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PREAMBLE
SMILE
Smile is a company of engineers specialising in the implementation of open source solutions and the integration of open source based systems. Smile is a member of APRIL, the association for the promotion and defence of open source software, PLOSS, a network of open source software companies in the Ile-de-France region, and CNLL, the French open source software council.
FR Smile has a staff of over 700 throughout the world, more than 550 of whom are in France (as . at December 2012), making it the largest integrator of open source solutions in France and Europe. Since approximately 2000, Smile has been actively monitoring technological developments,
SMILE which has enabled it to discover the most promising open source products, to qualify and
. assess them so as to offer its clients the most successful, robust and sustainable products. This approach has led to a range of white papers covering various fields of application: content management (2004), portals (2005), business intelligence (2006), PHP frameworks (2007), virtualisation (2007), electronic document management (2008), ERPs (2008), open
WWW source VPNs (2009), firewalls and flow controls (2009), message oriented middleware (2009), e-commerce and corporate social networks (2010), the Guide to Open Source and NoSQL (2011) and, more recently, mobile and open source census and compliance tools (2012). Each of these works presents a selection of the best open source solutions for the domain in question, their respective qualities as well as operational feedback. As open source solutions continue to acquire new domains, Smile will be there to help its clients benefit from these in a risk-free way. Smile is present in the French IT landscape as the integration architect of choice to support the largest companies in their adoption of the best open source solutions. Over recent years, Smile has also extended the range of services it offers. Since 2005, a consulting department has been supporting our clients both in the pre-project phases and in project guidance. Smile has had a graphics studio since 2000, which in 2007 became an interactive agency (Smile Digital) that, in addition to graphics creation also offers expertise in e-marketing, publishing and rich interfaces. Smile also has an agency that specialises in third party maintenance (supporting and operating software applications) and a complete training centre, Smile Training. Finally, Smile is based in Paris, Lille, Lyon, Grenoble, Nantes, Bordeaux, Marseille and Montpellier. It is also present in Spain, Switzerland, Benelux, Ukraine and Morocco.
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CLIENT REFERENCES
Smile is proud to have contributed, over the years, to some of the largest web fulfilment projects in France and Europe. Below are some examples of clients that have placed their trust in us.
Websites
EMI Music, Salon de l’Agriculture, Mazars, Areva, Société Générale, Gîtes de France, Patrice
FR Pichet, Groupama, Eco-Emballage, CFnews, CEA, Prisma Pub, Véolia, NRJ, JCDecaux,
. 01 Informatique, Spie, PSA, Boiron, Larousse, Dassault-Systèmes, Action Contre la Faim, BNP Paribas, Air Pays de Loire, Forum des Images, IFP, BHV, ZeMedical, Gallimard, Cheval Mag, AFSSAPS, Bénéteau, Carrefour, AG2R La Mondiale, Groupe Bayard, Association de la Prévention Routière, Secours Catholique, Canson, Veolia, Bouygues Telecom, CNIL and
more...
SMILE .
Portals, intranets and information systems HEC, Bouygues Telecom, Prisma, Veolia, Arjowiggins, INA, Primagaz, Croix Rouge, Eurosport, Invivo, Faceo, Château de Versailles, Eurosport, Ipsos, VSC Technologies, Sanef, Explorimmo,
WWW Bureau Veritas, Région Centre, Dassault Systèmes, Fondation tag">d’Auteuil, INRA, Gaz Electricité de Grenoble, Ville de Niort, French Ministry of Culture, PagesJaunes Annonces and so on…
E-commerce Krys, La Halle, Gibert Joseph, De Dietrich, Adenclassifieds, Macif, Furet du Nord, Gîtes de France, Camif Collectivité, GPdis, Projectif, ETS, Bain & Spa, Yves Rocher, Bouygues Immobilier, Nestlé, Stanhome, AVF Périmédical, CCI, Pompiers de France, French Atomic Energy Commission, Snowleader, Darjeeling, etc.
ERPs and business intelligence Veolia Transport, Solucom, Casden Banques Populaires, La Poste, Christian Louboutin, PubAudit, Effia Transport, France 24, Inra, Publicis, Nomadvantage, Nouvelles Frontières, Anevia, Jus de Fruits de Mooréa, Espace Loggia, Bureau Veritas, Skyrock, Lafarge, Cadremploi, Groupe Vinci, IEDOM (Banque de France), Carrefour, Corsair, Le Bon Coin, Jardiland, Trésorerie Générale du Maroc, Ville de Genève, ESCP, Sofia, Faiveley Transport, INRA, Deloitte, Yves Rocher, ETS, DGAC, Generalitat de Catalunya, Gilbert Joseph, Perouse Médical and more...
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Document management Primagaz, UCFF, Apave, Géoservices, Renault F1 Team, INRIA, CIDJ, SNCD, Ecureuil Gestion, CS Informatique, Serimax, Véolia Propreté, NetasQ, Corep, Packetis, Alstom Power Services, Mazars, etc.
Infrastructure and hosting Agence Nationale pour les Chèques Vacances, Pierre Audoin Consultants, Rexel, Motor Presse, OSEO, Sport24, Eco-Emballage, Institut Mutualiste Montsouris, ETS, Ionis, Osmoz,
SIDEL, Atel Hotels, Cadremploi, SETRAG, Institut Français du Pétrole, Mutualité Française, Bouygues Telecom, Carrefour, HEC, Jardiland, Orange, TNS Sofres, Manpower, French
FR Ministry of the Economy, Eram, Kantar Worldpanel, Fiducial, and so on... .
SMILE View our client references online at: http://www.smile-oss.com/en/Clients. .
WWW
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THIS WHITE PAPER
The studies agree: open source solutions are used by a majority of companies, both large and small, whether or not it was a conscious decision. This comes as no surprise given the rich and varied range of open source solutions available today. Since 2004, Smile has regularly published white papers presenting the extraordinary depth of these solutions: content management in 2004, portals in 2005, business intelligence in 2006, virtualisation in 2007, electronic document management and ERPs in 2008, open source VPNs
and firewalls in 2009, e-commerce and corporate social networks in 2010, NoSQL in 2011,
mobile and open source census/compliance tools in 2012, and so on. FR
. A total of 27 documents have thus been produced and are available for free to download. Each text presents a selection of the best open source solutions for the domain in question, outlining their respective strengths and providing feedback on real life experiences in using these tools.
SMILE Yet one thing was missing: a central repository containing the best open source solutions on . the market, which could be used to guide and orientate decision makers toward benchmark solutions. We have received many requests for such a guide, particularly from IT Departments. For this reason, we published the first edition of this Guide to Open Source Solutions in late 2011. In that publication, more than 150 open source solutions were
analysed and presented. WWW In the space of one year, there were more than 12,000 open source downloads and it was only natural to offer an updated version reflecting the extraordinarily dynamic nature of the world of open source software. The gap has now been filled with this 2013 edition, which presents nearly 200 products in 40 enterprise software domains. All product types are included, or nearly all – this paper does not look at “office automation” applications like Firefox, Gimp and LibreOffice – with a summary presentation and an assessment of each based on six standard criteria. In this 2nd edition, two categories have been added: cloud computing & big data. Before launching into the following 300 pages, we recommend you read through the next section, which describes our analytical methodology and lists our suggestions for deriving maximum value from the guide. We hope that this white paper, the fruit of the labour of 40 of our top experts, will be of use to you. Enjoy!
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Please feel free to share your opinions and assessments of the products presented in this white paper with us. Likewise, do let us know if there is a solution you would like to see included, which we have omitted. One address for both: [email protected]
FR
.
SMILE
. WWW
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CONTENTS
PREAMBLE ...... 2
SMILE ...... 2 CLIENT REFERENCES ...... 3 THIS WHITE PAPER ...... 5
CONTENTS ...... 7
WHAT OPEN SOURCE HAS CHANGED ...... 9 FR . ANALYTICAL METHODOLOGY ...... 15
PRESENTATION ...... 15 HOW TO GET THE MOST FROM THIS GUIDE ...... 21
SMILE BEST OPEN SOURCE SOLUTIONS ...... 22 .
INFRASTRUCTURE DIMENSION ...... 22 REMOTE COMPUTER CONTROL ...... 23 IT ASSET AND INVENTORY MANAGEMENT ...... 27
ROLL-OUT AND BACK-UPS ...... 35 WWW HIGH AVAILABILITY ...... 41 SECURITY ...... 46 VPNS ...... 53 FIREWALLS ...... 56 SUPERVISION AND METRICS ...... 61 LINUX & BSD OPERATING SYSTEMS ...... 70 VIRTUALISATION ...... 79 CLOUD COMPUTING ...... 85 VOIP / TELEPHONY...... 89 MESSAGING, EMAIL MARKETING & GROUPWARE ...... 94 HTTP ACCELERATORS ...... 107 OTHER ...... 111 DEVELOPMENT AND INTERMEDIATE LAYERS DIMENSION ...... 116 CORPORATE DIRECTORIES ...... 117 DATABASES ...... 122 BIG DATA ...... 134 BPM / WORKFLOW ...... 141 DEVELOPMENT TOOLS ...... 145
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TESTING & CONTINUOUS INTEGRATION ...... 160 ESBS ...... 167 WEB DEVELOPMENT FRAMEWORKS AND LIBRARIES ...... 173 CROSS-PLATFORM MOBILE FRAMEWORKS ...... 188 PKIS ...... 192 IDENTITY AUTHENTICATION, FEDERATION AND MANAGEMENT ...... 199 LOAD TESTING TOOLS ...... 208 SEARCH ENGINES ...... 212 HTTP AND APPLICATION SERVERS ...... 219
MOM & EAI ...... 226 OTHER ...... 232
FR APPLICATIONS DIMENSION ...... 236 . CRMS ...... 237 BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE: ETLS ...... 243 BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE: REPORTING ...... 247
BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE: SUITES ...... 252 SMILE
. E-COMMERCE ...... 258 ERPS ...... 268 CMSS ...... 274 EDM & ECM ...... 288 LIBRARIES & DOCUMENTATION ...... 297 WWW PORTALS...... 302 CORPORATE SOCIAL NETWORKS (CSNS) ...... 308 BLOGS, WIKIS AND FORUMS ...... 315 E-LEARNING ...... 324 VISITOR TRACKING ...... 328 OTHER ...... 332 CONCLUSION ...... 336 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...... 337 INDEX OF SOLUTIONS ...... 338
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WHAT OPEN SOURCE HAS CHANGED
Open source is a concept that saw the light of day in the world of software, although it has inspired and shaken up many other domains. In this section, we will try to explain its various impacts.
Free and open source software
FR Let's start at the beginning. "Free" software was conceived by Richard Stallman in the 1980s. . It is founded on the idea that it should be possible to make free use of computer programmes and, above all, to study and alter them. While some saw this as a utopic vision, it still marked the start of a veritable revolution, one that, 20 years later, would shake up the entire software economy and beyond. In the late 1990s, some preferred the alternative label of
SMILE "open source software" to designate roughly the same thing, but emphasising the special . qualities of these programmes – created collectively with relatively little centralisation and whose source code (the programme as written by its developer) is available and modifiable and can be used to create new programmes and derivatives – rather than their freedom of use.
WWW In some respects, the open source movement is a humanistic one. It considers that software, like any scientific knowledge, is part of humanity's heritage, for the greater good, which we collectively enrich to the benefit of one and all. Open source, or free software, also has a message that is particularly relevant today: software controls us, so it is vital for us to control software in turn. Ever broader segments of our lives are under the control of software applications. One software solution determines whether your car will brake, another whether your pacemaker will make your heart beat, and yet another might identify the candidate for whom you voted in the presidential elections. Software today does more than "serve" us; it controls us. This is not necessarily a bad thing, on condition however that we, in turn, control it, that we understand exactly what it does and that we are able to modify it as needed. This primary demand of free software is, now more than ever, an essential one. Over the past 20 years, free and open source software, commonly referred to as FLOSS or FOSS, has been a source of incredible upheaval.
A multi-faceted revolution in information technologies
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First, in terms of how programmes are created. In the 1990s, shortly after the birth of the worldwide web, it was a revelation: the most critical programmes on the web, the most commonly used programmes and the most complex programmes were all open source. Even Bill Gates suddenly became aware of the phenomenon, addressing a memo to his troops in 1998, in which he expressed his alarm at the transformation, at these new, equally strong and sometimes stronger, programmes, and at this new form of competition. Open source created a major shift in the software economy by dropping prices to an incredible extent. Everything that constituted the base of an IT or web platform was, quite simply, available free of charge: operating systems, databases, server software, development
tools and admin tools. Naturally, the total cost of ownership is never nil: hardware, support and human expertise are still needed to roll out and run all of the above. But for start-ups, the
FR barrier to entrance was tremendously reduced, stimulating and accelerating the creation of . innovative new companies. And for the companies using these programmes, the new lay of the land translated as gains in competitiveness. Like all technological revolutions since the creation of the steam engine, open source
engendered a form of creative destruction, as previously described by economist Joseph SMILE
. Schumpeter. By producing virtually zero-cost alternatives to formerly expensive software, open source eliminated actors that were no longer competitive, and reduced the profit margins of a number of others. But the new context of a software base shared as a common good enabled the emergence of thousands of new actors and innovative start-ups, some of which have already grown exponentially. More generally, it also facilitated the emergence of
WWW the web, its major players and thousands of smaller, but innovative and growing, actors. Software development was profoundly affected as well. The modern approach to development involves assembling small and large components, many of them open source. Consequently, a key part of development is the selection and integration of the right components, with development actions focusing on customised sections accounting for the majority of the application's added value. This transformation of software development practices has yielded substantial gains in productivity.
Open source dominant on servers and in the cloud Open source has had limited success on workstations (ordinary PCs). And yet, less visible and less known to the public, open source solutions have enjoyed a crushing victory on servers and in the cloud. While Windows dominates on individual workstations, the Linux operating system enjoys even greater domination across the largest web platforms' millions of servers (those of Google, Facebook, Amazon, eBay, etc.), but also among smaller actors. A recent study estimated Linux's market share on Amazon's Cloud at 90%. In many domains, open source is at the cutting edge, giving rise to the tools of tomorrow. This is true, for example, of big data, the handling of data at a whole new scale, where older database tools
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have reached their limits creating a need for new technologies. Nearly all of these new "NoSQL" databases use open source software.
Open innovation Open source has also yielded a new approach to R&D. A great illustration of this is the Genivi open source project which, at the initiative of BMW and PSA, brought together the largest car and equipment manufacturers in a typical pooled R&D strategy, working collectively to build a software platform for their vehicles. To ensure the success of their strategic project, these major industrialists chose the open source model, not only as their base but also for development, distribution and governance. Obviously, the kernel of the Linux system itself is
another example, to which dozens of companies contributed, making it unquestionably the FR
. best example of pooled R&D at a global scale. Such approaches, sometimes referred to as "open innovation", have proven the benefits of innovation when it is more open to the world, less hidden away behind closed doors, and when run on a networked basis.
SMILE Open art . Some critics present open source solutions as the enemy of intellectual property rights. Yet in fact the opposite is true: open source is defined by its user licences, which are themselves based on copyrights. The author, the rights holder, gives the user extended rights... and a few duties. This principle, by which the author is clearly identified and retains all rights, but
WWW authorises different uses and the redistribution of their work, has been extended to many different domains well beyond that of software. Open source now exists in art too. Creative Commons licence have made it possible to publish all types of artwork with extended rights, particularly that of free re-publication, with or without the right to modify the original work. In this way, the Blender Foundation, which develops one of the best 3D animation programmes in the world – an open source programme – creates "open movies", animated films whose every source file (used to generate the film) are made available for use and modification. Like a novel whose ending can be rewritten.
Open hardware Open source has also spread to hardware, under the label of "open hardware". In this case, it involves sharing the plans for whole circuits and equipment. One great example of open hardware is the Arduino project, a completely open source, programmable software and hardware microcontroller that can be adapted to any form of signal handling or process control. It can be programmed to respond to signals from external sensors, processing them and commanding actions. It has grown richer each year since 2005 and more than 300,000 units
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have been manufactured. The distribution of open hardware is still rather modest today, but bear in mind that this was also the case of open source software at the beginning, being considered a "geek thing". But today these geek things are running the web's platforms. The buzzword behind these projects and strategies is the "reappropriation” of technology. Technology is no longer the special domain of a few elite ensconced in Silicon Valley. We can control it, especially if we unite forces. This is the principle behind FabLabs. We are not just dumb consumers going into debt to buy the latest smartphone, whose battery we are not even allowed to change. With a few friends and a little help, and with open source plans and software, we can build extraordinary things in the comfort of our garages. Not quite the latest
smartphone, but not so far off either. And 3D printers have opened up new frontiers in this respect. After taking control of software, it is now becoming possible to regain control over
FR hardware. There are already dreams of being able to download the plans for a spare part for . one's coffee maker under an open source licence and printing the part from home on a 3D printer. The next step will be to print the open source coffee maker itself! Utopic? Perhaps, but the greatest revolution of open source is that it has shown that, sometimes,
utopia wins.
SMILE . Open medicine? Open source systems are not just for Sunday DIYers. For example, they are now spreading into medical research. A marvellous example of the use of open source hardware and
WWW software in conjunction with a research process can be found in Raven. This open source surgical robot was developed by researchers and made available to research teams the world over in order to foster the advancement of computer assisted surgery software and technologies. Other researchers are working on a machine that is a combination scanner and radiotherapy machine, whose plans, source code and manufacturing instructions will all be open source. It is worthy of note that some of these open source medical projects have received the support of the FDA (US Food and Drug Administration), in the particular hope that open source software will enhance the quality of proprietary equipment, currently deemed to be insufficient.
Individual efforts united in a common goal Open source has also shown that the efforts of a large number of people can be united and organised around a shared project. It was the precursor to what was later dubbed "crowdsourcing", projects that involve a large number of volunteer contributors, the iconic success story example being Wikipedia, but which also led to the creation of OpenStreetMap. The credo is twofold: first, knowledge is a shared asset that must be accessible to everyone, with no economic barriers, and, second, citizens can manage this heritage themselves, under a decentralised organisation with open governance.
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One of the variations on open source is the open data movement, in which public data as well as certain companies' data are made accessible. On the one hand, this is a democratic, socially-aware approach, but it also forms the base for many new economic models and initiatives that rely on those data. Open source has united a number of basic civic struggles. Open source activists have a particular force behind them: they think about trends in society and are, at the same time, at the heart of new technologies and, in some instances, of the underlying economic machinery. For example, they understand the importance of truly open standards, whose specifications are freely accessible, whose governance is open and whose use is free of charge. They fight
for Internet neutrality, that fundamental principle of non-discrimination of flows on the global network which enabled the emergence of a whole online industry that is in danger today.
FR They try to explain to politicians why patents are not applicable in the world of software . developments, where a simple copyright is more than sufficient. In the world of software, patents are counterproductive, discouraging innovation and used as a weapon wielded by an oligopoly of giants and mafia-like entities called "patent trolls". In the case of the former, they try to scare off their most innovative, small competitors. The latter seek to extort revenue
SMILE from the innovations of others. .
A flourishing industry Open source is not separate from the economy; quite the contrary. The developers who build open source programmes are not always volunteers. Most of them are paid by companies WWW that see a carefully assessed interest in participating in this work: they get access to high performance software for which they only have to finance a fraction of the R&D, they have complete control over those technologies that will later become standards, and they have a role to play in those projects' governance. In France, the free software economy involves more than 300 SMEs and intermediate sized enterprises (ETIs) – software vendors and service providers – dedicated to free and open source software. Many of them have organised into regional cluster associations, each of these in turn being part of the CNLL (the French open source software council). Together they account for more than 3,000 employees and enjoy annual growth of nearly 30%. If we also include jobs linked to free software in general services companies, industry (particularly aeronautics) and telecommunications, the total turnover linked to open source is estimated at €2.5 billion, or 6% of the software and computer services market and accounts for more than 30,000 jobs, with annual growth of 30% [Source: Pierre Audoin Consultants]. We can see that there is a multitude of variations on open source solutions, with the impact of open source extending well beyond software and new technologies, to other industries, society as a whole, and to our conceptions of social responsibility and democracy. As a famous technology brand once said, think different...
