, there already exist plenty of types of Linux OS in the market. As Linux is built on Unix platform, one should consider (and agree) that it is highly secured and has less chances of penetration.
If I could think of implementing an exclusively open source solution for an eCommerce site, I would make some of the following decisions. However, I emphasize that they do not suit all of my requirements. I am combining some Sun products to make myself comfortable in those respective areas. But, I can lessen my budget (which is almost free for the following environment).
Operating System, Firewall - Fedora
Database - MySQL
Web Development - PHP (or other Java technologies like JSP, Servlets)
Middle tier development - EJB using J2EE (with a free application server like JBoss, JRun, Sun System Application Server etc)
Mail Server - SendMail
SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) - Java Web Services
Mobile development- J2ME
Enterprise Content Management - not supported yet
Ware House or Mining - not supported yet
Virtualization - not supported yet
Several other features - not supported yet
There exists several other areas where we need to buy the products which support open source technologies. Thus my slogan (no platform is completely free) is true. In general, those who are not quite confident on scalability of MySQL would generally buy Oracle, Sybase, DB2, etc. (as they support warehousing and mining capabilites as well).
I would supplement the open source platform in this way, including some of the Sun technologies. Otherwise, I will have lot of issues under the section "not supported yet." Finally, I would like to say that all the free products from open source (excluding Sun) may not be a best choice for any Enterprise solution development.
I didn't yet mention the latest "go-mono" project (which is a linux based open source .NET platform) and its implementation, as I didn't really work on it yet. For more details about "go-mono" you can refer at www.go-mono.org.
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