One Point Blog

The objective of ‘Reducing cost and driving up efficiency’ has led many organizations to shift to the use of Open Source Software (OSS). Flexibility, easy customization, wide choice of vendors, open standard and open data are the other factors that have led many organizations to have renewed interest in OSS as a part of cost saving approaches.

Initiatives in many countries including Europe, in the USA and in the BRIC countries are proof of these policy ambitions. Around the globe, even governments have started taking initiatives to foster open source. The US government’s open government initiative is the best example. You can find here detailed information on this initiative.

The latest report from the prestigious London School of Economics (LSE) has certainly raised the spirit of the Open Source industry. This report was prepared for the UK Cabinet Office supported by OpenForum Europe.

LSE prepared this report to provide an independent evaluation of the possible savings to Government through the targeted use of free/open source software. The study came up with enduring cost reductions benefits by collecting evidence from those who are involved with the open source community or offering support services (with extensive experience).

Highlights of the findings that prove adopting Open Source is a good idea:

When asked to participants “Does your organisation have a policy in support for open source?”  The responders reacted with just over half of their organisations had a policy in respect of open source.

Answering the question “Do you have substantial contracted support? If so is it from your usual systems integrator/partner?” Respondents spilt almost 50:50 as to whether they had substantial contracted support for open source or not. From the comments made it is clear that many see this as essentially an in-house task, and some saw it as a part of their wider commitment to the OS community.

Besides that, the major concern for many companies is reducing dependency on service providers or software (called vendor lock-in). In the report, ‘reduced vendor lock-in’ was found as the top scoring strategic driver for open source adoption. Value for money was the close second.

The respondents distinguished a range of important cost saving categories considering the component parts of the TCO model. The number one was cost of software, closely followed by cost of customization for specific business need. When considering the ease or difficulty of estimating these cost factors respondents were equally clear. It was no surprise that most of the respondents were aware that open source adoption does help overall to reduce costs.

“Respondents were clear that real cost savings are possible from adoption of open source software - license fees and other acquisition costs are close to zero.”

“Over half of the respondents gave examples of situations where OSS had replaced proprietary software. And there was strong agreement that these uses of OSS had saved the organisation money.”

“Some UK local authorities explained how open source supported agility. They saw the response time for queries and bug fixes as astounding compared to working with proprietary software companies who worked to their own cycles of product development.”

But, on the other hand…

“Respondents often emphasized that if open source is to become an accepted part of information systems work within the public sector then it needs government-level policies to sustain such a change including an overhaul of procurement processes. Most see this as an essential levelling of the playing field that can provide open source service companies, particularly in the SME sector, with a chance of survival and growth.”

The interviewees believe that open source is not just confined to saving money; it is also more able in the long run to be able to provide the types of systems and services that the public sector needs, and in a way that reflects the common interests of the sector.

You can also read the whole LSE report by clicking here.

OSSCube is very pleased to announce the world’s first Zend Centre of Excellence.

OSSCube UK Limited (A One Point Sister Company) is part of OSSCube and  looks forward to working in close partnership with Zend.  Full press release below:

PRESS RELEASE:

Raleigh RTP (North Carolina), 26 January 2011 — OSSCube today announced its selection by Zend Technologies, the PHP Company, as the world’s first Zend Center of Excellence (CoE). As a Zend CoE, OSSCube is recognized as a center for PHP best practices and a Zend Solutions Partner positioned to deliver innovative and productive applications and services to mid- to large-sized enterprises across the U.S., the U.K. and India. OSSCube U.K. becomes a Zend Authorized Training Center, certified to provide full training and support for Zend Certification programs.

The Zend Center of Excellence program was launched in January 2011 by Zend Technologies as part of its ongoing PHP community thought leadership and knowledge sharing for effective use of PHP open source and commercial solutions for enterprise application development. Zend provides developers with an integrated solution ideal for Web and cloud computing environments that includes Zend Server Web application server, the Zend Studio IDE and Zend Framework, the leading PHP application framework.

“OSSCube is proud to be the first to establish a Zend Center of Excellence, an important step in our commitment to provide customers with best-of-breed practices, tools and solutions for successful application development and management on the Zend PHP platform. We are confident that our expanded partnership with Zend will enable us to deliver even higher value and ROI in our engagements,” said Lavanya Rastogi, President and Co-founder, OSSCube.