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Patrice Bertrand, Smile Founder and Managing Director
FR
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SMILE
. WWW
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ANALYTICAL METHODOLOGY
PRESENTATION
In preparing this white paper, we solicited our technical, functional and business experts, with the primary objective of creating a broad, practical reference guide to the best open
source solutions on the market.
FR . Choice of categories We began by establishing a list of the categories that would be presented in this guide. It was vital to group products in this way given the vast number of open source options available
today. In the end, we selected only domains that make sense for corporate solutions, and in SMILE
. which Smile has previously implemented projects and has real expertise. We assigned each of these forty-some categories to one of three "dimensions": . Infrastructure: IT asset management, firewalls, VPNs, supervision, virtualisation,
operating systems, HTTP accelerators, etc. WWW . Development and intermediate layers: corporate directories, databases, ESBs, web and mobile frameworks, search engines, MOM and EAI, etc. . Applications: CRMs, business intelligence tools, CMSs, EDM tools, portals, e- commerce solutions, etc.
Choice of solutions For each category, we asked our technical, functional and business experts to select the best solutions, those which any company could use with complete confidence as foundations for its most ambitious projects. In some cases, there were so many products available that we had to differentiate between "primary" and "secondary" tools. Only primary tools were including in our selection and our recommendations. We have attempted to make this guide as comprehensive as possible. More than 300 open source tools are presented here, offering you a broad choice for building the most appropriate architectures for your needs.
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Assessment criteria Our choice of tools was largely based on feedback from the field and our experience on hundreds of past projects. We also performed objective evaluations of six criteria applicable to all of our categories, an explanation of which you will find below. Because we did not want this white paper to be a mere reference file, but rather a real guide for decision makers, we decided to make our results public.
It will thus provide you with reliable indicators covering each tool’s reputation, dynamics, the quality of its technical base, its functional scope, its expandability and adaptability, and the
FR availability of resources/profiles to support you through its integration with your . environment. Wherever possible – and, in particular, wherever relevant – we calculated the average score of all solutions in each category in order to highlight the strengths and weaknesses of each
specific tool. SMILE . The six analytical criteria are as follows:
Current reputation (in France)
WWW A solution's current reputation is important, insofar as it can provide a sense of security or at least advance notice of potential issues. However, a reputation built on marketing investments will not last long if it is not accompanied by a dynamic community and basic technical quality. While it will be decisive to implement a solution that is strong at the time of installation, it is even more crucial for the indicators to all have the green light, such that the solution will remain a good one over at least the next three years. Resource availability, pricing and upgradability will be directly dependent on this. For this reason, although the criterion of reputation is important, it is not enough to make an informed decision. For this criterion, we considered: . Number and importance of customer references . Number and reputation of existing integrators (and are they independent? SMEs? large groups? is there only one integrator for the product?) . References in the trade press . Size of forum and mailing list archives . Google PageRank for the site, linked to the number of high-ranked websites pointing to the product’s site
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. Exchanges on social networks: Twitter, Facebook, Google+, etc. Dynamics This pertains to the solution's dynamics, particularly in respect of its community. Along with technical quality, this factor directly determines the position the solution will hold in the future. In the end, a vendor’s investments are not particularly important in view of the patches, documentation and even marketing that an active community can produce. We believe that models in which the vendor is almost the sole integrator of its product are not favourable to the development of a community of partners contributing to the
product’s dynamics.
FR For this criterion, we considered: . . Increases in forum and mailing list volumes . IRC chat activity . Governance: how often are integrators and users consulted and included as
SMILE stakeholders in the product’s design and upgrades? . . Frequency of documentation updates, especially wikis . CVS/SVN code submissions . Frequency of releases
. References by independent players, including occasional bloggers WWW
Technical base Investments and communities are still small potatoes compared with questions of coherence, power, and alignment with the modelling standards at the core of an open source application.
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Functionalities are just the top layer built on these foundations, and the cost of implementation of the same business function can easily vary from one to five times the price, depending on the technical quality of the base. Thus, even in the case of tremendous investments, further enhancements to a product’s functional side will cease to be possible beyond a certain point, if the application is based on abstractions at too low a level, whereas a well-designed solution using clear and efficient concepts can, on the contrary, be expanded at a lesser cost. Naturally, a financially sound vendor can recode its solution – a common practice today – but once your implementation of a solution has been rendered, it is quite difficult or financially impractical to adapt it to a vendor’s new offering if it has fundamentally changed. The ideal foundation should allow for continual enhancements; otherwise you will be the one to pay the price of brutal
migrations.
FR
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SMILE
. WWW
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For this criterion, we considered: . Compliance with existing standards (a sign of maintainability and ease of handling) . Power and canonicity of the abstractions utilised (sign of productivity, here referring to ORM, native web services, etc.) . Use of a framework . Degree of code factoring (sign of reliability and easy handling) . Strength of hooks, anchors and interfaces for dedicated plug-ins
. Maturity and cover of web services
. Product learning curve: a flat curve receives a lower score FR
. . Application modularity (Inversion Of Control pattern where possible, such that the application comprises a small kernel and plug-ins that take account of one another) . No obvious performance issues
SMILE .
Functional scope
This refers to the overall functional scope of the solution in relation to what is commonly WWW found among tools of the same category. It provides a valuable indicator regarding the tool's capacity, even if we do recommend, wherever possible, going down to the "macroscopic" level when comparing solutions for a given scope. Our thematic papers (open source CMSs, open source EDM, open source ERPs, etc.) can help with this type of comparison. We would also like to note that, while this is an important criterion in terms of enjoying a tool that, from the outset, has as broad a scope as possible, the criterion of "flexibility" has a greater impact in terms of cost. This is because it can be relatively simple to add functionalities when a tool is flexible.
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Flexibility / Expandability Businesses must sometimes go beyond their tool’s native functional scope. In fact, this is quite common. But how easy is this to do? This is a decisive criterion in terms of the total cost of ownership, given the cost of custom developments. Flexibility has many points in common with technology, but it places its emphasis specifically on the tool’s modularity and on the efficiency of third party developments. For this criterion, we considered (among other points): . Possibility of adding plug-ins . Ease of modifying data structures to add or alter business object storage
FR . Ease of modifying user interfaces to make them more ergonomic . . Ease of modifying the processing performed . Speed and simplicity of development cycles: do classes need to be recompiled / redeployed, and do metadata need to be imported or exported to or from the database? if so, how are functional enhancements rolled out to a database in
SMILE production? .
Resources (in France) WWW Difficulty or ease of finding service providers on the French market that are capable of performing advanced developments on the tool. Is it easy to find resources to implement a project? Will I be dependent on a provider? Warning: Be careful not to misinterpret this indicator, because superior technology can easily compensate for more substantial initial adjustments.
As a complement to this paper presenting the best open source solutions, we recommend that you read our other white paper on "Open source policies", freely available for downloading. This text explains the benefits afforded to IT departments by establishing an open source policy.
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HOW TO GET THE MOST FROM THIS GUIDE
This page explains how this document is organised. All the solutions are presented in the same format, to simplify reading and comprehension.
Presentation of the tool: name, version studied and website. We have also specified whether the solution is community or vendor
driven. FR .
SMILE
.
Description of the toolWWW : type of tool, date created, author, functional presentation, type of distribution licence, technical base and opinions.
Assessment of the tool based on six criteria: the orange section (both light and dark)
corresponds to the tool's cover; the dotted black line denotes the average score for the category; and the dark orange section indicates the tool's strengths (above average scoring).
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BEST OPEN SOURCE SOLUTIONS
INFRASTRUCTURE DIMENSION
The “Infrastructure” dimension is certainly the best represented in the field of open source
tools, with hundreds and even thousands of available solutions.
And it is from this dimension that open source projects are born. Many have reached such FR
. prominence that they are close to being household names: tools such as the Apache HTTP server, the Nagios supervision tool, and the Linux line of operating systems. These projects and the many others included in this dimension lay the foundation for a sound infrastructure capable of hosting the best applications under optimal conditions.
SMILE More than 50 solutions are evaluated here for this dimension, and more than 90 are listed in . total, among the following categories:
. Remote computer control . Linux & BSD operating systems
WWW . IT asset and inventory . Virtualisation management . Cloud computing . Roll-out and back-ups . VoIP / Telephony . High availability . Messaging, Email marketing & . Security Groupware . VPNs . HTTP accelerators . Firewalls . Other . Supervision and Metrics
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REMOTE COMPUTER CONTROL
More and more remote computer control solutions are becoming available, and their technology has advanced impressively in recent years. These tools were initially created to meet user
support and assistance needs. They can, as needed,
be either localised or spread across some or all of a FR
. company’s client workstations. They are used to respond to the different issues encountered at companies, including shared views of computers and file transfers.
SMILE The open source range in this category includes tools . like TightVNC and OpenSSH. The latter is the favourite among systems administrators in the world of UNIX servers.
WWW
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TightVNC Version studied: 1.3.10 Website: www.tightvnc.com Vendor driven solution (GlavSoft LLC)
TightVNC is a set of tools that implements the VNC protocol.
This protocol provides for remote graphic displays via another network protocol, RFB (Remote Frame Buffer). It is a very widespread protocol used in graphical computer administration,
FR user support, etc. TightVNC is therefore defined as a remote control and online . administration programme that can be used on any computer, irrespective of the operating system. TightVNC has been available since 2001 under the GPL v2. It should be noted that there are
two branches of parallel developments:
SMILE . . version 1.3, compatible with Windows and Linux/UNIX; . version 2.0, compatible only with Windows, providing additional functionalities like SSH tunnelling and better performance on Windows.
TightVNC is developed in C/C++ but also comes with a VNC Viewer developed in Java. WWW
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OpenSSH Version studied: 6.1 Website: http://www.openssh.com Foundation driven solution (OpenBSD)
OpenSSH is a software suite used for remote server administration. In the world of UNIX servers, it is the preferred software among systems administrators. Over the years, OpenSSH has added numerous functionalities providing for much more than the traditional “network console” use. In particular, OpenSSH enables the set-up of simple VPNs
and the remote display of graphics applications.
FR . Since 1999, OpenSSH has been developed under the BSD License by the OpenBSD Foundation, which has a number of companies providing OpenSSH support. Like most BSD projects, OpenSSH is written in C, and great attention is given to the quality of
SMILE its code. .
WWW
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IT ASSET AND INVENTORY MANAGEMENT
Open source IT asset and inventory management tools are becoming more and more popular in companies, with flagship references like GLPI and OCS Inventory NG used by many players in the CAC 40.
These solutions have a broad scope, including
functions such as management of the company’s FR
. hardware assets, management of associated contracts (computers, devices, printers, network components, consumables, etc.), support functions (with or without user access, detailed user rights management,
automated notifications with personalisable SMILE
. templates, SLAs, etc.), licence management and more. IT asset and inventory management tools can also incorporate a financial dimension (cost tracking model, calculation of depreciation, etc.).
WWW
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GLPI Version studied: 0.83.7 Website: www.glpi-project.org Community driven solution
GLPI is an IT inventory and helpdesk tool launched in 2003 and driven by Julien Dombre, Jean- Mathieu Doléans and Bazile Lebeau. It provides for: . hardware management, including associated contracts: computers (with automated
information feeds if combined with OCS-NG or Fusion Inventory), devices, printers, FR
. network components and consumables; . support functions: with or without user access, detailed user rights management, automated notifications with personalisable templates, and SLAs; . substantial expandability thanks to its plug-ins: integration with supervision software,
SMILE project management, new inventory items, etc. . GLPI is distributed under the GPL. GLPI is based on PHP/MySQL technologies.
WWW
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FR
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SMILE
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OCS Inventory NG Version studied: 2.0.5 Website: www.ocsinventory-ng.org Community driven solution
OCS Inventory NG is a French automated computer workstation inventory tool created in 2001. OCS transmits information on both the hardware features of each workstation, as well as the
software installed there. All these data can then be viewed on a web interface with export functions. Software dictionaries can also be defined for the purpose of groupings (such as for
FR Windows Updates). Concerning remote deployment, OCS can manage software installs on . Windows, Mac or Linux workstations, by means of packages created by administrators. Remote deployments are secure and can be scheduled. In addition, the architecture of OCS servers can be divided so as to avoid network congestion during major remote roll-outs.
OCS is available under the GPL v2. SMILE . It is primarily based on Perl and MySQL technologies.
WWW
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Pulse 2 Version studied: 1.3.1.1 Website: www.mandriva.com/en/pro/pulse Vendor driven solution (Mandriva)
Pulse 2 is software created by Mandriva for IT inventory management, workstation imaging and remote deployment. Thanks to an agent installed on each computer, Pulse 2 transmits the workstations' hardware
and software characteristics. The agent is also used to allow administrators to remotely control computers via the VNC protocol on a secure channel (SSH). Remote roll-out is done in
FR packages, potentially on a decentralised basis, with reporting and scheduling functionalities. . Windows, Mac and Linux platforms are supported. Workstation imaging makes it possible to create masters and to rapidly and remotely install them on computers without any intervention by the administrators (remote control / PXE).
Pulse 2 is distributed under the GPL. SMILE . It is built on several technologies: Python, MySQL and C++.
WWW
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Fusion Inventory Version studied: 0.83 Website: www.fusioninventory.org Community driven solution
Fusion Inventory was created as a spin-off to the OCS Inventory project (see above) by changing the latter's operating architecture: the central server, which collects the inventory data transmitted by agents deployed on workstations, has been eliminated, with that function
being performed directly by GLPI. Fusion Inventory breaks down into two components: the FR
. plug-in that integrates with GLPI and the agents deployed on the workstations. This gives Fusion Inventory significant advantages over OCS: everything is centralised in GLPI, so there can be no latency or synchronisation problems with the inventory server. The ability to force the immediate transmission of a workstation's inventory is another of this product's
SMILE strong qualities. . Fusion Inventory is, however, a more recent project and does not have functions as advanced as those in OCS Inventory, particularly in respect of remote roll-outs.
WWW
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FR
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SMILE
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Other Among the different products available in the field of asset and inventory management, the following tools can also be added to the list:
Name URL / Website
Linbox Rescue Server http://lrs.linbox.org
FR .
SMILE
. WWW
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ROLL-OUT AND BACK-UPS
Back-up tools like Bacula are used to save important data on different media, based on a series of highly advanced rules. The functionalities included in back-up tools can include very detailed back-up scheduling (e.g.
calendars), definition of back-up types (full, FR
. incremental or differential), storage location, etc. Some tools go as far as to offer multi-streaming, multi-plexing, user back-ups, back-up pool management and more.
SMILE Roll-out tools like Puppet can remotely prepare
. environments, based on pre-defined rules or an expected end state. All major companies use roll-out software to simplify the administration of their IT environment.
WWW
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Bacula Version studied: 5.2.10 Website: www.bacula.org Vendor driven solution (Bacula Systems)
Bacula is a highly flexible back-up and recovery system developed in 2000 by Kern Sibbald, and now supported by Bacula Systems. Bacula provides for highly detailed back-up scheduling, in terms of both its calendar and the
back-up type (full, incremental or differential). Bacula’s architecture is based on three key components: the Director is the conductor, performing central coordination of the back-up
FR processes; the File Daemon is the agent deployed on each client, in charge of performing the . back-up under the Director’s control; and the Storage Daemon interfaces with the storage media. Bacula also implements advanced functionalities used in all effective back-up solutions, such as multi-streaming, multi-plexing, user back-ups, back-up pool management
and more. SMILE
. Bacula is distributed under the GPL and is developed in C/C++. It uses a PostgreSQL or MySQL database.
WWW
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Chef Version studied: 10.16.2 Website: http://opscode.com Vendor driven solution (Opscode)
Chef is an infrastructure automation tool written in Ruby that operates similarly to Puppet. The administrator writes "recipes" that describe the status that each node administered by Chef should have (deployment of configuration files, packet installation, password
management, etc.). Chef then applies those recipes to the different nodes, enabling the
centralised administration of a large number of different machines. FR
. Chef has a younger user community than Puppet, but one that appears very promising. Moreover, many of the ideas introduced by Chef have also been included in Puppet. Chef is distributed under the Apache License.
SMILE
. WWW
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Puppet Version studied: 2.6 Website: http://puppetlabs.com Vendor driven solution (Puppet Labs)
Puppet is an infrastructure automation tool.
Rather than describing a series of actions to be performed, like with traditional admin tools, the administrator enters the desired end state (permissions desired, files and software
FR installed, configurations applied, etc.), and Puppet automatically takes the system to the . specified state, irrespective of the starting point. In this way, Puppet centrally administrates a large and heterogeneous environment. Puppet boasts a community of enthusiastic and dynamic users, as well as professional support
provided by its vendor, Puppet Labs. It is distributed under the Apache License. SMILE . Puppet is written in Ruby.
WWW
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Spacewalk Version studied: 1.8 Website: http://www.spacewalkproject.org/ Community driven solution developed by Red Hat
Spacewalk is an open source configuration management solution that was originally developed by Red Hat. The first stable version of Spacewalk was released in 2008. Like Red Hat Network Satellite, it centralises the following functions: monitoring, hardware and
software inventory management, and configuration file distribution. FR . Spacewalk can also provide provisioning, controls and Xen hypervisor management. This veritable centralised console makes it possible to perform global updates across an entire IT environment and to track the progress of those updates with complete granularity.
SMILE It supports several OSs, chief among which are Fedora, Centos, Suse and Debian. . It was designed for scalability. Spacewalk's proxy nodes provide for a multi-site cache of packets and configuration files, in this way optimising update and remote distribution operations on geographically distant infrastructures.
WWW
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Other Among the different products available in the field of roll-out and back-ups, the following tools can also be added to the list:
Name URL / Website
Kdump http://lse.sourceforge.net/kdump
FR mkCDrec http://mkcdrec.sourceforge.net . SIS http://sourceforge.net/projects/sisuite
CloneZilla http://clonezilla.org
SMILE Partimage http://www.partimage.org . Pulse 2 http://www.mandriva.com/en/pro/pulse
OCS Inventory NG http://www.ocsinventory-ng.org
Amanda http://www.amanda.org/ WWW
BackupPC http://backuppc.sourceforge.net/
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HIGH AVAILABILITY
"High availability" is a term frequently used to designate a service or system architecture that must be available as continuously as possible, ideally 100% of the time.
It is very important for companies to install high
availability technologies for information systems that FR
. serve as the central nervous system of their organisation. They can be implemented in a number of different ways, namely from either a physical or a logical point of view.
SMILE There are excellent open source tools designed to
. ensure that services are always responsive. Keepalived, for example, operates like a router to guide queries based on service status, while Linux-HA enables communications between servers, allowing for the modification of configurations on the fly, WWW based on the status of the other servers on the network.
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Linux-HA Version studied: 3.0.5 Website: www.linux-ha.org Community driven solution
The Linux-HA project provides high availability components for UNIX type operating systems. The main component is the communication software, Heartbeat, which informs a group of machines of their respective statuses, making it possible to trigger actions in a concerted
manner without requiring a third party server. Heartbeat is typically used with a cluster resource manager like Pacemaker, whose role is to manage dependencies between services
FR and to perform automated switching. A very basic resource manager is supplied by Linux-HA, . which is quite often sufficient for companies’ needs. Linux-HA is the most widespread high availability system and many service providers cover its support. Its first components date back to 1999. The GPL v2 is most commonly used.
SMILE Linux-HA is written in C and Python. .