“We are impressed by the steadfast commitment of OSSCube to developing and promoting industry standard best practices for PHP open source and commercial solutions,” said Siddhartha Agarwal, VP, Americas & Emerging Markets Field Operations at Zend. Their strong team of Zend certified professionals consistently break new ground with Zend and PHP in large-scale and business-critical implementations around the world.”

About OSSCube

Headquartered in North Carolina with offices in the U.K. and India, OSSCube is a leading global Open Source software development company with expertise in outsourced product development. We are dedicated to providing solutions to businesses by leveraging the power of open source software, solutions and technologies. OSSCube partners with leading technology providers such as Zend, EnterpriseDB, Acquia and SugarCRM, to provide the most innovative and effective solutions possible. With over a decade of experience and 200+ team members, OSSCube has an established track record of delivering solutions cost-effectively and on time. Learn more at http://php.osscube.com

About Zend

Zend Technologies, Inc., the PHP Company, is the leading provider of software and services for developing, deploying and managing business-critical PHP applications for Web, cloud and mobile computing environments. PHP runs 35 percent of the world’s Web sites and has quickly become the most popular language for building dynamic Web applications. The Zend family of products delivers a comprehensive solution supporting the entire application lifecycle, being deployed at more than 35,000 companies worldwide. Zend is headquartered in California with offices in France, Germany, Ireland, Israel and Italy.

Learn more at http://www.zend.com.

OSSCube launches into the European market with One Point Consulting

Press Release
OSSCube, as OSSCube UK, enters into the European market with a landmark joint venture with One Point Consulting Ltd, one of the leading open source consulting providers in UK. the joint venture will address the needs of the European market.

OSSCube marks its entry into the European market with a landmark joint venture with one of the leading open source consulting providers in UK - One Point Consulting Ltd.  Known as OSSCube UK, the joint venture will address the needs of the European market. One Point brings a range of skills and partnerships including Zimbra, MindTouch and Processmaker, which complements the OSSCube service lines. OSSCube UK will proactively be promoting the solutions and services of OSSCube including SugarCRM, Zend, LAMP, MySQL and EnterpriseDB.

“With extensive experience in the areas of Enterprise Architecture, Systems Integration, Programme Management, Identity Systems and Open Source with rigour and strong ethics, One Point enriches the OSSCube family with its unique insights into the European market and provides a strategic advantage by enabling us with the requisite expertise, and skills to successfully deliver projects” said OSSCube’s President and co-founder Lavanya Rastogi.

“By becoming a part of the OSSCube family, One Point Consulting will make new forays into servicing enterprises in Europe with a better range of open source services and a strong team with immense passion and rich skill-sets. It enables us to better fulfill the vision we had for One Point” said Shashin Shah, MD OSSCube UK

About One Point Consulting

One Point Consulting is a premium quality consultancy in the Enterprise Architecture, ECM, Messaging and Collaboration domain in Europe. The core team has expertise and industry best practices developed over a period of 25 years delivery services and solutions to large corporations and SMEs.

About OSSCube

OSSCube is a leading Open Source software development company with expertise in outsourced product development. Headquartered in the US, the company focuses on leveraging the power of open source technologies to deliver business solutions. Our partnerships with the most innovative technology development companies include Zend, MySQL, Ingres, SugarCRM and EnterpriseDB to provide effective, cutting-edge solutions.

One Point, Zimbra’s only certified trainer in the UK has organised a 3-day System Admin Course in London.

For details see: http://mylearn.vmware.com/mgrReg/courses.cfm?ui=zimbra&a=det&id_course=79945

To register please go to:

http://www.onepointltd.com/jsps/contact/

Offer Title:

A proven Collaborative WebSite for £5K

We believe enterprise software should be scalable, agile and extensible.

Over and above this, it needs to affordable. That’s why One Point has partnered with MindTouch to bring you this very special promotional offer.

Offer Summary:

Special discounted offer to deploy on your own infrastructure your own collaborative website using MindTouch Platform v10 for £5K per annum.

Professional Services, Hosting, Training and Support options available at additional cost.

Offer Details:

Includes:

- Per Server Licensing Model

- Unlimited external content viewers

- Unlimited internal content contributors

- Desk Top Suite

- Publishing

- Collaboration

- Provided as a Vmware installable image

Offer Information:

http://www.mindtouch.com/products/platform

Offer Expiry Date:

30/09/2010

Contact Details for Special Offer:

Mr Shashin Shah

One Point Consulting Ltd

W: www.onepointltd.com

E: Shashin@onepointltd.com

One Point continues to bring the best open source solutions to its clients by adding Process Maker to its portfolio. Process Maker is the only PHP based Business Process Management System (BPM).  It is 100% web based with a very light footprint and fully supports SOA based architecture. One Point is pleased that Process Maker have selected us their first UK partner based on our established expertise in Enterprise Architecture and Open Source.