WWW
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LVS Version studied: 1.2.1 Website: www.linuxvirtualserver.org Community driven solution
LVS (Linux Virtual Server) is the load balancer included in the Linux kernel since 1998. It was written by Wensong Zhang. It routes incoming network connections to a set of machines by applying a number of
traditional balancing policies (round robin, weighted round robin, etc.). It is merely one brick in a load balancing system, given that it cannot configure itself. Third party software is used to
FR test server statuses and update the LVS configuration in the event of a server failure. . Like all other Linux components, LVS is available under the GPL v2 and is supported by a large number of service providers.
SMILE
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HAProxy Version studied: 1.4.22 Website: http://haproxy.1wt.eu Community driven solution
HAProxy is a reverse proxy used for load distribution. The project began in 2001 and was written by Willy Tarreau. It natively handles HTTP protocol, enabling the set-up of session affinity by means of cookies.
It has a number of status verification mechanisms used to detect any failed servers and to
redirect their traffic to other servers. FR
. HAProxy is distributed under the GPL v2 and is officially supported by a small number of companies.
SMILE
. WWW
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Keepalived Version studied: 1.2.7 Website: www.keepalived.org Community driven solution
Keepalived is a component used to configure LVS. The project was launched in 2001. As LVS is a relatively basic and static system, it needs software to maintain its configuration. Keepalived can test the availability of a service (e.g. TCP connections, HTTP queries, etc.) and
update the list of usable servers for LVS. It also manages an IP switch system based on VRRP,
for its own redundancy. FR
. Keepalived is supplied under the GPL.
SMILE
. WWW
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SECURITY
The field of security is very vast, with products ranging from antiviruses to intrusion detection systems, for which there are many open source options. In this section, we will present integrity verifiers, virus
detectors, intrusion detectors, network analysers and
security testers. Anti-spam tools like SpamAssassin FR
. and DSPAM are included in the Messaging, Email marketing & Groupware category. All these tools are invaluable aids that help systems and network administrators to ensure the integrity of
their IT environment. SMILE . Given the diversity of the tools selected for this category, the graphs below do not display the average
scores. WWW
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AIDE Version studied: 0.15.1 Website: http://aide.sourceforge.net Community driven solution
AIDE is a UNIX systems integrity checker, developed beginning in 1999. Rami Lehti and Pablo Virolainen launched the development, followed by Richard van den Berg from 2003 to 2010, and now by Hannes von Haugwitz.
Its goal is to establish a fingerprint of a system’s files at the time of installation and later to confirm the system’s alignment with that fingerprint. This allows the administrator to identify
FR any suspicious file alterations, which are typically a sign of an intrusion on the system. . AIDE is available under the GPL.
SMILE
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ClamAV Version studied: 0.97.6 Website: www.clamav.net Vendor driven solution (Sourcefire)
ClamAV is a virus detector created prior to 2005. Unlike its equivalents in the Windows world, it is not used to protect the machine on which it is installed, but rather to scan the files stored on it. For example, it is often used on web
servers, file servers and mail servers. ClamAV can detect a large number of threats on any operating system. Signature updates, sustained by a very involved community, can be
FR accessed free of charge. . ClamAV is available under the GPL v2. The antivirus engine is the library libclamav, written in C.
SMILE
. WWW
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Snort Version studied: 2.9.4 Website: www.snort.org Vendor driven solution (Sourcefire)
Snort is a network intrusion detector created in 1998 by Martin Roesch. Often used as a probe, it also has an active mode that allows it to block any suspicious traffic when installed on routing equipment. In other words, it is a Network Intrusion Detection
System (NIDS) that performs real-time traffic analyses on a given network segment.
Although the engine is distributed under the GPL, it is of no use without a rule base, which FR
. does entail a paid subscription with the vendor. Nonetheless, the rules are available free of charge after a period of 30 days.
SMILE
. WWW
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OpenVAS Version studied: 5.0 Website: www.openvas.org Vendor driven solution (Greenbone)
OpenVAS (Open Vulnerability Assessment System) is a spin-off of the famed Nessus scanner, the first version of which dates back to 1998. It tests for any weak points in a scanned system’s security. Unlike Nessus, OpenVAS is
completely open source, with free updates provided by its community. Paid updates, whose availability is guaranteed, and a graphical administration interface can be obtained through
FR the vendor, Greenbone. . It is available under the GPL.
SMILE
. WWW
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Wireshark Version studied: 1.8.4 Website: www.wireshark.org Foundation driven solution (Wireshark)
Wireshark (formerly Ethereal, renamed for copyright reasons) is a network traffic analyser created in 1998. It is used by numerous administrators to diagnose complex network problems. Available in
the form of a large graphics application as well as a text mode interface, it can decode a very
large number of protocols, including encrypted ones. FR
. It is available under the GPL. Wireshark is multi-platform, running on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Solaris and FreeBSD. Wireshark recognises more than 700 network and application protocols.
SMILE
. WWW
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Other Among the different products available in the field of security, the following tools can also be added to the list:
Name URL / Website
Bastille http://bastille-linux.sourceforge.net
OpenSIMS http://opensims.sourceforge.net
FR RadicalSpam http://www.radical-spam.org .
SMILE
. WWW
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VPNS
A VPN, or Virtual Private Network, can be broadly defined as referring to the different technologies used to extend a company’s network while preserving data confidentiality and overcoming the physical barriers of
traditional networks.
VPN solutions generally provide the following FR
. benefits: public key authentication, confidential exchanges, preserved confidentiality in the case of compromised encryption secrets, and packet transfers to private networks via public ones.
SMILE In the world of open source solutions there are many
. quality products, including OpenVPN and Openswan,
presented below. WWW
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OpenVPN Version studied: 2.2.2 Website: http://openvpn.net Vendor driven solution (OpenVPN Technologies)
OpenVPN is the spearhead for a fairly recent category of VPN: SSL VPNs. It has been around since 2002 and was written by James Yonan. SSL VPNs reuse SSL encryption mechanisms to authenticate and encrypt their connections.
OpenVPN is based on the product OpenSSL, the main open source implementation of the SSL protocol in terms of both quality and usage levels, and utilises its encryption and identity
FR verification routines to provide excellent data security. . OpenVPN is distributed under the GPL v2. Available for Solaris, Linux, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, NetBSD, Mac OS X, Windows 2000, XP, Vista
and 7, it also offers a good number of additional security and control functions. SMILE
. WWW
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Openswan Version studied: 2.6.38 Website: www.openswan.org Community driven solution
Openswan is an implementation of IPsec for Linux and a continuation of the FreeS/WAN project (dating back to 1999). Openswan enables the set-up of IPsec links between machines, as well as VPN tunnels, both
between corporate networks and for mobile clients. It is compatible with a large number of
operating systems and proprietary solutions. FR
. Openswan is available under the GPL.
SMILE
. WWW
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FIREWALLS
The concept of the firewall is often linked to the notion of routing, i.e. the transiting of network flows between different machines. As a result, firewalls are usually installed on routing
equipment, of which they are an integral part. This
means that routing can be modified by a firewall FR
. decision, and that the firewall will apply different filtering rules depending on the origin and destination of the traffic. This is the firewall’s main function. Firewalls can also be used in a more qualitative, more
refined role, such as determining the bandwidth SMILE
. authorised for a particular application in a particular context. The open source firewall market is very complete,
with products like Packet Filter, netfilter and pfSense. WWW
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PF (Packet Filter) Version studied: 5.1 (aligned with OpenBSD versions) Website: www.openbsd.org/faq/pf Community driven solution
PF (Packet Filter) is the filtering layer integrated with BSD UNIX legacy open source solutions (FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, etc.). PF was created in 2001 by Daniel Hartmeier as a replacement for IPFilter.
This system has the advantage of using a simple configuration language and of integrating NAT and QoS functionalities. Packet Filter has become the most powerful open source tool to
FR act as a firewall. It can also be used for load balancing and to handle network traffic on open . source BSD UNIX machines. PF is distributed under the BSD License.
SMILE
. WWW
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netfilter Version studied: 1.4.12 Website: www.netfilter.org Community driven solution
netfilter, sometimes referred to as iptables, is the filtering layer integrated with the Linux kernel. It was created by Rusty Russell in 1998. It is an extremely flexible system that integrates with the kernel's routing and QoS
functionalities, and includes its own NAT functions. It has many filtering criteria (time, data volume, etc.) and connection tracking modules for complex protocols (like FTP, SIP and H323).
FR However, it is complicated to configure, so a third party tool is often used to generate its . configuration (Shorewall, ferm, etc.). netfilter is distributed under the GPL v2.
SMILE
. WWW
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pfSense Version studied: 2.0.1 Website: www.pfsense.org Vendor driven solution (BSD Perimeter)
pfSense is a software distribution used to create a network gateway from an x86 server. It was originally created in 2004 from a fork of m0n0wall by Chris Buechler and Scott Ullrich. Very commonly used in SMEs and other small organisations, pfSense offers a complete
routing, filtering, VPN and connection sharing solution. It is based on PF and incorporates a large number of third party components: DHCP/DNS server, time server, web proxy,
FR monitoring, and more. Configuration is done exclusively via a web interface. . pfSense is available under the BSD License. Official support is provided by BSD Perimeter.
SMILE
. WWW
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Other Among the different products available in the field of firewalls, the following tools can also be added to the list:
Name URL / Website
NuFW http://www.nufw.org
Uncomplicated Firewall https://launchpad.net/ufw
FR Firewall Builder http://www.fwbuilder.org . ferm http://ferm.foo-projects.org
Shorewall http://shorewall.net
SMILE
. WWW
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SUPERVISION AND METRICS
Supervision and metrics are quite well covered by open source solutions, with many quality products available. Nagios in particular enjoys a very strong reputation.
Supervision tools are used to monitor networks,
machines, services and more. The functionalities they FR
. provide include views of the status of supervised services and machines, metrics, reporting, access to supervision events, and advanced user and ACL management, but also dependencies, escalations,
service and host templates, active and passive SMILE
. monitoring support, etc. Six open source solutions have been evaluated for this category.
WWW Given the diversity of the tools selected for this category, the graphs below do not display the average scores.
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Cacti Version studied: 0.8.8a Website: www.cacti.net Community driven solution
Cacti is based on the metrics solution, RRDTool. It can create a graphic representation of any quantifiable data collected either via network protocols like SNMP or scripts personalised by the user.
It is considered the worthy successor of MRTG and provides a real interface with RRDTool by enabling changes to every aspect of the graphs it generates. Its highly advanced configuration
FR capabilities mean that it is often used as a complement to supervision solutions like Nagios, . particularly for the metrics side, in cases where there is heavy, specialised demand. The community has developed many plug-ins that extend Cacti's functionalities, in some cases beyond mere metrics. Cacti is distributed under the GPL v2.
SMILE It operates from a web server equipped with a database and uses the PHP language. Cacti . also uses a system of scripts (Bash, PHP, Perl, VBs, etc.) to perform more complex measurements.
WWW
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Nagios Version studied: 3.4.3 Website: www.nagios.org Vendor driven solution (Nagios Enterprises)
Nagios (formerly NetSaint) is a network supervision application created in 1999 by Ethan Galstad. It is considered to be the benchmark for open source supervision solutions. Nagios includes a multitude of functionalities such as multiple legacy management,
dependencies, escalation notices, service and host templates, active and passive monitoring support and more. This makes it a very comprehensive tool that can adapt to any type of use,
FR with extremely advanced configuration options. . Its modularity and the strong community revolving around Nagios (250,000+ members participating in the development of numerous plug-ins and add-ons) offer supervision possibilities that now make it possible supervise almost any resource whatsoever.
SMILE The plug-ins are written in the programming language best suited to their task: shell scripts . (Bash, ksh, etc.), C++, Perl, Python, Ruby, PHP, C#, etc.
WWW
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Centreon Version studied: 2.3.9 Website: www.centreon.com Vendor driven solution (Merethis)
Centreon is a front-end web interface developed and supported by the French company Merethis, used to configure supervision tools like Nagios, Inciga, Shinken and Centreon Engine.
In addition to its configuration capabilities, the sophisticated interface also offers numerous functionalities like views of the status of supervised services and machines, metrics,
FR reporting, access to supervision events, advanced user and ACL management, and more. . Complementary modules can extend its reporting functionalities, also providing APIs capable of interacting with Centreon and automating configuration management. Centreon is distributed under the GPL v2.
SMILE For its web interface, Centreon is based on Apache and PHP technologies, and for its . configuration and supervision data storage functions, it uses MySQL.
WWW
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Zabbix Version studied: 2.0.4 Website: www.zabbix.com Vendor driven solution (ZABBIX SIA)
Zabbix is a complete monitoring solution with an embedded front-end web interface, one or more decentralised servers, and pre-compiled multi-platform agents (Windows, Linux, AIX, Solaris, etc).
Zabbix can also perform SNMP and IPMI monitoring, as well as network discovery. Web checks are also incorporated, allowing for the simulation of a visitor’s route on a web server
FR while simultaneously verifying content and page response times. Graphs and maps can be . modelled directly in the front end for all the values supervised by Zabbix and its agents. Zabbix is available under the GPL.
It is based on C/C++/PHP for the front end and MySQL/PostgreSQL/Oracle for the DB. SMILE
. WWW
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OpenNMS Version studied: 1.10.7 Website: www.opennms.org Vendor driven solution (OpenNMS Group)
OpenNMS is to open source what HP OpenView and IBM Tivoli are to the proprietary world of network management. From its creation in 1999, OpenNMS was designed to meet the demands of large companies
in terms of scalability, automation and flexibility, thereby providing for out-of-the-box management of tens of thousands of resources. Its many functionalities include automated
FR discovery and monitoring of equipment and services, data collection and processing (in . SNMP, JMX, XML, nrpe and others), advanced management of active and passive events, alerts and notifications with escalation and an on-call schedule, report generation, network graphics and cards, supervision of user path simulations, multi-site compatibility (remote
polling), etc. SMILE
. OpenNMS is available under the GPL v3 and complies with FCAPS standards. OpenNMS is developed in Java and is based on the Jetty web server and the PostgreSQL DBMS.
WWW
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FR
.
SMILE
. WWW
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Munin Version studied: 2.0.9 Website: http://munin-monitoring.org Community driven solution
The project was started in 2004, created by the company Redpill Linpro and joined by numerous other developers soon thereafter. The project continues to be very active today. Munin can monitor any server parameter and then transmit the information in the form of
graphs on a web interface. It can also be used to evaluate any metrics: systems, networks, applications, or whatever else you might imagine. Its main assets are its simplicity and the
FR multitude of available plug-ins (numbering in the hundreds) for additional graphs. . Munin is distributed under the GPL. Munin is based on the excellent RRDTool. It is written in Perl, which makes the software wholly multi-platform (Linux / UNIX / Windows). The plug-ins are executable files that can be
SMILE written in any language. .
WWW
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Other Among the different products available in the field of supervision and metrics, the following tools can also be added to the list:
Name URL / Website
MRTG http://oss.oetiker.ch/mrtg
Zenoss http://community.zenoss.org
FR Icinga https://www.icinga.org . Shinken http://www.shinken-monitoring.org
SMILE
. WWW
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LINUX & BSD OPERATING SYSTEMS
Operating systems are the foundation of any computer programme. They provide the base for the execution of thousands of applications. In the world of open source solutions, two major
families of operating systems are represented: Linux
based and BSD based OSs. FR
. Despite the fact that they share a common base, each offers special features that make them better suited to a particular context. OpenBSD, for example, is often used to implement sensitive network
components. SMILE .
WWW
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Debian Version studied: 6.0 Website: www.debian.org Community driven solution
Debian is a free, open source, community-based operating system using the Linux kernel and launched by Ian Murdock in 1993 with the support of the Free Software Foundation. With one of the largest open source communities in the world (more than 1600 developers),
the Debian project is the most complete distribution available, with close to 30,000 packages in version 6. The distribution is published in accordance with the community orientated
FR philosophy that gave rise to open source software, and is a benchmark in terms of its quality . and stability. Debian is a non-commercial GNU/Linux distribution.
SMILE
. WWW
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Red Hat Enterprise Linux Version studied: 6.3 Website: www.redhat.com/rhel Vendor driven solution (Red Hat)
Red Hat Enterprise Linux is an open source operating system published by Red Hat since 1995. Based on the historical Red Hat Linux distribution (now Fedora), RHEL is designed for corporate use and enjoys vendor support and extended stability. Many agreements with
software companies and hardware manufacturers ensure solid integration for companies.
FR
.
SMILE
. WWW
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Novell SUSE Enterprise Linux Version studied: 11 Website: www.suse.com Vendor driven solution (Novell / Attachmate Group)
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server is an open source operating system created in 1996, now published by Novell. The first version of this distribution appeared in early 1994, making SUSE the oldest commercial distribution still existing today.
Based on the OpenSUSE distribution, it is designed for corporate use, with an emphasis on compatibility with Microsoft technologies. In terms of systems administration, Novell SUSE
FR Enterprise Linux continues to privilege open standards like CIM (Common Information Model) . and WS-Management (Web Service Management), both of which make it possible to consistently administrate heterogeneous environments with hardware from competing suppliers.
Two versions are available: one for servers (SLES or SLE for Server) and the other for client SMILE
. computers (SLED or SLE for Desktop).
WWW
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Ubuntu Version studied: 12.04 Website: www.ubuntu.com Vendor driven solution (Canonical)
Ubuntu is a community open source operating system based on Debian. The project was launched in 2004 by Mark Shuttleworth of South Africa. Officially supported by Canonical, Ubuntu can be used on servers and individual workstations
alike. That being said, Ubuntu tends to be orientated toward the general public thanks to its user-friendly handling and control. It is a compact distribution (frequently distributed by CD)
FR with a high level of software compatibility and numerous software programmes, either . embedded or available for installation. One of Ubuntu’s great success stories is the fact that it is used on the computers of French Members of Parliament.
SMILE
. WWW
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OpenBSD Version studied: 5.2 Website: www.openbsd.org Foundation driven solution (OpenBSD)
OpenBSD is a free, open source, community operating system based on BSD UNIX. It was created in 1994 by Theo de Raadt. The project is a spin-off of NetBSD, from which it separated in 1996.
Developed by the OpenBSD Foundation, which boasts more than a hundred developers, the OpenBSD project is a complete operating system that focuses on quality and code security. It
FR is often used on sensitive network equipment. . OpenBSD is distributed under the BSD License. The vast majority of its code is written in C.
SMILE
. WWW
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FreeBSD Version studied: 9.0 Website: www.freebsd.org Community driven solution
FreeBSD is a free, open source, community operating system based on BSD UNIX. The project saw the light of day in 1993. FreeBSD emphasises performance and functionalities. It incorporates advanced storage (ZFS),
network, and security (i.e. Mac and BSM audit framework) functionalities. It is primarily used
on the web and at the core of proprietary hardware (Juniper and NetApp, etc.). FR
. FreeBSD is distributed under the BSD License. The majority of its code is written in C.
SMILE
. WWW
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NetBSD Version studied: 6.0 Website: www.netbsd.org Community driven solution
NetBSD is a free, open source, community operating system based on BSD UNIX. The project was created in 1993. It emphasises portability and code quality, as well as user-friendliness. It is primarily used in
research and in embedded devices. Its careful design and advanced functionalities make it an excellent solution for both production environments and research. NetBSD is developed and
FR supported by a large and active international community. It offers multiple forms of user . support. It should be noted that the entirety of its source code can be accessed. Many applications are readily available via the NetBSD packets system. NetBSD is distributed under the BSD License.
SMILE The majority of its code is written in C. .
WWW
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Other Among the different products available in the field of Linux & BSD operating systems, the following tools can also be added to the list:
Name URL / Website
Mandriva Linux http://www.mandriva.com
Fedora http://fedoraproject.org
FR .
SMILE
. WWW
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VIRTUALISATION
Server virtualisation is a set of techniques and tools used to run multiple operating systems on the same physical server. This means that the principle of virtualisation involves
the principle of sharing, in which the different
operating systems share the server’s resources. FR
. To be of operational use, virtualisation must conform to two basic principles: compartmentalisation (each operating system runs independently and cannot interfere with the other(s) in any way) and
transparency (the fact of operating in a virtualised SMILE
. mode in no way changes how the operating system runs, and even less so the applications installed on each one). In this category, four open source tools were selected,
including Xen and KVM, the best known in the WWW business world.
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Xen Version studied: 4.2.0 Website: http://xen.org Vendor driven solution (Citrix)
Xen is a hypervisor that handles paravirtualisation. The project was created in 2003 in the form of a research project at Cambridge University in England. Paravirtualisation refers to a virtualisation system's ability to interact with virtualised systems.
This makes virtual machines more efficient and easier to administrate. Xen was derived from a university research project and is now a part of the Linux kernel. Citrix offers an enterprise
FR edition of the solution along with the associated support. . Xen is available under the GPL.
SMILE
. WWW
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OpenVZ Version studied: 4.1 Website: www.openvz.org Community driven solution
OpenVZ is a lightweight virtualisation solution for Linux that was created in 2005. Like any simple virtualisation solution, OpenVZ can only run Linux systems. This handicap is however offset by performance levels much closer to native levels than any other type of
virtualisation, particular for inputs/outputs, and the solution also uses less memory. OpenVZ is primarily used in development and test environments, where it is not uncommon to have
FR dozens of systems installed on the same host. . The code is available under the GPL v2.
SMILE
. WWW
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KVM Version studied: 1.1.2 Website: www.linux-kvm.org Community driven solution
KVM is a complete Linux-based virtualisation solution launched in 2005. KVM is a fork of QEMU. In some cases, the source code for the two products is resynchronised. Included in the mainline Linux kernel since version 2.6.2, KVM can run virtual systems under
all the major OSs by simulating standardised hardware, and supports advanced functions like
migration and detailed inspections of the VM's status. FR
. KVM is distributed under the GPL.
SMILE
. WWW
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Oracle VirtualBox Version studied: 4.2.4 Website: www.virtualbox.org Vendor driven solution (Oracle)
VirtualBox is a virtualisation solution created in 2007 and designed for installation on individual computers. VirtualBox supports a large number of guest operating systems and has functionalities that
interact with these systems: file sharing, mouse pointer integration, merging of the host and guest desktops, etc. Some options, like USB device sharing, can be added via proprietary plug-
FR ins. . VirtualBox is distributed under the GPL v2.
SMILE
. WWW
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Other Among the different products available in the field of virtualisation, the following tools can also be added to the list:
Name URL / Website
QEMU http://wiki.qemu.org
FR .
SMILE
.
WWW
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CLOUD COMPUTING
One of the key ideas concealed behind the somewhat vague concept of cloud computing is the abstraction of an application's platform at various levels. This can include IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) in particular, but also PaaS (Platform as a Service) and
SaaS (Software as a Service). FR
. Naturally, virtualisation is crucial to setting up IaaS. However, it requires making virtual machines available in a completely automated manner. Monitoring of resource use for billing purposes is part
SMILE of the cloud computing business model and so should
. be an integral part of any IaaS solution. The product should also handle the automatic configuration of a permanent storage space for VMs, as well as providing for their network connectivity.
WWW For organisations wishing to build their own IaaS, open source solutions like OpenStack are now available and make it possible to industrialise virtualisation.
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OpenStack Version studied: Folsom Website: http://www.openstack.org/ Solution driven by the OpenStack Foundation comprising a Technical Committee and a Board of Directors (sponsors: Canonical, IBM, Rackspace and others)
OpenStack, initially developed by Rackspace and NASA, offers an open source software package under the Apache License.
This package can be used to configure and utilise the calculation and storage portions of an IaaS cloud. Historically, Rackspace contributed to OpenStack's storage technology while the
FR calculation segment was developed by NASA. OpenStack now has a foundation named . OpenStack Consortium, which counts more than 150 member enterprises, including Canonical, Dell and Citrix. OpenStack is not just a virtualisation tool: it is a complete cloud computing solution. The
project includes a series of software applications that can manage calculation resources, SMILE
. decentralised storage and redundancy for all of its components. It also provides usage metrics, a service that manages snapshots of instances and a service that identifies and authenticates users, projects and, lastly, services. The solution's architecture is designed to be highly modular, with extremely detailed configuration and assembly, according to each
organisation's needs. WWW
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OpenNebula Version studied: 3.8.1 Website: http://www.opennebula.org/ Solution driven mainly by C12G
Unlike classic cloud computing solutions, OpenNebula provides a complete toolbox for the centralised management of a heterogeneous virtual infrastructure. The tool is compatible with classic hypervisors: VMware, Xen and KVM. OpenNebula runs like a
scheduler of storage layers, networks, supervision and security. FR . It is suited to the conversion of a virtual infrastructure into an IaaS platform. This function of centralised orchestration of hybrid environments is at the very heart of the tool. The project, which began in 2005, published its first version in 2008 and has been active ever since. Its many releases have resulted in major functional upgrades for storage node support,
SMILE high environment availability and the ergonomics of its admin interfaces. . OpenNebula is distributed under the Apache License 2.0.
WWW
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Other Among the different products available in the field of cloud computing, the following tools can also be added to the list:
Name URL / Website
Eucalyptus http://open.eucalyptus.com/
FR CloudStack http://cloudstack.org/ . Nimbus http://www.nimbusproject.org/
SMILE .
WWW
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VOIP / TELEPHONY
VoIP (Voice over IP) is a technique that enables voice communications over IP compatible networks. These can be private networks or the Internet, and either wired (cable, ADSL or optical) or wireless (satellite,
WiFi or GSM).
In particular, this technology is used to support FR
. Telephony over Internet Protocol (ToIP) services. The top solutions provide for interoperability with proprietary IPBX systems (used to route all or part of a company’s communications) via existing protocols
SMILE (H.323, SIP, IAX, MGCP, etc.) and the most commonly
. used codecs (G711, G729ab, iLBC, Speex, GSM, etc.). In terms of open source solutions, Asterisk is the most frequently used and the most complete, offering a wide range of functionalities and a good capacity for
WWW integration with existing environments.
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Asterisk Version studied: 1.8.17 Website: www.asterisk.org Vendor driven solution (Digium)
Asterisk is an open source private automatic branch exchange (PABX) for UNIX systems. Among other uses, it provides for voice messaging, hold queues, call agents, hold music, enquiry calls, call distribution and conference calls.
Asterisk implements the protocols H.320, H.323 and SIP, as well as a custom protocol called IAX (Inter-Asterisk eXchange). Asterisk can also play the role of registrar and gateway in
FR connection with public networks. Some operators use it as the core of their telephone . network, given its interoperability and its scalability. When combined with SugarCRM or vtiger, it is often used as a call centre management tool. In its traditional use as an IP telephony platform, Asterisk is typically combined with FreePBX,
an IHM that manages all its functionalities. Asterisk and FreePBX can be found in many SMILE
. Appliance distributions, the most popular being Elastix and trixbox. Asterisk is distributed under the GPL.
WWW
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Kamailio Version studied: 3.3.0 Website: www.kamailio.org Community driven solution
Kamailio is an open source SIP server. This fork of the OpenSER project (in 2005) is one of the most complete PBXs. It supports asynchronous TCP, UDP and SCTP transactions, communications encryptions via TLS, load balancing, a native failover mechanism, authentication on Radius, MySQL and LDAP
back ends or via XML-RCP transport. It is used both by telecoms operators, as a VoIP platform, FR
. and in traditional corporate telephony solutions. It is an alternative to FreeSWITCH and Asterisk, the two other heavyweights in this domain. Kamailio is distributed under the GPL.
SMILE
. WWW
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Kannel Version studied: 1.5.0 Website: www.kannel.org Community driven solution
Kannel was developed in 1998 by WAPit Ltd, a company that no longer exists today. The project is now managed by members of the Kannel Group, which includes major corporations. Kannel is a carrier grade, open source SMS and WAP gateway that supports the standard
SMSC protocols: UCP/EMI, SMPP, HTTP and CIMD. Kannel supplies a set of APIs that allow it to be used as a front end for middleware and web applications requiring outbound WAP or
FR SMS messages. Included as an infrastructure brick, it provides secure access to operator . resources while supplying reliable, robust SMS and WAP support. Kannel is distributed under the Kannel Software License (based on the Apache License).
Kannel is written in C. SMILE
. WWW
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Other Among the different products available in the field of VoIP/telephony, the following tools can also be added to the list:
Name URL / Website
CallWeaver http://www.callweaver.org
SER http://www.iptel.org/ser
FR sipXecs http://www.sipfoundry.org . trixbox http://fonality.com/trixbox
Yate http://yate.null.ro/pmwiki
SMILE FreeSWITCH http://www.freeswitch.org .
WWW
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MESSAGING, EMAIL MARKETING & GROUPWARE
The field of “messaging” is extremely vast, ranging from individual messages to grouped mailshots, all of which are covered by a multitude of open source solutions.
This category includes presentations of messaging
servers (SMTP and IMAP), anti-spam tools and in-box FR
. interfaces (groupware). Anti-viruses like CLAV are covered in the Security section. All these tools are invaluable in the implementation of a complete messaging system.
SMILE . Given the diversity of the tools selected for this category, the graphs below do not display the average scores.
WWW
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Postfix Version studied: 2.9 Website: www.postfix.org Community driven solution
Postfix is a messaging server. Postfix was originally created in 1997. It was developed by Wietse Venema and several other contributors. Postfix was first known as VMailer and then as IBM Secure Mailer.
More and more frequently used to replace Sendmail in open source email infrastructures, Postfix is a flexible, scalable SMTP server. It can query a large number of external sources of
FR information (databases, LDAP directories, etc.). Its scope is relatively broad and perfectly . suited to professional use. In particular, Postfix can prevent spam (based on a public anti- spam list, for example). Postfix is distributed under the IBM Public License.
SMILE
. WWW
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Cyrus IMAPd Version studied: 2.4.15 Website: www.cyrusimap.org Community driven solution
Cyrus is a scalable mail server available for both personal and professional use. Cyrus is based on many standards and offers two downloadable editions. As for Cyrus IMAPd, it is an open source IMAP server. The project came from Carnegie Mellon University in the US and dates
back to 1994.
It supports advanced functionalities such as push (IDLE), ACLs, shared folders, quotas, server
FR side filtering (sieves) and a large number of SASL authentication methods. . Cyrus IMAPd is distributed under the BSD License.
SMILE
. WWW
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SpamAssassin Version studied: 3.3.2 Website: http://spamassassin.apache.org Community driven solution
SpamAssassin is an anti-spam solution that uses a wide range of different techniques. It was launched in 1997 and is led by the Apache Software Foundation, the creator of the famous Web Apache HTTP Server.
It is a very widespread tool among mail servers, including in the infrastructures of major suppliers. The technologies used include Bayesian analysis based on learned keywords,
FR various blacklist systems (URIBL, DNSBL, etc.), content analysis (Razor and DCC) and a number . of other message formatting criteria (image to text ratio, no text version, invalid originator, etc.). SpamAssassin is available under the Apache License.
SMILE It is written in Perl. .
WWW
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DSPAM Version studied: 3.10.2 Website: www.nuclearelephant.com Community driven solution
DSPAM is an anti-spam solution based on Bayesian filtering and written by Jonathan A. Zdziarski, also known as the author of Ending Spam. This type of filtering, based on learned keywords, has proven particularly effective after an
initial learning phase. The main benefit of DSPAM in relation to its competitors lies in the depth of its analytical engine, as well as its user interactions, providing users with a web
FR interface used to manage quarantines and to explicitly designate email as desirable or . undesirable. DSPAM is distributed under the GPL.
SMILE
. WWW
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Zimbra Version studied: 8.0.1 Website: www.zimbra.com Vendor driven solution (VMware)
Zimbra is a collaborative messaging server. Its 100% online, Ajax based user interface is famous for its ergonomics. All Zimbra's functionalities can be accessed through a web browser or a fat client. Zimbra’s
webmail is in fact compatible with all modern browsers. The Zimbra suite includes a Zimbra Desktop fat client but remains fully compatible with standard fat clients like Microsoft
FR Outlook, Mozilla Thunderbird, Eudora, etc. In its commercial edition, Zimbra can also . synchronise with virtually all mobile platforms (iPhone OS, BlackBerry, Android, Symbian OS and Palm OS). Zimbra is published under the Zimbra Public License, a derivative of the MPL.
SMILE The messaging tool is based on a rich and robust infrastructure base: WebDAV (XML), LDAP, . iCal, HTTP(S), SMTP, IMAP, POP3 and CalDAV. It supplies a SOAP base enabling the development of plug-ins called “Zimlets” that provide for the free extension of its functional scope. This makes it possible to interface with a telephony solution like Asterisk or a CRM tool like SugarCRM. Since 2012, it has also offered advanced voice messaging and unified
communication functionalities, interfacing with Cisco solutions (API in the works for other WWW solutions). Today, Zimbra has become an indispensable reference in collaborative enterprise messaging.
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FR .
SMILE . Horde Version studied: 4.0.8 Website: www.horde.org
Community driven solution WWW
Horde Groupware Webmail Edition is a professional, collaborative messaging solution. It is fully modulable groupware (collaborative software). It allows users to read, exchange and organise their emails, and to organise and share their calendars, contacts and tasks. More than a mere aggregate of technical bricks, Horde is an ergonomic bundle of applications like INgo, Turba, IMP and Mnemo, whose ergonomics make it a key, reliable collaborative messaging tool. Horde is distributed under the GPL. It is written in PHP.
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FR .
SMILE
.
WWW
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Zarafa Version studied: 7.1.1 Website: www.zarafa.com Vendor driven solution (Zarafa)
Zarafa's collaborative messaging software natively supports the MAPI protocol. It was originally developed in the Netherlands. Its webmail (which uses Ajax and is fully accessible online) and its direct interfacing with
Outlook make it the functional open source alternative that is most similar to Microsoft Exchange. Since 2007, the engine for Zarafa’s enterprise edition has embedded the Z-Push
FR open source solution, providing nearly complete compatibility with all ActiveSync . smartphones and Pocket PCs on the market. Zarafa is distributed under the Affero GPL v3. Its data are stored in a MySQL database. The webmail is based on Ajax with PHP processing
SMILE (with the MAPI PHP extension). . In 2012, Zarafa performed a great deal of work on its interfaces' design and now offers a new, more ergonomic administrative platform. The enhancements and optimisations performed on the internal structure of its components have solidified this solution's internal mechanisms, in line with the market's needs. WWW
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Blue Mind Version studied: 1.0 Website: www.blue-mind.net Vendor driven solution (Blue Mind)
Blue Mind is a complete corporate messaging, calendar and collaborative work solution, the youngest of all the collaborative messaging solutions described in this guide. Available since
2012, it was, first and foremost, conceived to only display key functions on-screen, maintaining a clean, modern appearance. Users and administrators can then access more
FR elaborate functions and more ad hoc ones, as needed. For Thunderbird and Outlook, Blue . Mind also provides connectors for the synchronisation of contacts and calendars (or calendar access in Thunderbird). The solution was built on a primary database, and the main technical foundations used by
SMILE Blue Mind are all up-to-date with the latest technologies. In this way, the solution comes
. standard with offline webmail management, mobile devices and a complete, accessible SOAP API that can be used to develop functional interfaces. The rest of the solution is based on existing open source software: Postfix, Cyrus IMAP, Roundcube, Apache, Tomcat, nginx, HornetQ and PostgreSQL. Overall, Blue Mind currently offers a young, aesthetically pleasing, smart, no frills product that is easy to use and administrate. It will be able to meet most of a WWW company's basic collaborative needs.
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FR .
SMILE . OpenEMM Version studied: OpenEMM 2011 Website: www.openemm.org
Vendor driven solution (AGNITAS AG) WWW
OpenEMM is an open source email marketing solution developed since 1999 by German company AGNITAS. OpenEMM is used by major groups the likes of BenQ, Siemens and more. It is used to manage corporate newsletters and email marketing campaigns. There are few open source email marketing solutions today that can boast a broad scope; OpenEMM is one of these, thereby earning its place here in this guide. From a functional standpoint, the tool is relatively well equipped. For example, it offers a 100% web interface available in several languages, including English and French, with targeting tools, real time statistics, template management, bulk import and export modules, strong documentation, and the possibility of using web services and bounce management. OpenEMM is distributed under the Common Public Attribution License (CPAL) 1.0. OpenEMM is based on the languages C, Java and Python. Its data are stored in a MySQL database.
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FR .
SMILE
. WWW
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Other Among the different products available in the field of messaging, email marketing and groupware, the following tools can also be added to the list:
Name URL / Website
Roundcube http://roundcube.net
EGroupware http://www.egroupware.org
FR OBM http://obm.org . Open-Xchange http://www.open-xchange.com
SMILE
. WWW
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HTTP ACCELERATORS
HTTP accelerators, also referred to as “reverse proxies”, are implemented on servers. They have a variety of different uses, including security, load distribution, SSL acceleration, compression and
caching.
It is this last point in particular that we will be FR
. assessing in this section. Web users “transit” via the reverse proxies to access internal server applications. Advanced caching policies can offload web application servers, irrespective of the language used. Some HTTP accelerators can handle fragment caching, namely by
SMILE supporting the ESI standard. .
WWW
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Squid Version studied: 3.2.5 Website: www.squid-cache.org Community driven solution
Squid is a HTTP proxy server commonly used by businesses. The first version of Squid dates back to 1996. Its main function is as a direct proxy, used to regulate web traffic and to cache frequently
viewed content. In some cases it is also used as a reverse proxy in web architectures. When
used for access control, blacklisted URLs can be procured from third party suppliers. FR
. Squid is distributed under the GPL. Squid was inspired by the Harvest project. It has been compatible with IPv6 since version 3.
SMILE
. WWW
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Varnish Version studied: 3.0.3 Website: www.varnish-cache.org Vendor driven solution (Varnish Software)
Varnish is a high performance HTTP cache. The first stable version of Varnish was launched in 2006 for the Norwegian newspaper Verdens Gang. The product’s architect is Poul-Henning Kamp of Denmark.
Used to improve the performance of high traffic websites, Varnish also includes load distribution functionalities and can be used to test the availability of servers producing web
FR content. Varnish is used by Facebook, for example. Varnish stores a portion of its data in . virtual memory. The tool is configured via VCL (Varnish Configuration Language) files; this enables the definition of extremely detailed management rules. Lastly, Varnish supports ESI (Edge Side Includes) tags.
Varnish is distributed under the BSD License. SMILE
. WWW
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Other Among the different products available in the field of HTTP accelerators, the following tools can also be added to the list:
Name URL / Website
nginx http://nginx.org
FR
.
SMILE
. WWW
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OTHER
In this last category in the “Infrastructure” dimension, we will present additional open source tools that are particularly useful to system and network administrators.
In particular, we will be presenting CUPS (a print
server), Samba (for UNIX file exchanges on Windows FR
. workstations), ProFTPD (an FTP server) and BIND (a DNS server).
Given the diversity of the tools selected for this
SMILE category, the graphs below do not display the average .
scores. WWW
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CUPS Version studied: 1.6.1 Website: www.cups.org Vendor driven solution (Apple Inc.)
CUPS (Common UNIX Printing System) is a popular print server for UNIX systems. It was created in late 1999 by Michael Sweet and Andrew Senft, owners of Easy Software Products. It is used on both individual workstations and dedicated print servers. It can support a very
large number of printers, and offers administrative capacities (file management, accountancy, etc.) and compatibility with the traditional printing protocols IPP, AppSocket, LPD and SMB
FR (Windows). . CUPS is available under the GPL.
SMILE
. WWW
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Samba Version studied: 3.6.0 Website: www.samba.org Community driven solution
Samba is an SMB server for Windows workstations. Its first version dates back to 1992. It was written by Andrew Tridgell at Australian National University. In Windows, the SMB protocol is used for file and printer sharing. Samba enables the use of a
UNIX server to make these resources available to Windows clients, thus establishing compatibility between the two environments. Samba can also function as a domain controller
FR on smaller networks. . The community is eagerly awaiting the release of Samba 4.0. Samba is distributed under the GPL v3.