A recent report published by the Public Sector Forum reveals interesting insight into the adoption and barriers of Open Source in local government.  Full report can be downloaded at http://ukgovoss.org/open-or-closed/.

For further details please contact David Linday at david.lindsay@onepointld.com.

K. L. E. Society’s College of BCA had organised a seminar on Open Source and Embedded Systems at the Digital Vision Laboratory of the Lingaraj College Campus in Belgaum, Karnataka on 28th April 2009.
K. L. E. Society (http://www.klesociety.org) is one of the largest educational societies in Asia with over 205 educational institutions spread throughout and outside India.

On this occasion, Chintan Zaveri, Open Source Consultant at One Point spoke about the need of adopting Open Source within the Indian EDU sector.  The topics covered included:

• History of Open Source Software (OSS)
• Myths and benefits of OSS
• OSS Activity throughout the world
• OSS Adoption Case studies
• The EDU scenario in India
• Why should the students and educators adopt Open Source?

We also took this opportunity to launch Open EDU One, a wide range of Open Source Software services for the educational institutions in India. Our services mainly focus on:

• Improving the institutions’ capability to manage change by improving internal collaboration
• Enhancing the institutions’ brand and visibility, globally
• Reducing IT and other expenditures and encouraging innovation

If you are an EDU in India, please call us on +91 98 603 23774 or email contact@onepointltd.com to find out how One Point can help you achieve any or all of the above mentioned goals.

Attachments:

• Open EDU One flier
• Clipping of the Press Coverage by Deccan Herald, Belgaum, 29th April 2009

The One Point Consulting team has extensive experience of Enterprise Architecture and Integration going back 20 years.  Our team built the Architecture & Integration practice at Andersen putting in place an integration methodology and implementing real-time and batch based integrations using IBM’s MQ Series, MQ Integrator, webMethods, CrossWorlds and Informatica for key blue chip clients. At Carphone Warehouse we led the architecture definition for a strategic platform for CRM/Billing/Order Management and Online channels using a SOA architecture based on the Tibco middleware products BusinessWorks, iProcess and Business Events.

One Point is actively involved in the research and evaluation of Open Source software which we believe can be applied to solve business problems for small and large enterprises. , One Point has recently been taking a closer look at real-time integration and based on our assessment and maturity models  decided to integrate Mule ESB and Alfresco ECM, both of which are the leaders in their respective areas.

The goal of our exercise was to create a Mule service to log into Alfresco using its Web Services and call one of the securely protected Web Services.

For the exercise, we used Alfresco 3 Stable (Community Edition) and Mule standalone 2.2.1. The development was done in Eclipse.

The step-by-step scenario:

1. Read the Alfresco user name and password from the command line.
2. Send the user name and password to the Alfresco Authentication Webservice.
3. Where the login is successful, get the ticket and store it somewhere.
4. Call another Alfresco webservice and inject the ticket into the SOAP security header.

Whereas, the above scenario looks simple, we documented a number of challenges and the specific configurations that helped us accomplish these. For the benefit of the community, we have posted a detailed version of our successful endeavour at the Alfresco Wiki (http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/Mule_Alfresco_Integration). Have fun!

UK Government has published on 24th Feb a new policy on open source software that will ensure maximum value for money for taxpayers. Policy covers:

1. Open source software: the policy includes 10 actions that will actively help make sure the best possible, best value for money software solutions are put forward for government requirements, be they open source or propriety products.
2. Open standards: the policy contains an explicit reference to open standards, ensuring systems are interoperable and avoiding getting locked in to a particular product where possible.
3. Re-use: the Government will look to re-use what it has already bought, with successful solutions being made available across government.

The new policy reflects changes to both the open source market and the Government’s approach to IT. In setting out the ten actions Government will make sure of a level playing field for Open Source Software, and encourage the use of Open Standards and re-use of software the Government has already paid for. The new policy can be found at http://www.cio.gov.uk/transformational_government/open_source/index.asp.

One Point welcomes this and will actively provide our feedback and suggestions to help the effective implementation of this policy. #ukgovOSS