SMILE
. WWW
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ProFTPD Version studied: 1.3.4b Website: www.proftpd.org Community driven solution
ProFTPD is a very powerful, well documented open source FTP server. It includes advanced functionalities like chroot, virtual hosts and users, accountancy and quotas. ProFTPD uses access and configuration syntax that is similar to the syntax used by
Apache HTTP Server. ProFTPD allows the use of a MySQL database to manage FTP accounts in lieu of management by the machine’s users. Its architecture is modular, which has made it
FR possible for extensions to be written for SSL/TLS encryption support (FTPS protocol) and . authentication via RADIUS, LDAP and SQL databases. It is available under the GPL.
SMILE
. WWW
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BIND Version studied: 9.9.2-P1 Website: www.isc.org/software/bind Community driven solution
BIND is the benchmark for DNS servers. BIND’s origins date back to the 1980s, when it was created by four students at the University of California, Berkeley. Published by the Internet Software Consortium, BIND is a DNS server providing for both name
resolution via name servers and hosting of its own zone. It supports all advanced
functionalities, namely DNSSEC (since the rewriting of its code in the early 2000s). FR
. BIND is available under the BSD License. Version 10 is now in development.
SMILE
. WWW
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DEVELOPMENT AND INTERMEDIATE LAYERS DIMENSION
As its name indicates, the "Development and intermediate layers" dimension covers all the solutions useful to development functions, typically found between the Infrastructure and Application layers. It is also particularly well equipped with open source products. Beyond applications like CMSs, e-shops, document management solutions, etc., there is a broad panel of open source development solutions, such as Eclipse and frameworks like
Symfony and Django. It should be noted that some tools, like directories and databases, could FR
. have been classified in the Infrastructure dimension. More than 50 solutions are evaluated here for this dimension, and nearly 110 are listed in total, among the following categories:
SMILE . . Corporate directories . Cross-platform mobile . Databases frameworks . Big data . PKIs . BPM / Workflow . Identity authentication, WWW federation and management . Development tools . Load testing tools . Testing & Continuous integration . Search engines . ESBs . HTTP and application servers . Web development frameworks . MOM & EAI and libraries . Other
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CORPORATE DIRECTORIES
Corporate directories, also referred to as “electronic directories”, are a specialised type of database designed to contain hierarchically arranged information on a company’s organisation.
Most of the time, the data pertain to people (users)
and/or resources (printers and the like). But the use FR
. of corporate directories is not limited to text searches; they can also be used as address books, for user authentication, to define the company’s security policy and more.
There is a standard used in most corporate directors SMILE
. to perform queries (LDAP protocol). In the open source universe, OpenLDAP has the best reputation, even if tools like 389 Directory Server also boast a strong functional scope.
WWW
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389 Directory Server Version studied: 1.2.10.4 Website: http://directory.fedoraproject.org Vendor driven solution (Red Hat)
389 Directory Server, formerly Fedora Directory Server, is an LDAP server developed by Red Hat within the Fedora community. It is based on the source code of the venerable Netscape Directory Server, itself based on the original slapd code, which also gave rise to OpenLDAP.
This means its origins date back to 1996, even if the first version of Fedora Directory Server
came out in 2005.
FR 389 Directory Server implements the LDAP v3 protocol and stands out from its rival solutions . thanks to its graphical administration interface in Java and master-master replication support, thereby enabling read and write access redundancy. It should also be noted that 389 Directory Server can be used as a replacement for SunONE/JES Directory Server, thanks to its very similar code base, particularly useful given that SunONE appears to have been dropped
SMILE since its acquisition by Oracle. . 389 Directory Server is distributed under the GPL. It is mostly written in C, with some portions like the GUI in Java.
WWW
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FR
.
SMILE
. WWW
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OpenLDAP Version studied: 2.4.33 Website: www.openldap.org Community driven solution
OpenLDAP is an open source company directory. It is a sound alternative to commercial directories. OpenLDAP was created in 1998 by Kurt Zeilenga. OpenLDAP implements the most recent version of the LDAP protocol (v3), while providing a
scalable architecture through an overlay system and back end. Each overlay provides additional functionalities (dynamic group, access log, password policy, etc.). In addition,
FR directory data can be stored in different back ends (LDAP proxy, query transfers to Perl or . Shell scripts, or a SQL database, etc.). OpenLDAP also incorporates replication and delegation mechanisms, enabling for example the implementation of an LDAP directory distributed to multiple sites, with each one administrating its own branch.
OpenLDAP is distributed under the OpenLDAP Public License, is compatible with the GPL and SMILE
. has been validated by the Free Software Foundation. OpenLDAP is developed in C and runs on Linux, on different BSD variants on UNIX based OSs (Android, AIX, HP-UX, Solaris, etc.), as well as on Windows and Mac OS X.
WWW
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Other Among the different products available in the field of corporate directories, the following tools can also be added to the list:
Name URL / Website
Apache Directory http://directory.apache.org
OpenDS http://www.opends.org FR
.
SMILE .
WWW
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DATABASES
Databases have become key components of the IT landscape. They are used to store a batch of information in a pre-defined structure. Current technologies make it possible to organise and
structure a database such as to be able to easily
handle its content and efficiently store very large
FR volumes of information. . Databases like MySQL and PostgreSQL are relational DBs that use SQL to query their data. Since 2009 a new trend has appeared: NoSQL, which
is an alternative to SQL and the relational model and SMILE
. which provides a high level of scalability (expandability). The major DBMSs today are open source solutions like MySQL and PostgreSQL.
WWW
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MySQL Version studied: 5.5.28 Website: www.mysql.com Vendor driven solution (Oracle)
MySQL is a fast, robust RDBMS, deployed especially in Internet environments. MySQL was created by Michael “Monty” Widenius in 1995. Initially focusing primarily on speed and simplicity, MySQL has gradually adopted new
functionalities reserved for traditional "corporate" databases. MySQL supports transactions, referential integrity, stored procedures, triggers, asynchronous replication, clustering and
FR data recovery in the event of a system failure. . MySQL uses the GPL and comes with exception linking, which enables the use of client libraries in programmes not compatible with the GPL. An Enterprise edition is also available, providing a number of graphics tools and support from its vendor company, Oracle. MySQL is
widely used at companies the likes of Google and Facebook, and by major websites like SMILE
. Wikipedia. MySQL is developed in C and C++ and can run on a very broad range of platforms, whether UNIX (Linux, Solaris, BSD, etc.) or Windows based.
WWW
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FR
.
SMILE
. WWW
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PostgreSQL Version studied: 9.2.1 Website: www.postgresql.org Community driven solution
PostgreSQL is the most complete open source RDBMS available today. PostgreSQL is a follow- up to Ingres. The project was launched by Michael Stonebraker in 1985 and the first version built using the current architecture was released in 1995.
The functional scope of PostgreSQL is vast and comparable to other Enterprise databases on the market. It supports stored procedures, triggers, custom functions, function indexes,
FR transactions, custom rules to modify the query execution path, a wide variety of data types, . legacy tables, full text searches, synchronous and asynchronous replication and more. Its performance and stability allow it to be integrated with even the most demanding production platforms.
PostgreSQL uses the PostgreSQL License, approved by the Open Source Initiative. SMILE . PostgreSQL is written in C and can run on a very large number of platforms, whether UNIX (Linux, Solaris, BSD, etc.) or Windows based.
WWW
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MongoDB Version studied: 2.6.7 Website: http://www.mongodb.org Vendor driven solution (10gen, Inc.)
MongoDB is a document orientated database that is part of the NoSQL movement and that allows for document storage in BSON format (a binary form of JSON). It is upgradable in decentralised environments via replication and sharding mechanisms. Its
particularly successful integration with most programming languages and its quality documentation have earned MongoDB its great popularity. MongoDB takes advantage of the
FR sharp upturn in interest for document databases that are better aligned with modern . environments that need to handle extremely heterogeneous data and for which relational DBMSs are not necessarily the most appropriate. It should be noted that many open source projects tend to integrate MongoDB for use as a storage engine. These include eZ Publish (which plans to use a NoSQL engine in its next major release) and Doctrine ODM (which
SMILE applies the very popular ORM logic to a MongoDB database). Smile has already successfully . integrated MongoDB with Magento to simplify the storage and handling of large volume catalogues. Further, the database is supported by a commercial entity, 10gen, Inc. MongoDB is
distributed under the Affero GPL. WWW It is written in C++.
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Redis Version studied: 2.2.13 Website: http://redis.io Vendor driven solution (VMware)
Redis is a key-value data warehouse from the NoSQL movement. The project is sponsored by
VMware. It was first published in 2009, by Salvatore Sanfilippo and Pieter Noordhuis.
Like most key-value data stores, Redis offers a HTTP REST interface. Its originality in relation
FR to other available solutions lies in the fact that Redis includes a set of data manipulation . functions that are primarily orientated toward handling stored character strings, giving Redis the capacity to build queries that are slightly more complex than its competitors, traditionally limited to CRUD (Create Read Update Delete) operations. The strong performance of Redis in both read and write modes positions it as an excellent choice for the implementation of cache
SMILE back ends and session managers. The solution's popularity has increased of late and the . product can now be used in some of the most popular open source solutions like Magento and Drupal. The database's persistence makes it an excellent alternative to Memcached which, although it boasts high performance levels, does not provide for data security or service continuity in the event of a failure (a key criterion for e-commerce solutions in
particular). WWW Redis is distributed under the BSD License. It is written in C.
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FR .
SMILE
. WWW
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Cassandra Version studied: 1.1.7 Website: http://cassandra.apache.org Foundation driven solution (Apache)
Cassandra is another NoSQL database. Initially developed by Facebook in 2008, it was later released and its development is now the work of the Apache Foundation. Cassandra is a column oriented database. Designed for massively distributed roll-outs (potentially across multiple datacentres), Cassandra is one of the most effective databases
wherever there is a need to respond to massive data processing issues. Further, its FR
. completely decentralised architecture makes it highly resistant to failures. Like most column oriented databases, it is also particularly well suited to business intelligence functions. Cassandra is distributed under the Apache License.
It is written in Java. SMILE
. WWW
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Riak Version studied: 1.0 Website: http://docs.basho.com/riak/latest/ Vendor driven solution (Basho Technologies, Inc.)
Riak is the Swiss army knife of unstructured data storage. Initially built as a key-value data store, very similar to Amazon DynamoDB, Riak has since evolved and now integrates highly advanced functions that have allowed it to stand out from the competition:
. Inclusion of MapReduce as an advanced query solution;
. Addition of support for secondary indexes for query writing;
FR . Integrated full text search engine with a syntax that (partially) replicates that of Solr, . and that is capable of covering any basic needs; . Support for relationships between objects; powerful graph oriented mechanisms. The solution's main strengths lie in its ability to integrate third party languages and its easy-to-
administrate cluster. Its vendor support is a definite plus. It should be noted that the solution SMILE
. also has a hook mechanism that can be used to introduce complex functional logic into the storage layer or for integration with third party environments. These validators can be written in Erlang (the language used by Riak's core) or in JavaScript (via the Rhino engine). This makes it one of the most scalable solutions in this segment. It is true that Riak's performance is not the best in our selection of NoSQL solutions, but its performance levels remain very high all the
WWW same. In our opinion, this is an acceptable trade-off in most cases, taking into account the high level of functionalities provided by the solution.
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FR .
SMILE . Couchbase Version studied: 2.0 Website: http://www.couchbase.com/ Vendor driven solution (Couchbase)
WWW Couchbase is one of the most dynamic solutions on the market. It is compatible with CouchDB, which was made popular by the Apache Foundation, and provides a real advantage in terms of managing server clusters. Additionally, Couchbase shares most of the qualities of CouchDB, first and foremost its support of views built using MapReduce and selective replications between databases. It is also a top tier solution for the construction of mobile applications, given that the database can be deployed to mobile terminals as synchronised (bidirectional) nodes, providing for simpler offline mode management. Couchbase also boasts advantageous bidirectional replication functionalities between datacentres, to ensure service continuity in the event of unavailability of the service. The bidirectional approach further allows the use of both datacentres simultaneously, so that data is as local as possible to the user. Additionally, Couchbase provides key-value storage support that is compatible with the Memcached API. The major advantage of Couchbase in this area is the possibility of decentralising the Memcached API, providing additional security to applications built on this technology (session and cache storage). This makes it easier to build secure, multi-tenant Memcached clusters.
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FR .
SMILE . Other Among the different products available in the field of databases, the following tools can also be added to the list:
WWW
Name URL / Website
Berkeley DB http://www.oracle.com/us/products/database/berkeley-db
db4o http://www.db4o.com
Apache Derby http://db.apache.org/derby
Firebird http://www.firebirdsql.org
HSQLDB http://hsqldb.org
Ingres http://www.ingres.com/products/ingres-database
SQLite http://www.sqlite.org
CouchDB http://couchdb.apache.org
Neo4j http://neo4j.org
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Voldemort http://www.project-voldemort.com
FR
.
SMILE
. WWW
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BIG DATA
The emergence of the big data phenomenon is intrinsically linked to the fact that information and the capacity to process it have become key factors in a company's success.
With these issues of large volumes and different
typologies, the technologies of the past quickly FR
. reached their limits and it was necessary to reinvent a number of tools so that they could be adapted to these new constraints: storage and processing of decentralised data, collection of heterogeneous data
from multiple sources, and data returns. SMILE
. It is noteworthy that most of the basic bricks in the big data movement are open source, structured around Hadoop. Moreover, some actors who had historically been hostile to open source (e.g. Microsoft) are now abandoning their proprietary solutions and rallying WWW around the Hadoop banner.
Given the diversity of the tools selected for this category, the graphs below do not display the average scores.
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Hadoop Version studied: 1.1.01.0 Website: http://hadoop.apache.org Foundation driven solution (Apache)
Hadoop has become the benchmark platform for writing applications to store and process decentralised data in batch mode. Hadoop is presented as a framework that provides a number of key bricks to developers and
administrators:
. The infrastructure components for the set-up of data storage and processing clusters. FR
. Data storage relies on HDFS, a distributed file system that houses data for processing; . MapReduce: a distributed processing Java framework used to develop processing tasks to be performed on cluster data; . Hadoop also supplies a set of tools that can launch and monitor tasks at the cluster
SMILE level. . The main idea behind Hadoop is that HDFS automatically distributes the data across the cluster, and processing is performed as close as possible to the data level (a function made possible by MapReduce). In this way, data transfers are reduced to the strict minimum necessary. WWW Hadoop is written in Java and is supported by multiple US start-ups. Further, it has become a sort of de facto standard for writing data processing applications and has won over all of the major players in the sector.
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FR .
SMILE . Pig Version studied: 0.10.0 Website: http://pig.apache.org
Foundation driven solution (Apache) WWW
Pig is a data processing tool that is part of the Hadoop suite. It provides for the writing of scripts executed on the Hadoop infrastructure without having to first write Java tasks using the MapReduce framework. In addition, it has functionalities for loading data from an outside source to the HDFS cluster and others for exporting data for use by third party applications. Pig is based on its own language, Pig Latin. It also provides access to Java's application layer. Pig Latin is a fairly simple language that allows developers from backgrounds other than Java to produce processing scripts that can run on Hadoop far more quickly. In practice, Pig is chiefly used to load external data to HDFS files and to convert files in order to facilitate their analysis, especially in cases involving multiple steps (due to the procedural nature of the language and its ability to store temporary results).
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FR .
SMILE
.
Hive
WWW Version studied: 0.9.0 Website: http://hive.apache.org Foundation driven solution (Apache)
Like Pig, Hive allows developers not proficient in Java to write data processing tasks. But where Pig has defined a procedural language used to work the cluster, Hive can define SQL type structured tables and feed them with data either from the cluster or from outside sources. Once the table layout has been defined and the data inserted, the HiveQL language can be used to query those tables. HiveQL's syntax is similar to SQL and can be used to perform most of the read operations required for classic analyses (field selection, sum, total, sort, join, etc.). Hive's biggest advantage is its ability to make use of the extremely widespread knowledge of SQL, giving developers a very fast learning curve for performing data extractions.
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FR .
SMILE
. WWW
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Sqoop Version studied: 0.9.0 Website: http://sqoop.apache.org Foundation driven solution (Apache)
Sqoop is an Apache Foundation project whose goal is to improve the cohabitation of traditional DBMS type systems with the Hadoop platform. It allows data to be exported from the database and normally costly processing to be
performed using the Hadoop cluster. Data collection systems working with databases are the FR
. most common today. In this way, data can be collected from traditional applications that are unable to connect to the cluster. Conversely, processing results can be exported to a third party database for exploitation by an
application (e.g. for reporting purposes). SMILE
. Sqoop was designed with the primary objective of providing high performance levels in mass import and export operations.
WWW
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Other Among the different products available in the field of big data, the following tools can also be added to the list:
Name URL / Website
Apache Mahout http://mahout.apache.org/
FR Apache Flume http://flume.apache.org/ .
SMILE
. WWW
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BPM / WORKFLOW
Leave requests, document validation and paperless customer relations: these processes are at the core of the information systems used by companies and government agencies.
BPM (Business Process Management) solutions offer a
modern approach in which users are largely released FR
. from technical constraints when modelling, deploying and optimising their processes. BPM solutions provide for graphic process modelling, form generation and adaptation, and online request
SMILE monitoring. . In the world of open source solutions, quality tools are available, such as Bonita, the flagship open source BPM product.
WWW
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Bonita Version studied: 5.5.9 Website: http://www.bonitasoft.com Vendor driven solution (BonitaSoft)
First developed by Bull in the early 2000s, the product has been driven by the open source vendor BonitaSoft since 2009. Bonita offers an extremely user-friendly graphic process modeller that makes it possible to
deploy simple BPM applications (e.g. the publication of leave request forms on an Intranet site) in just a few clicks. The forms are automatically generated by the solution or can be
FR configured in advance. Access to and processing of pending requests are intuitive, thanks to . the “user XP” interface, which is very similar to a mail client. But Bonita’s real strength lies in its system of connectors, available in their default form or custom developed. A community edition of Bonita is available under the GPL v2. The SP (Subscription Pack)
edition is subject to subscription and comes with additional functionalities, as well as support. SMILE . Bonita is developed in JEE, the language also used to develop new connectors. Some advanced configurations are done in Groovy.
WWW
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jBPM Version studied: 5.3 Website: www.jboss.org/jbpm Vendor driven solution (JBoss)
jBPM is developed by a community with the support of JBoss. As the benchmark for open source BPM in recent years, many software companies have integrated jBPM with their solutions. The product does currently suffer from a lack of community dynamics. The latest
version is promising though, and the product remains a key technical BPM brick for projects,
particularly in open source environments.
FR jBPM is an excellent BPM engine, being both powerful and lightweight. Version 5 has been . announced as BPMN 2.0 compatible. When used as a software brick, it is easy to configure and enjoys a comprehensive API. Eclipse (developer) and web (functional user) interfaces enable graphical workflow management, but suffer from a degree of immaturity that makes them unsuited to management by non-technical users. In addition, the web interface is only
SMILE available via Drools (a rule engine), which cancels out the tool’s chief advantage, its simplicity. . jBPM is published under the LGPL and is developed in Java.
WWW
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Activiti Version studied: 5.11 Website: www.activiti.org Vendor driven solution (Alfresco)
Activiti is published by the producer of ECM, Alfresco, which wanted to develop an alternative to jBPM for its own purposes. In electing to make it a stand-alone component, Alfresco is banking on the dynamic nature of open source (the product has been handed over to the
Spring community) and aims to make it the benchmark for open source BPM. Technically,
Activiti is at the cutting edge and enjoys excellent dynamics thanks to the widespread
FR popularity of its sponsor. . Today, Activiti is a lightweight, robust BPM engine. Its youth makes it better suited as a BPM brick integrated with more complex projects, as is the case at Alfresco, for example. Activiti does however boast user-friendly process design interfaces that allow functional and technical teams to work together on process modelling. Nonetheless, its actual
SMILE implementation necessarily requires a solid technical background. . Activiti is published under the Apache License and is developed in Java.
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DEVELOPMENT TOOLS
This section presents the tools useful in the development of applications, particularly web applications. It includes project management tools like Redmine
and Maven, automation tools like Ant and Phing,
development environments like Eclipse, ticket FR
. managers like MantisBT, source code management tools like Subversion and Git, and collaboration and software engineering solutions like Tuleap. As we will see, there are also excellent open source
development bricks that can be used to build SMILE
. ambitious projects under optimal conditions.
Given the diversity of the tools selected for this category, the graphs below do not display the average
WWW scores.
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Ant Version studied: 1.8.4 Website: http://ant.apache.org Foundation driven solution (Apache)
Ant ("Another Neat Tool") is a task automation tool used throughout the software development cycle. Ant was designed by James Duncan Davidson in 2000 (when the first version was released).
Ant allows for the automation of repetitive operations throughout a project, similarly to Make commands. Ant is mainly used in Java projects, although it can also be used in projects
FR utilising other technologies. The tasks most commonly entrusted to Ant include external tool . execution (like Checkstyle and FindBugs), documentation generation (Javadoc), programme compilation, archiving, back-ups, etc. Ant is distributed under the Apache License and is supported by the foundation of the same
name. SMILE . Ant is written in Java.
WWW
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Phing Version studied: 2.4.14 Website: www.phing.info/trac Community driven solution
Phing is an IT project life cycle management tool inspired by Ant and originally developed by Andreas Aderhold. In particular, it is used to automate recurring tasks during IT project developments, such as the launch of unit testing, code analysis tools and delivery
management.
Phing, like Ant, uses an XML file to define a list of actions (the "target"), each containing one
FR or more tasks (file copies, command launches, etc.), that can be launched from the command . line. It incorporates a long list of native tasks (execution of PHPUnit testing, code analysis with PHP CodeSniffer, PHP Mess Detector, file handling, work with source code version managers, etc.) that is very easy to expand, depending on needs, via the intermediary of new PHP classes. Distributed through the PEAR package manager, Phing can use ancillary libraries like
SMILE Xdebug and phpcs for some of its tasks. . Phing is distributed under the LGPL (Lesser Public General License) v3. Phing is developed in PHP and is compatible with the Windows, Linux and Mac OS X platforms.
WWW
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Capistrano Version studied: 2.13.5 Website: http://capistranorb.com/ Community driven solution To build a PHP project, Phing is most commonly used. Phing can also be used to manage the post-build segment, i.e. roll-out. Where the roll-out process only involves updating a source code on a single server, Phing tasks can be created to handle this. However, when multiple servers need to be updated, if a copy of the previous delivery needs to be stored for a
possible rollback, if services need to be restarted, or if multiple operations need to be
performed (purging a cache, tracing deliveries, etc.), it quickly becomes clear that it is not
FR realistic to use a tool designed to manage builds as a web application roll-out tool. Capistrano
. was specifically designed to handle web application roll-outs. To this end, it contains a large number of native functionalities that greatly simplify roll-out scripting. Capistrano can natively, without plug-ins, parallelise roll-out, archive past roll-outs, set up an SSH tunnel to perform roll-outs via forwarding, and supply a broadcast shell connected to
SMILE each target server. . Many plug-ins are available for managing your projects' specific roll-out needs, such as "Capifony" for Symfony and "Magentify" for Magento. Capistrano is developed in Ruby and inspired by Rake.
Capistrano is distributed under the MIT License. WWW
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Composer Version studied: 1.0.0-alpha6 Website: http://getcomposer.org/ Community driven solution Composer is a PHP dependency management tool. It allows you to specify a list of dependencies for your project. Once the dependencies have been specified, you can install them, update them and load them into your project (PSR-0 autoloading). Composer can scan different source code repositories: Git, Mercurial,
Subversion and even higher level repositories like BitBucket and Github. Composer uses another open source tool, packagist.org, to display the list of dependencies to be installed
FR and their location on the Internet. Packagist.org is an index of dependencies packaged for . Composer. This package index is a public index. If you need a private index, this can be obtained using Satis. Composer can scan multiples indexes and then make use of packagist.org if it cannot
locate your package (http://getcomposer.org/doc/articles/handling-private-packages-with- SMILE
. satis.md). Composer is currently available in an alpha version. Nonetheless, the tool has already been unanimously adopted by major actors in PHP: Symfony 2, Magento2, Zend Framework 2, EZPublish 5 and more.
WWW Composer is distributed under the MIT License. Composer, Packagist and Satis are developed in PHP.
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FR .
SMILE . Eclipse Version studied: 4.2 Website: www.eclipse.org
Foundation driven solution (Eclipse) WWW
Eclipse is a scalable, multi-functional development environment, initiated by IBM in 2001. Designed around a shared platform coupled with spin-off components, the project is in fact a composite of many sub-projects specific to the underlying technologies. The purpose of Eclipse is to provide tools that foster productivity, but not just in respect of software coding. It includes integrated development environments, but also design, modelling, test, reporting and other environments. Although Eclipse is written in Java, it can be used for developments in any programming language. Eclipse is published under the EPL (Eclipse Public License). The Eclipse Foundation is now the official sponsor. Eclipse is written in Java.
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FR .
SMILE
.
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MantisBT Version studied: 1.2.11 Website: www.mantisbt.org Community driven solution
MantisBT is a very popular web based bug tracking tool (covering anomalies, upgrade requests, service requests and more) that is suited to any type of project. Kenzaburo Ito, who launched the project in November 2000, was soon joined by Jeroen Latour, Victor Boctor and
Julian Fitzell in 2002; the four now form the core development team for the product.
MantisBT allows for project based ticket allocation. Requests can also be classified using a
FR variety of criteria (type, category, severity, priority, public/private, etc.). In particular, the tool . offers functionalities like a customisable status chaining workflow, a notification system, a filtered ticket search form, a personalised page for each user that lists the tickets they opened and those assigned to them, user rights management, an admin section for each project in
which users can be added/deleted, sub-project creation and more. SMILE
. MantisBT is distributed under the GNU GPL v2. MantisBT is developed in PHP and requires the use of a database (MySQL, PostgreSQL, MS SQL or DB2). It has primarily been tested for Web Apache and IIS servers.
WWW
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Maven Version studied: 3.0.4 Website: http://maven.apache.org Foundation driven solution (Apache)
Maven is a technical project management tool. Its development is mainly performed by the Apache Foundation. Maven was designed for project standardisation and use. It can also manage a project’s
dependencies, perform complete automated deliveries, deploy applications and simplify project roll-outs on a continuous integration platform. Maven also offers advanced
FR integration of numerous reporting tools (Surefire, PMD, Checkstyle, NCSS, etc.). Maven was . designed for Java projects in general and for Java EE projects in particular. Maven is distributed under the Apache License.
It is written in Java. SMILE
. WWW
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Subversion Version studied: 1.7.7 Website: http://subversion.apache.org/ Foundation driven solution (Apache)
Subversion (SVN) is a centralised version control system. A spin-off of CVS, its development was initialised in 2000 by the company CollabNet. It became an official Apache Foundation project in 2010.
A popular standard, it has been selected by many open source software communities. Numerous tools and resources are available to turn it to its best advantage. Apache
FR Subversion was written to overcome the shortcomings of CVS, whose implementation (but . not its concept) had been called into question. A number of additional functionalities have been included: directories and metadata are versioned, revision numbers are global across the entire data warehouse, files can be renamed and/or moved without losing their histories,
commits are atomic, etc. SMILE
. Subversion is distributed under the Apache and BSD Licenses. It is written in C.
WWW
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Git Version studied: 1.8.0 Website: http://git-scm.com Community driven solution
Git is a distributed version control system (DVCS). In particular, it is used in the Linux kernel and for PHP. It is an open source software solution created by Linus Torvalds in 2005. Among other functions, Git is used to “commit” locally, then to push a set of local commits to other developers. It also enables the use of a development workflow, such as subjecting a
code’s transmission to approval by one of the developers. Git’s ability to easily create and FR
. administrate branches makes it a top-grade tool for open source project development. Git is distributed under the GPL v2. It is written in C, Bourne Shell and Perl.
SMILE
. WWW
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Redmine Version studied: 2.1.2 Website: www.redmine.org Community driven solution
Redmine is a collaborative tool used to manage projects via a secure web interface. It was created by Jean-Philippe Lang in 2006. Redmine offers the following functionalities: . secure multi-project management;
FR . user, profile and rights management, depending on the project; . . document management, classification by category, owner, title, date, etc.; . management of requests, their status, their priority and their history, and assignment of requests to the relevant project participants;
. project status views in the form of a Gantt diagram; SMILE
. . email and RSS feed notifications; . etc. Redmine is distributed under the GPL v2.
It was developed in Ruby on the basis of the Ruby on Rails framework. WWW
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Tuleap Version studied: 4.0.21 Website: http://www.enalean.com/en/products/tuleap-suite/ Vendor driven solution (Enalean)
Tuleap is an open source software suite that provides the tools that companies need for software development and efficient collaboration. Also referred to as a software forge or ALM
(Application Lifecycle Management), Tuleap is developed by the company Enalean.
Tuleap's software is used by tens of thousands of users around the world for their FR
. professional developments, at major companies the likes of STMicroelectronics, Ericsson, Orange and Renault. Tuleap is a complete ALM suite, providing bug, test and risk tracking, version control, continuous integration, document management, collaboration tools and more.
SMILE Tuleap is distributed under the GPL. Tuleap's vendor, Enalean, based its economic model on . the provision of professional services and support. Tuleap is primarily written in PHP.
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FR
.
SMILE
. WWW
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Other Among the different products available in the field of development tools, the following can also be added to the list:
Name URL / Website
CVS http://cvs.nongnu.org
GForge http://gforge.org/gf
FR Trac http://trac.edgewall.org . Mercurial http://mercurial.selenic.com
Ivy http://ant.apache.org/ivy/
SMILE Gradle http://www.gradle.org/ . NetBeans http://netbeans.org
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TESTING & CONTINUOUS INTEGRATION
Continuous integration is a set of practices designed to improve the quality of application deliveries by checking that the result of each source code change does not lead to any regressions (i.e. additional errors
relating to the added code).
To implement continuous integration platforms, many FR
. quality open source tools exist, such as Continuum and Hudson. Graphics rendering (results display) solutions can also be found in connection with these tools.
SMILE . Given the diversity of the tools selected for this category, the graphs below do not display the average scores.
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Continuum Version studied: 1.3.8 Website: http://continuum.apache.org Foundation driven solution (Apache)
Continuum is the Apache Foundation’s continuous integration tool. It offers all the functionalities one might expect of such a tool: configurable automations, of course, but also build distributions to slaves, configuration of different execution
environments, highly detailed rights management and integrated reporting on unit test
results. FR
. The functionality that makes Continuum stand out from the rest is the possibility of grouping modules/projects together in project groups. Within these groups, the various configurations and rights are pooled, which provides for simple management of a series of projects, even for groups with rapidly increasing numbers.
SMILE Continuum is distributed under the Apache License. . It is written in Java.
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FR
.
SMILE
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Jenkins Version studied: 1.489 Website: http://jenkins-ci.org Community driven solution Jenkins is a continuous integration tool that is a fork of Hudson, a continuous integration tool initially developed by Oracle/Sun. Jenkins can automate project building and can generate quality and testing reports. Jenkins is chiefly used in the continuous integration solutions market. Jenkins’s major asset is its
ecosystem, which comprises hundreds of plug-ins, as well as its simpler, less austere interface
than Continuum’s. Project generation can be initiated in various ways: planning mechanisms FR
. similar to cron, intergenerational dependencies, or queries on specific URLs. Jenkins is distributed under the MIT and Creative Commons Licenses. It is written in Java.
SMILE
. WWW
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Selenium Version studied: 2.25.0 Website: http://seleniumhq.org/projects/ide Community driven solution
Selenium is an interface testing tool. The project began in 2004 at ThoughtWorks in Chicago, thanks to Jason Huggins who wanted to test the response times of various applications (Python, Plone, etc.).
Selenium is based on Selenium IDE, for the recording of interface tests from Firefox and their storage for playback with Selenium. This tool is very useful in confirming that an interface
FR conforms to expectations. In addition, it can be integrated with a continuous integration . platform in order to automate interface testing. Users can choose to utilise the records or to modify the scripts manually. Selenium is distributed under the Apache License.
SMILE
. WWW
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PMD Version studied: 5.0.0 Website: http://pmd.sourceforge.net Community driven solution
PMD, also known as “Project Mess Detector” or “Project Meets Deadline”, is a static code analysis tool designed to detect the most common programming errors. By using a system of scalable rules, PMD can detect empty try/catch statements, dead code,
overcomplicated expressions and copied/pasted code (thanks to its CPD plug-in). PMD can also calculate cyclomatic source code complexity, an interesting indicator when assessing
FR software quality. . PMD is licensed under a BSD-style licence. PMD analyses Java source code, JavaScript source code and XML/XSL files. There is also an equivalent for analysing PHP code (PHPMD, a.k.a. PHP Mess Detector).
SMILE The rules can be written using XPath expressions or Java classes (or PHP for PHPMD). .
WWW
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Other Among the different products available in the field of testing and continuous integration, the following tools can also be added to the list:
Name URL / Website
Sonar http://www.sonarsource.org
Checkstyles http://checkstyle.sourceforge.net
FR JUnit http://www.junit.org . PHPUnit https://github.com/sebastianbergmann/phpunit
FindBugs http://findbugs.sourceforge.net
SMILE CruiseControl http://cruisecontrol.sourceforge.net .
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ESBS
ESBs (Enterprise Service Buses) allow applications to communicate with one another, where these do not already include services or interfaces designed for that purpose.
ESBs are often presented as new architectures that
use different techniques like transformation, FR
. information transfers and routing, and web services. ESBs act as “mediators” between clients and service providers (applications). Benchmark solutions in the open source universe
SMILE include the likes of Talend ESB, Mule and Petals. .
WWW
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Talend ESB Version studied: 5.2.0 Website: http://www.talend.com/products/esb Vendor driven solution (Talend)
Talend, the leader in open source data management, has acquired Sopera, a German SOA and middleware platform vendor, known in its home country for its prestigious clients the likes of Deutsche Post, Zurich Insurance and Landesbank Berlin. The merger of the Talend Data
Management and Sopera ASF solutions resulted in the creation of a high level integrated
middleware tool that combines the flexibility of use of a corporate services management
FR framework with the power of data manipulation tools. . This has made Talend ESB a first class tool that allows for work on both Data Quality and Service Quality. The key features that set this solution apart are a very well equipped mediation platform, service distribution capacity, high level centralised technical monitoring
and integration of the Talend suite. It is a very solid product that merits exploration. SMILE
. Talend ESB is distributed under the Apache 2 License.
WWW
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Mule Version studied: 3.3 Website: www.mulesoft.org Vendor driven solution (MuleSoft, Inc.)
Mule is both an ESB and an EAI tool. The open source project was developed in 2003 by Ross Mason, now CTO of MuleSoft (formerly MuleSource). Mule is a platform that is conducive to multiple exchanges between different applications
that use a wide variety of communication protocols.
Mule supports more than 50 standards, protocols and technologies, including JMS, JDBC, TCP, FR
. UDP, multicast, HTTP, servlets, SMTP, POP3 and XMPP. Mule is also an exchange platform with substantial routing capacity. Its architecture was designed to be scalable. Mule is distributed under the CPAL (Common Public Attribution License).
It is written in Java. SMILE
. WWW
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Petals Version studied: 4.1 Website: http://petals.ow2.org Consortium (OW2) and vendor (Petals Link) driven solution
Petals ESB is an open source enterprise service bus, mediator and turntable for SOA infrastructures. The project is coordinated by Petals Link and is developed based on the OW2 Consortium’s forges.
Petals ESB is a response to the issues encountered with SOA: a flexible information system adapted to rapid IT developments, all of which with a real time system and openness to the
FR outside world. Integrated with Petals View (business supervision), Petals Master (SOA . governance) and Petals Studio (SOA development environment), Petals ESB is at the centre of a complete open source solution for SOA infrastructures. Petals supports and integrates many protocols and technologies, including JBI, SCA, BPEL, EIP, Java, JSR 181, XSLT, XSD WSDL,
SOAP, REST, POP, SMTP, IMAP and JSE Platform. SMILE
. Petals ESB is distributed under the LGPL.
WWW
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FR
.
SMILE
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Other Among the different products available in the field of ESBs, the following tools can also be added to the list:
Name URL / Website
JBoss Enterprise Service http://www.jboss.org/jbossesb
Bus
ServiceMix http://servicemix.apache.org FR . Synapse http://synapse.apache.org
SMILE
. WWW
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WEB DEVELOPMENT FRAMEWORKS AND LIBRARIES
A framework can reduce application development times by effectively responding to the most common problems encountered by developers. Frameworks typically include a wide range of ready to use
functionalities with well polished implementations, and use standard, well implemented design models.
FR The time saved on more general issues can then be . devoted to the custom aspects of the application. The frameworks available on the market are generally of high quality. Frameworks can be found for any
language (Java, PHP, JavaScript, Python, Ruby, etc.), SMILE
. with approaches than can vary widely. Most modern applications are based on web frameworks or libraries.
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Symfony Version studied: 2.1.4 Website: www.symfony.com Vendor driven solution (Sensio Labs)
Symfony is an MVC framework written in PHP. It is supported by Sensio Labs and distributed under the MIT License. After the significant success of Symfony 1.x, a complete overhaul gave rise to version 2.x, which takes advantage of the latest PHP developments: namespaces,
traits, closures, etc.
Symfony 2 is a series of weakly connected components, brought together in the form of a
FR distribution. The standard edition offers a full stack framework that includes a Doctrine or . Propel ORM, the Twig templating engine, SwiftMailer email management and a security component that handles user authentication. Adherence to the HTTP protocol and the MVC paradigm are the core of the framework, which
provides a complete development context with a comprehensive debugging tool. The SMILE
. developer has standardised access to the database, controllers and views. The framework also supplies a large library of utility functions. On the security end, symfony protects against traditional attacks on web applications (SQL injection, XSS, CSRF and so on). A set of bundles supplements its possible uses. Symfony 2 is the basis for many different
applications: Drupal 8, eZ 5, Composer, phpBB and more. WWW
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Zend Framework Version studied: 2.05 Website: http://framework.zend.com Vendor driven solution (Zend Technologies)
Zend Framework is one of the duo of leaders in PHP frameworks, alongside Symfony. It is one of the most commonly used PHP frameworks. The design of Zend Framework 2 uses a component based approach with very weak
connections. It can be installed via Composer or Pyrus. It includes a dependency injection component, HTTP cache management, and a basic project structure. As with version 1, each
FR component can be used separately. This version is based on PHP 5.3 and its upgrades, such as . namespace management. The framework provides the components needed to create MVC applications, with database abstraction. It should however be noted that Zend Framework does not include ORM, but rather a lightweight table gateway interface. From a general point of view, Zend Framework
SMILE offers a very broad range of components. Among others, these include Zend\Authentification . for user authentication, Zend\Soap for SOAP management, and services like ZendService\Twitter for social network integration of 140 character posts. There is no bridge available between Zend Framework 1 and Zend Framework 2; complete
refactoring is needed in order to switch between framework versions. WWW Zend Framework requires PHP 5.3.3 and supports all the databases managed by PDO.
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FR .
SMILE
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Spring Version studied: 3.1.3 Website: www.springsource.org Vendor driven solution (SpringSource, a division of VMware)
Spring is a portfolio of tools and libraries. It offers a complete stack as a sort of alternative to the standard Java EE stack. Spring is built on a lightweight container, which allows it to manage dependencies between
the objects forming the application. One of the portfolio’s many components can then be used on top of this lightweight container. The main components are Spring MVC, Spring ORM
FR and Spring AOP. Spring MVC is an annotation based, full REST MVC framework. The classes . that respond to user actions are annotated to indicate the method that should be used and the view that should be served. Spring ORM is a data access abstraction library. It provides an abstraction for the usual persistence frameworks like Hibernate, JDO and EclipseLink. Spring AOP is an aspect oriented programming framework. More simplistic that AspectJ, Spring AOP
SMILE nonetheless offers the usual AOP tools with different types of grafts and different ways of . expressing pointcuts. Spring is also used to load the application's various configurations, for transaction management and for a whole series of utility tools, making the tool a must in the Java
ecosystem. Spring is distributed under the Apache License. WWW
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FR
.
SMILE
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GWT Version studied: 2.5 Website: http://developers.google.com/web-toolkit/ Vendor driven solution (Google)
Google Web Toolkit is an RIA framework developed by Google, whose version 1.0 dates back to 17 May 2006. GWT enables the development of elaborate applications in pure Java that is "compiled" in
JavaScript and HTML. The result is an extensive application that adheres to web standards, unlike technologies such as Flex and Silverlight, which require the installation of a special
FR plug-in on client workstations. . GWT's XML format for interface descriptions allows for rapid development. However, because GWT generates all its interface views using XML and Java, it is, paradoxically, very difficult to integrate a HTML layout, which requires time-consuming, manual integration that consists of
a translation of the layout in XML and Java. SMILE . GWT is distributed under the terms of the Apache License. GWT can be used to create and maintain dynamic web applications that implement JavaScript, using the Java language and tools.
WWW
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FR
.
SMILE
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jQuery Version studied: 1.8.3 Website: http://jquery.com Community driven solution
jQuery is one of the main JavaScript libraries. It was created by John Resig in 2006. jQuery simplifies multi-browser JavaScript developments by providing an API that is independent of the underlying platform. The purpose of jQuery is to simplify the usual JavaScript manipulations: DOM manipulation, event management, and animation and
management of Ajax calls. Implementation follows a strict object based logic and could FR
. benefit from call chaining to simplify the writing. jQuery also has a compatibility mode, which allows its use at the same time as another JavaScript library. One of jQuery’s strong points is its simplified plug-in writing, which enables the reuse and functional encapsulation of behaviours. As the community is extremely responsive, a multitude of plug-ins are available
from the official website.
SMILE . jQuery is distributed under the MIT License or the GPL, providing for virtually restriction-free integration. jQuery has been integrated into numerous open source projects, including Microsoft ASP.NET Ajax; and Google supplies a CDN for the library’s files.
jQuery is compatible with the vast majority of browsers, including Internet Explorer 6. WWW
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Prototype Version studied: 1.7.1 Website: www.prototypejs.org Community driven solution
Prototype is a JavaScript library created by Sam Stephenson in 2005 in order to add Ajax support to the Ruby on Rails framework. Over and above its simplification of cross-browser and Ajax oriented development,
Prototype's goal is to enrich the JavaScript language and the DOM by attaching additional FR
. components and functionalities. In this way, JavaScript development with Prototype brings in a number of traditional object oriented programming concepts that are absent from standard JavaScript (constructors, legacy objects, etc.). It should however be noted that DOM expansion has raised a number of issues and is currently being withdrawn from the library.
SMILE Prototype is distributed under the MIT License. . Prototype is written in JavaScript and is compatible with the vast majority of browsers, including Internet Explorer 6.
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Play! Version studied: 2.0.4 Website: www.playframework.org Vendor driven solution (Zenexity)
Play! is a web-oriented Java framework created by Guillaume Bort in 2007. The principle behind Play! is to reduce the Java development life cycle and to limit the complexity of applications often associated with Java projects. It therefore includes the transposition to Java of the main concepts used in frameworks like RoR, Django and Symfony:
MVC, Convention over Configuration, Don’t Repeat Yourself, etc. Play! also has its own FR
. technical project manager, used to create CRUD interfaces, and its own application server (although it is also easy to deploy on a Tomcat server), which allows it, for example, to transparently reload the modified code on the fly. Play! is distributed under the Apache License 2.0. Zenexity contributes to the project and
SMILE performs product development and support. . Version 2 has been freed of Hibernate and uses libraries that are better suited to the (Ebean/Anorm) framework's stateless mode. It includes new form management capabilities and, above all, has separated from Groovy templating, using a Scala based engine instead.
Play! is written in Java and Scala, and the project manager in Python. WWW
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Django Version studied: 1.4.2 Website: https://www.djangoproject.com Foundation driven solution (Django Software Foundation)
Django is the benchmark for web frameworks in Python. It was created in 2005 by the company Lawrence Journal-World. Django is based on the MVC paradigm and on the principle of Don't Repeat Yourself,
supplying as many pre-existing components as possible, such as a database abstraction layer, FR
. a cache system, an infrastructure for form manipulation and data entry validation, a templating engine, an interface for the Python unit testing framework (PyUnit), CRUD interface creation tools and classic web attack prevention systems (XSS, CSRF, SQL injection, etc.). It should be noted that Django is available on the Google App Engine platform. Some of
the more noteworthy websites that use Django include Disqus, Pinterest and Instagram. SMILE . Django is distributed under the BSD License and developed in Python.
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Ruby on Rails Version studied: 3.2 Website: http://rubyonrails.org Community driven solution
Ruby on Rails is a web framework. The first version, written by David Heinemeier Hansson, was released in 2004. The Ruby on Rails framework is characterised by the concept of Don't Repeat Yourself, in the
name of which it supplies a number of code and interface generators (scaffolding). These generators mean the developer does not have to perform the operations over again or
FR recode similar standard functionalities. In the same spirit, the classic lower layers (security, . database access, HTTP management and Ajax calls) are integrated with the framework and allow the developer to concentrate on the business logic rather than the technical aspects. One of RoR’s success stories has been Twitter, even if some parts (not linked to the front
office) have been rewritten in Scala following load bearing issues with the Ruby interpreter. SMILE
. Ruby on Rails is developed in Ruby and distributed under the MIT License.
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Other Among the different products available in the field of web development frameworks and libraries, the following can also be added to the list:
Name URL / Website
CakePHP http://cakephp.org
Lithium http://lithify.me FR
. Prado http://www.pradosoft.com
PHPonTrax http://www.phpontrax.com
CodeIgniter http://codeigniter.com SMILE
. Jelix http://jelix.org
CXF http://cxf.apache.org
Yii http://www.yiiframework.com
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CROSS-PLATFORM MOBILE FRAMEWORKS
With the advent of the smartphone, mobile applications have increased exponentially in recent years. Many mobile operating systems now exist, engendering a corresponding increase in development
work.
To avoid duplicating development work, cross- FR
. platform open source mobile frameworks have been created, enabling porting to X operating systems from the same source code. This is the case, for example, with
PhoneGap/Cordova, which runs on the iPhone, SMILE
. Android, BlackBerry, Symbian and Palm, among others. In the world of open source solutions, three frameworks stand out far above the rest:
PhoneGap/Cordova, as mentioned above, as well as WWW Rhodes and Titanium. These frameworks use different techniques to obtain relatively similar results.
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Titanium Version studied: 2.1.3 Website: http://www.appcelerator.com/products/titanium-mobile-application-development Vendor driven solution (Appcelerator)
Titanium Mobile is a multi-platform framework that can generate native applications for iOS and Android. The tool has been developed by Appcelerator since 2009. Titanium's JavaScript API provides for multi-platform development and its SDK generates
native code from the JavaScript code. Titanium enables access to all smartphone and tablet PC functionalities, and a multitude of extensions are also available (PayPal, barcode scanner,
FR etc.). . This product is available under the Apache License 2.0, and Appcelerator offers a variety of support levels ranging from Indie to Professional. An application can be developed with Titanium in JavaScript, while its extensions are written in native code.
SMILE The databases manipulated are SQLite DBs. Titanium currently supports iOS and Android; . BlackBerry support is now in beta mode.
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PhoneGap/Cordova Version studied: 2.2.0 Website: www.phonegap.com Vendor driven solution (Adobe)
PhoneGap/Cordova is a tool used to create multi-platform mobile applications that adhere to web standards. PhoneGap is developed by Adobe, which acquired the company Nitobi, the solution's original developer. The project's source code was given to the Apache Foundation,
allowing it to remain open source and changing the name to Cordova.
FR The applications produced using PhoneGap are web applications, packaged by the tool so that . they can be launched by the target smartphone's native browser. PhoneGap also offers an API that can call up the smartphone’s advanced functionalities (GPS, accelerometer, video camera, etc.).
PhoneGap is distributed under the Apache License. SMILE
. It currently supports seven platforms, making it a complete and technically relevant solution for the development of multi-platform mobile applications. Adobe recently launched the service PhoneGap Build, which generates final applications from a web interface.
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PKIS
PKI-style solutions are used to make electronic relationships (i.e. email) secure by guaranteeing their confidentiality, authentication, integrity and non- repudiation, whether via signature certificates (email
or web access) or encryption (using two keys).
In making identity management secure, PKI tools FR
. simplify the development of transactional activities, whether external (contractual and commercial relationships) or internal (staff accountability). The available open source solutions include OpenSSL,
SMILE OpenCA, OpenTrust and EJBCA. .
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OpenCA Version studied: 1.1.1 Website: www.openca.org Community driven solution
OpenCA PKI is a component of a vast community project aiming to define standards for the development of PKI software. OpenCA PKI is the part dedicated to certificate management. With its modular design, it provides a web interface that can easily perform the majority of
common tasks (certificate issuing and revocation, testing, etc.). It can also perform rights restrictions. Combined with the other components of the PKI project, like the OCSP
FR responder, it contributes to the establishment of a complete PKI solution. . OpenCA PKI is currently covered by the BSD License. The 100% community based development was initiated in 2001 and continues to be actively pursued today. The solution is very heterogeneous but uses recognised current standards: the web server is
SMILE based on Apache 2 and the interface is written in Perl. Its encryption mechanisms are based . on OpenSSL. Finally, certificate management is handled by OpenLDAP.
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OpenSSL Version studied: 1.0.1c Website: www.openssl.org Community driven solution
OpenSSL is the open source library that has virtually been raised to the rank of a UNIX standard for its cryptographic functions. In particular, it completely implements the standard for PKIs, i.e. X509.
In addition to providing for encryption (and any possible hashing) using any known algorithm (MD5, AES, Blowfish, etc.), it can also issue and revoke certificates using X509 and is fully
FR capable of handling the certification chain. It can write and rewrite certificates in the most . common formats on the market, and many tools that are more advanced in terms of their usability are based on OpenSSL. The development of OpenSSL is old, dating back to before 1998. It is available under either
the Apache or the BSD License. SMILE . Developed in C, it remains the benchmark for Linux and BSD and is often used in all sorts of situations requiring encryption (ranging from 802.11 protocols to HTTPS communications, by way of SSH and FTPS).
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easyCA Version studied: 0.9.5 Website: http://sourceforge.net/projects/easyca Community driven solution
easyCA can manage small scale PKIs very quickly and simply. It was developed by Ferry Kemps in 2005. It departs almost entirely from the relative complexity of OpenSSL, enabling the very fast
creation of certification authorities and client certificates. It can also manage revocations and
offers export options for back-ups. FR
. Covered by the GPL, its development seems to have been broken off at present. Nonetheless, the basic script has been adopted by many independent projects and has been supplemented with new functionalities (OCSP, etc.). easyCA is written in Bash and requires no dependencies other than OpenSSL. It is easy to edit
SMILE and personalise to meet the needs of most system administrators. .
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EJBCA Version studied: 4.0.12 Website: www.ejbca.org Vendor driven solution (PrimeKey)
Developed since 2001, EJBCA is one of the most complete PKI management open source solutions there is. It is currently driven and actively maintained by Swedish company PrimeKey.
Like other PKI solutions, EJBCA can handle all aspects of standard X509 certification, from certificate issuing, CRL revocations to certification chains, and it is one of the only products to
FR implement a large number of the standards linked to specification X509 (OCSP responder, . CMS, and so forth). Its management of custom hardware such as HSMs is quite accurate. It also offers a complete admin interface with rights restrictions and a client portal. For several months now, EJBCA has also offered support for innovative protocols for iPhones
(SCEP standard) and partial support for emerging technologies (CMP, XKMS, etc.). EJBCA is SMILE
. covered by the LGPL and has only one edition. Commercial support can be subscribed to with the vendor, PrimeKey. From a technical perspective, EJBCA is entirely written in Java and is powered by a JEE application server, which could be either JBoss or GlassFish. Compatible with a vast array of
proprietary and open source database engines, it is one of the rare products that fully WWW complies with Java Beans specifications.
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IDENTITY AUTHENTICATION, FEDERATION AND MANAGEMENT
In this category, we will present the various identity authentication, federation and management solutions
now available.
These tools are relatively similar but their end goals
FR may differ in some cases. For example, the Shibboleth
. system provides unique multi-domain authentication. This makes it possible to include third party applications in its federated identity management system in order for users logging onto their unique
identification system to gain access to the application SMILE
. in question. LinOTP is also presented here. This is an OTP solution allowing for the use of passwords generated at a given time, which are valid over a short period of time
and only usable once. WWW Other open source solutions like CAS, FederID, LemonLDAP and OpenAM are also described.
Given the diversity of the tools selected for this category, the graphs below do not display the average scores.
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CAS Version studied: 3.5.1 Website: www.jasig.org/cas Community driven solution
Central Authentication Service is a web oriented Single Sign On system. It was created in the early 2000s at Yale University. In 2004, CAS came under the banner of special interest group Jasig.
CAS provides for Single Sign On between multiple sites, including on different domains, by means of one-time password tokens. The applications themselves never have access to the
FR user’s password, but rather log in the user after querying CAS. The communication protocol . used is SAML v2 and, in later versions of CAS, additional information can be transmitted at user login (groups, full name, etc.). CAS can use different types of back ends as the user database, such as an LDAP directory, a relational database, flat files and so on. CAS also supplies a proxy system that allows an application to transfer the user’s identification to
SMILE another back end application (whether web based or not), such as a web service or an IMAP . server. CAS is distributed under the Jasig (BSD-style) License. CAS is written in Java and supplies CAS clients for SSO integration with applications, in Java,
PHP and .NET. An Apache module is also available. WWW
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LemonLDAP::NG Version studied: 1.2.2 Website: http://lemonldap-ng.org Consortium driven solution (OW2)
LemonLDAP::NG is a Web SSO authentication system initiated in 2004 by the company Linagora, and now taken over by the OW2 Consortium. It requires the use of an Apache server, although its reverse proxy mode allows it to be used with applications running on a
different server (IIS, Tomcat, etc.).
LemonLDAP::NG makes it possible to base web application authentication on a LDAP
FR directory, but also on many other directories, databases and other systems such as OpenID . and SAML. It can also serve as a CAS, OpenID and SAML supplier. Access control can be defined by URL for each application in need of protection, and LemonLDAP::NG provides for access traceability. A web admin interface is also available.
The product is developed in Perl and is easy to personalise, in terms of both its behaviour and SMILE
. its appearance, via a template engine. LemonLDAP::NG is distributed under the GPL.
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OpenAM Version studied: 10.0.1 Website: http://forgerock.com/openam.html Vendor driven solution (ForgeRock)
OpenAM is a complete identity management solution. After Sun’s decision to stop developing OpenSSO, ForgeRock initiated a fork called OpenAM that it has continued to develop and maintain ever since. The company announced that it was going to pursue the release of new
versions of OpenAM by following the original Sun Microsystems roadmap.
OpenAM is an infrastructure brick that transparently performs Single Sign On functions for FR
. both web applications and middleware. OpenAM provides a solution that allows for simplified roll-outs of web access rights management projects: the universal gateway. OpenAM is distributed under the CDDL (Common Development and Distribution License, an open source licence created by Sun Microsystems and based on the Mozilla Public License,
SMILE version 1.1). . OpenAM is developed in Java.
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LinOTP Version studied: 2.4.4 Website: www.linotp.org Vendor driven solution (LSE Leading Security Experts GmbH)
LinOTP is an open source OTP solution maintained by the German company LSE (Leading Security Experts) GmbH. It is a robust, professional solution that can be integrated with a heterogeneous
infrastructure. LinOTP interfaces with all types of tokens that support the HMAC-OTP protocol, as well as with hybrid solutions like MOTP devices. OTP stands for “One-Time
FR Password”: OTPs are passwords generated at a given time, that are valid over a short period . of time and only usable once. These passwords are generated thanks to certain hardware, like tokens and even smartphones. LinOTP is distributed under the AGPL v3. An Enterprise edition is also available.
SMILE From a technical standpoint, LinOTP is a server written in Python, with which communications . are possible via simple HTTP queries. This means it can be administrated using tools other than those provided as part of the distribution. For example, a custom web interface could be developed and included in a special section of an Intranet site.
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Shibboleth Version studied: CDS 1.21, EDS 1.0.2, IP 2.3.8 Website: http://shibboleth.net Community driven solution
Shibboleth was developed by the consortium Internet2, which encompasses more than 200 universities and research centres, in order to simplify access to internal and external resources and to make such access more secure. Version 1.0 was published in 2003. Shibboleth provides for the set-up of an authentication system centralised between multiple
services, as well as the propagation of identities between these services. The goal of identity FR
. propagation is twofold: to delegate authentication to the user’s original establishment and to retrieve certain user attributes (to manage access control or to personalise content). Like the module for Apache HTTP Server, a number of extensions have been developed to allow various systems to interface with Shibboleth.
SMILE Shibboleth is distributed under the Apache License 2.0. . It is written in Java and C++.
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Other Among the different products available in the field of identity authentication, federation and management, the following tools can also be added to the list:
Name URL / Website
OpenSSO http://java.net/projects/opensso
FederID http://federid.ow2.org FR
.
SMILE
. WWW
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LOAD TESTING TOOLS
As the name suggests, load testing tools are applications that simulate heavy loads on a service. This could be a website, but also a database, LDAP
directory, web service, etc. The possibilities are many.
A graphical interface is usually available for entry of
FR the test scenarios: a path via a specific page, clicks on
. a given menu, completion of a particular form, form submission, etc. The scenarios themselves can be extremely complex, with loops, conditions, extraction and reuse of variables, variable loading from an
external file, etc. SMILE . These applications generally offer load testing output in the form of a large number of exportable graphs and statistics generated in reports. The open source tools in this category include JMeter,
WWW Tsung and FunkLoad.
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JMeter Version studied: 2.8 Website: http://jakarta.apache.org/jmeter Foundation driven solution (Apache)
JMeter is a traffic injection tool published by the Apache Foundation. It is used to conduct load testing on multiple server types: web, LDAP, database, etc. It has a graphical interface that simplifies the creation of user scenarios. The scenarios themselves
can be extremely complex, with loops, conditions, extraction and reuse of variables, variable
loading from an external file, and many types of graphs and statistics. FR
. JMeter is distributed under the Apache License. Its development started in 2001, written in Java.
SMILE
. WWW
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Tsung Version studied: 1.4.2 Website: http://tsung.erlang-projects.org Community driven solution
Tsung is a traffic injection tool used for load testing of different types of servers. It supports HTTP and a handful of spin-offs (SOAP and WebDAV), MySQL and PostgreSQL databases, and XMPP. Developed in Erlang, a language that specialises in high performance
applications, it is not subject to the traditional limitations of this type of tool and can
therefore simulate very heavy traffic. It also includes an automated statistics generator. FR
. Initially created by the French company Idealx, it is now developed by an independent community. It is available under the GPL.
SMILE
. WWW
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Other Among the different products available in the field of load testing tools, the following can also be added to the list:
Name URL / Website
CLIF http://clif.ow2.org
OpenSTA http://opensta.org
FR FunkLoad http://funkload.nuxeo.org . Gatling http://gatling-tool.org/
SMILE .
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SEARCH ENGINES
Search engines, like operating systems and databases, are the cornerstones of our daily lives. They allow us to locate and access resources (in the broadest sense of the term – web pages, images,
videos, files, etc.) indexed with a series of keywords.
FR Search engines usually consist of two services:
. indexing and searches. They can generally be differentiated by their indexing capacity (format, speed and relevance algorithm) and by their linguistic processing functions (plurals,
SMILE conjugations, phonetics, etc.). . In the world of open source, the market is dominated by the search engines Lucene and Solr. These two are quite often associated with the best web applications.
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Lucene Version studied: 4.0 Website: http://lucene.apache.org Foundation driven solution (Apache)
Driven by the Apache Foundation, the Lucene project is the solution selected by Wikipedia, among others, to index and perform searches on its content. Lucene is, without a doubt, the most well known, most widely used and most dynamic search tool on the open source
market. It was released for free downloading by Doug Cutting in March 2000.
First and foremost, Lucene is a content search and indexing library. Like most search engines,
FR Lucene is based on the concept of automated indexing, in other words, processing input data . all at once and assigning them multiple links. On the functional side, Lucene supports searches for related forms of the same word (plural or singular, conjugations, tenses, etc.), synonym management, configurable relevance and more. It handles all of this with an
exceptional level of performance. SMILE
. Initially distributed under the LGPL, Lucene is now available under the Apache License. Lucene is written in Java. It can be integrated with Java applications but also with applications in other languages like Ruby, Perl, PHP, C++ and more.
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Solr Version studied: 4.0 Website: http://lucene.apache.org/solr Foundation driven solution (Apache)
Solr is an overlay of Lucene that adds functionalities and simplifies the roll-out of certain Lucene functions known to be excessively technical. Its development was initiated by CNET Networks, which decided to publish their work in 2006. Solr is a corporate search server that centralises indexing and results serving operations. Solr
can communicate with other applications via many protocols based on open standards. It also FR
. offers an admin interface in web mode. One of Lucene’s major characteristics is its capacity to index the content by field or by attribute, meaning that a document is not analysed as a simple set of words; rather it is made of fields, with each field being a string of words (terms). Solr makes it possible to take full advantage of this functionality. This allows for much more
detailed management of relevance and advanced searches.
SMILE . Also noteworthy is the improved distribution of processing results and data thanks to the Solr Cloud functionalities included in version 4.0. Solr is distributed under the Apache License.
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Elasticsearch Version studied: 0.19.11 Website: http://www.elasticsearch.org/download/ Vendor driven solution (Elasticsearch)
Elasticsearch was created by Shay Banon, the originator of the Compass project, as a replacement for the latter. Elasticsearch is similar to Solr, both functionally (centralised search server) and
technologically (lower layer handled by Lucene).
FR It differs however from Solr in its heavily distributed approach, which makes it better suited . to handle big data issues, even if Solr 4.0 has made up lost ground in this area thanks to its Solr Cloud functionalities. Elasticsearch is available under the Apache 2 License.
SMILE
. WWW
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mnoGoSearch Version studied: 3.3.12 Website: www.mnogosearch.org Vendor driven solution (Lavtech.Com)
mnoGoSearch is a search engine whose first open source version came out in 2000. mnoGoSearch specialises in indexing Internet and Intranet websites. As a result, its indexing method is primarily based on HTTP crawling. For searches, it supplies an integratable CGI
script on a web server. A simple template system makes it possible to customise the search FR
. page. mnoGoSearch natively supports numerous languages, synonyms, spell-checking, Boolean search operators and more. It can use a MySQL or PostgreSQL database as storage. mnoGoSearch also supports the indexing of office documents by means of external utilities
(catdoc, pdf2text, etc.), as well as file system indexing without a HTTP server. SMILE
. mnoGoSearch is distributed under the GPL for UNIX environments, whereas Windows binaries are proprietary and available for a fee. mnoGoSearch is developed in C.
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OpenSearchServer Version studied: 1.3 Website: www.open-search-server.com Vendor driven solution (OpenSearchServer)
OpenSearchServer is a search engine created by Emmanuel Keller. The first open source version was released in 2008. OpenSearchServer was developed internally for the website of Usine Nouvelle. Based on
Lucene, it differs from Solr in its HTTP accessible graphical admin interface, its highly advanced site crawling capacity (thread management, page exclusion, index programming,
FR etc.), a database indexing system and a file crawler. OpenSearchServer also interfaces easily . with any application by means of a REST interface. In addition, OpenSearchServer is easy to expand with custom modules that enhance its functionalities. OpenSearchServer can also interpret the content of a number of file formats (OpenOffice, MS Office, PDF, etc.).
OpenSearchServer is distributed under the GPL. The company of the same name, based in SMILE
. Paris, does most of the development work and provides support for the tool. OpenSearchServer is written in Java.
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Other Among the different products available in the field of search engines, the following tools can also be added to the list:
Name URL / Website
Nutch http://nutch.apache.org
Sphinx http://sphinxsearch.com FR
. Flax http://www.flax.co.uk
LucidWorks http://www.lucidimagination.com/products/lucidworks- search-platform
SMILE .
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HTTP AND APPLICATION SERVERS
In this category, we will present the open source HTTP and JEE application servers currently available on the market. HTTP servers (also referred to as HTTP daemons and
web servers) serve web users’ queries (often pages or
images) in accordance with HTTP protocol. FR
. In the world of HTTP servers, the Apache server is largely dominant, thanks to its outstanding reputation. It will not be hard to find service providers to meet your consulting or integration needs.
SMILE Regarding application servers, although JBoss AS and . Tomcat share the spotlight, many other names have also cropped up on the scene, namely GlassFish.
Given the diversity of the tools selected for this WWW category, the graphs below do not display the average scores.
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JBoss AS Version studied: 7.1.1 Website: www.jboss.org/jbossas Vendor driven solution (Red Hat)
JBoss AS is the global leader in application servers, with more than one third of the market share. The product’s first designer was Marc Fleury. In April 2006, Red Hat acquired JBoss, Inc. With its Java EE 6 Web Profile certification, it represents an excellent alternative to
commercial application servers like WebSphere and WebLogic. JBoss provides a clear and
simple admin interface. Its tree structure is, however, quite complex. FR
. JBoss is distributed under the LGPL. It is written in Java.
SMILE
. WWW
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Tomcat Version studied: 7.0.32 Website: http://tomcat.apache.org Foundation driven solution (Apache)
Apache Tomcat is the Apache Foundation's JEE servlets container. The Tomcat project was launched as the reference implementation of servlets by James Duncan Davidson, a software engineer at Sun.
It is the most widely used Java application server in the world. Its admin interface is very succinct. Moreover, Tomcat is often combined with a more “general” web server like Apache
FR or even JBoss. In these cases, the web server serves HTML web pages, for example, and . delegates pages that use Java (servlets, JSP, etc.) to Tomcat. Tomcat is distributed under the Apache License. It is written in Java. This means it can run via the Java virtual machine on any operating
SMILE system that supports it. .
WWW
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.
SMILE
. WWW
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GlassFish Version studied: 3.1.2.2 Website: http://glassfish.java.net Vendor driven solution (Oracle)
GlassFish is the reference implementation of Java EE developed by Oracle. In fact, the project originated in 2005 with the opening of the Sun Application Server. The first version of GlassFish (1.0) was released in 2006.
In particular, GlassFish boasts a comprehensive admin interface and a complete shell allowing for command line administration of the server. In terms of standards, GlassFish is a complete
FR implementation of Java EE 6, covering: EJB 3.1, JPA 2.0, JAX-RS 1.1, JSF 2.0, Servlet 3.0, CDI . 1.0, etc. GlassFish is distributed under either the CDDL or the GPL v2.
It is written in Java. SMILE
. WWW
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Apache Version studied: 2.4 Website: http://httpd.apache.org Foundation driven solution (Apache)
Apache is the most widely used web server in the world. Its development began in 1995 as a mere collection of patches and additions for the NCSA HTTPd 1.3 server. It offers tremendous flexibility in its configuration and a multitude of modules for functional
cover that remains unparalleled today. Version 2a namely added multi-platform support (including Windows), a new API and support for IPv6. Over and above its initial scope, Apache
FR was designed to be modular and to be able to host additional functionalities such as . interpretation of Perl, PHP, Python and Ruby, support for SSI tags and CGIs, and so on. It is distributed under the Apache License.
SMILE
. WWW
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Other Among the different products available in the field of HTTP and application servers, the following tools can also be added to the list:
Name URL / Website
EasyBeans http://wiki.easybeans.org
Geronimo http://geronimo.apache.org
FR JOnAS http://wiki.jonas.ow2.org . TomEE http://tomee.apache.org/
nginx http://nginx.org
SMILE lighttpd http://www.lighttpd.net .
WWW
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MOM & EAI
Message Oriented Middleware or “MOMs” are particularly invaluable tools in the implementation of exchanges between all types of applications. Middleware allows different applications to
communicate and interoperate. This interoperation
can occur even when the applications are running on FR
. different servers, so long as they are interconnected by a network. Middleware is a high level tool, given that it provides its services to applications, but the resulting exchanges are based on a whole stack of
network protocols. SMILE
. Middleware is more than a mere protocol for calling the services offered by an application, and RPC, RMI and SOAP, all of which are also asynchronous, are usually considered to be real middleware.
WWW
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ActiveMQ Version studied: 5.7.0 Website: http://activemq.apache.org Foundation driven solution (Apache)
Released in 2004, ActiveMQ is the open source MOM published by the Apache Foundation. ActiveMQ relies on a handful of other Apache projects: Apache Camel (partial implementation of enterprise integration patterns) and Jetty (Java application server
integrated with ActiveMQ). ActiveMQ in turn is used by several other major projects: Apache Service Mix, Mule and Geronimo (as the default JMS provider). ActiveMQ’s message
FR processing is undoubtedly its most famous asset, after its superior connectivity. Thanks to the . integrated Camel project, it can process messages according to enterprise integration patterns (EIPs). ActiveMQ is developed in Java. The diversity of languages and environments it supports is
particularly impressive and is one of ActiveMQ’s greatest assets. The languages by which SMILE
. ActiveMQ can be accessed are: C, C++, Ajax, RESTful and SOAP, .NET, Delphi, FreePascal, Perl, PHP, Pike, Python, Ruby, etc. It is distributed under the Apache License 2.0.
WWW
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FR
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SMILE
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JORAM Version studied: 5.8.0 Website: http://joram.ow2.org Consortium (OW2) and vendor (ScalAgent) driven solution
JORAM (Java Open Reliable Asynchronous Messaging) is the middleware created by the consortium Object Web, released in 1999. Object Web is also known for its Java application server, JOnAS, with which JORAM is integrated. JORAM has an elegant internal architecture based on the agent model. An agent is a software
component the responds to certain events. In the case of JORAM, events take the form of FR
. messages. Queues and topics are therefore represented by agents. A user connected to the platform is also represented by an agent called a “proxy”. This approach offers a high level of flexibility because it allows for the creation and deletion of agents on the fly and on any broker whatsoever.
SMILE The languages by which JORAM can be accessed are: Java (via the JMS interface), C and C++ . (using JNI, which can then simulate a JMS environment). JORAM has been distributed under the LGPL since May 2000.
WWW
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SMILE
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Other Among the different products available in the field of MOM and EAI, the following tools can also be added to the list:
Name URL / Website
JBoss Messaging http://www.jboss.org/jbossmessaging
FR
.
SMILE
. WWW
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OTHER
In this final category of the “Development and intermediate layers” dimension, we will present other open source tools that can be of benefit to companies, although it was difficult to define a
separate category for them.
In particular, we will be presenting Drools (an amazing FR
. rule engine) and ESIGate (which makes it possible to build pages on the fly from fragments taken from different technologies).
SMILE Given the diversity of the tools selected for this . category, the graphs below do not display the average
scores. WWW
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Drools Version studied: 5.4.0 Website: www.jboss.org/drools Vendor driven solution (JBoss)
Drools (or JBoss Rules) is a system for managing business rules that uses a forward chaining inference engine, i.e. a system capable of defining rules and applying them to data (a web application via a graphical interface).
Drools allows for the evolution of rules and constraints without having to alter the associated computer programme. Drools comprises multiple modules: Drools Guvnor, a web admin
FR interface (Business Rules Management System); Drools Expert, a rule engine that executes . the rules modelled in Guvnor; Drools Planner, an automated planning engine that works off defined constraints to calculate and suggest solutions; Drools Flow, a workflow engine (information flow modelling); and, finally, Drools Fusion, used to manage business events. It should be noted that the use of the Guvnor module may be relevant when paired with
SMILE Talend: by using this business rules repository – the aim of which is to create rules then . import those rules into Talend – the ETL's business rules are completely outsourced. The tBRMS component developed using Talend provides the interface between these two tools. Further, Drools Guvnor offers the following services: version control and rule deployment, editing of those rules without development, their form of hierarchy and categorisation, as
well as their automated deployment. WWW Drools is distributed under the Apache License.
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SMILE
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ESIGate Version studied: 3.4 Website: www.esigate.org Community driven solution
ESIGate is a website assembling toolkit. It was created by a number of specialist J2EE engineers at Smile, the leading European integrator of open source solutions. ESIGate acts like a reverse proxy for existing websites and webapps, whose HTML pages it can
retrieve, convert and reassemble on the fly. The various bits of pages obtained from different servers are then served to the user as if they came from a single website. The major strength
FR of this approach is the fact that it is technologically agnostic, capable of integrating any PHP, . .NET or Java web application with no, or very few, modifications to that application (just the addition of ESI tags). ESIGate is distributed under the Apache License. It is currently the only complete open source
implementation of the W3C's Edge Side Include standard (other tools like Varnish offer partial SMILE
. implementations). ESIGate is written in Java and includes an API, as well as various extension points that make it possible to adapt it to each project's needs and to the special features of integrated solutions (cookie management, Single Sign On, URL rewriting and more).
WWW
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APPLICATIONS DIMENSION
The "Applications" dimension includes all the solutions commonly used by companies' end users. They typically offer carefully developed interfaces that are far removed from the command lines typically available in tools in the “Infrastructure” dimension. The vast majority of these tools are developed by vendors, unlike infrastructure tools, which are primarily community based. These vendors have chosen the open source model for publication of their solutions. Their economic models are mostly based on support, and even
warranties, for the products in question. These tools have played a key role in the widespread
adoption of open source technologies, by offering quality applications with very broad
FR scopes. . There are almost no categories now that do not include at least one open source option. Even in very specific domains like library management and business intelligence, open source solutions are available.
SMILE More than 50 solutions are evaluated here for this dimension, and nearly 100 are listed in . total, among the following categories:
. CRMs . Libraries & Documentation
WWW . Business Intelligence: ETLs . Portals . Business Intelligence: Reporting . Corporate social networks . Business Intelligence: Suites . Blogs, Wikis and Forums . E-commerce . E-learning . ERPs . Visitor tracking . CMSs . Other . EDM & ECM
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CRMS
CRM (customer relationship management) systems are tools designed to capture, process and analyse information on existing and prospective clients. The scope of these tools is therefore potentially very
(very) broad, given that it pertains to all the actions
developed to foster customer and prospect loyalty by FR
. offering the best possible service. CRM functionalities can include multi-entity management, customer service, case and groupware management, sales cycles, marketing and mass
broadcasting campaigns, contact and account SMILE
. management, and more. Excellent products the likes of SugarCRM and vtiger are some of those available from the world of open source solutions.
WWW
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openCRX Version studied: 2.10 Website: www.opencrx.org Community driven solution
openCRX is an open source CRM solution chiefly designed for corporate use. It is currently developed and maintained by a small team of developers. The first version appeared in 2004 and has continued to improve since then.
openCRX provides a multitude of functionalities including multi-entity CRM for companies with elevated sales automation needs, customer service, case and groupware management,
FR etc. The functionalities offered in these domains exceed those provided by other CRMs on the . market (whether open source or not). That being said, it is missing a number of functionalities in other important aspects of the life cycle, such as marketing. The latest enhancements/developments for openCRX are in line with current trends in the CRM market, which favour sales team communication and collaboration tools that use technologies like
SMILE instant messaging (XMPP support) which can automatically send out a tweet or email when a . specific action is performed. Some of the main developers work for companies that supply plug-ins and additional services, particularly CRIXP Corp., a German company. But openCRX itself is a purely community driven
project. It is available under a BSD-style License. WWW openCRX is a JEE application that supports most relational databases including Oracle, DB2, MySQL and PostgreSQL.
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SMILE . SugarCRM Version studied: 6.5 Website: www.sugarcrm.com
Vendor driven solution (SugarCRM, Inc.) WWW
SugarCRM is an open source customer relationship management suite. It was first distributed in 2004 and SugarCRM, Inc. has since continued to develop and maintain it. The vendor is based in Cupertino, California. SugarCRM has evolved to cover all the main features of customer management and the sales cycle. It boasts an impressive list of functionalities, ranging from marketing and mass broadcasting campaigns to leads, by way of contact and account management, and more. The latest versions (particularly since version 6) have emphasised mobile CRM (native applications) and the integration of a Social CRM dimension. Recent enhancements have been made on the Calendar module and the mobile interface, as well as on its social connectors. Its overall performance has also been improved. SugarCRM comes in three types: a Community edition (free, open source), an Enterprise edition (with additional functionalities) and a SaaS edition (on demand). The Community edition (published under the Affero GNU Public License v3) has a much smaller scope than the other editions. The product is based on a LAMP platform, with a number of possible variants in respect to databases and web servers (so long as PHP can be run).
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.
SMILE .
Vtiger Version studied: 5.4
WWW Website: www.vtiger.com Vendor driven solution (vtiger)
Vtiger is an open source CRM created from a fork of SugarCRM in 2004. The reason for this fork was to preserve a completely free and 100% open source product at a time when SugarCRM was beginning to diversify its business model by launching commercial editions. Vtiger has been evolving continuously since then. The latest version (published in November 2010) offers a complete set of functionalities, including reports and dashboards, invoices and organisational (team) access control. Vtiger also has connectors for the most common office automation suites and for messaging clients. More recently, vtiger has taken its first steps in the mobile universe with iPhone and Android apps. As a company, vtiger operates out of Bangalore, India, and Sunnyvale, California. It is responsible for managing the open source project. It offers technical support, training, migration and other services. The newest version of vtiger CRM offers an even broader functional scope, adding new integrations, import and export functions, reports and more. Vtiger is strongly orientated toward an OnDemand platform model.
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The product is built on a LAMP/WAMP platform. Vtiger OnDemand (cloud based) is hosted on the Amazon EC2 platform. The source code from the SugarCRM fork is covered by the SugarCRM Public License and vtiger modifications are under the MPL.
FR
.
SMILE .
WWW
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Other Among the different products available in the field of CRMs, the following tools can also be added to the list:
Name URL / Website
CiviCRM http://civicrm.org
OpenERP http://www.openerp.com
FR
.
SMILE
. WWW
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BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE: ETLS
ETLs often serve as a business intelligence brick, although they can also be used outside that context. ETL stands for "Extract, Transform, Load". The term designates tools used to perform massive information synchronisations from one data source to another. In
practice, ETL tools can be used for much simpler FR
. extraction, transformation and/or loading scenarios. They usually include connectors for data imports and exports to and from third party applications. Transformations can be performed by means of
SMILE existing plug-ins or through programming. . Open source ETL solutions include Talend and Pentaho Data Integration (formerly Kettle).
WWW
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Talend Version studied: 5.2 Website: www.talend.com Vendor driven solution (Talend)
Talend Open Studio is an open source ETL tool that appeared in 2005, developed by Talend. It is a code generator-style ETL, meaning that it can graphically create data manipulation and transformation processes, then generate the corresponding executable file in the form of a
Java or Perl programme. A very thorough list of components makes it possible to connect to
any type of database or application (SAP, SugarCRM, etc.). In 2010, Talend released its MDM,
FR followed by an ESB in 2011. . Talend's basic brick, Talend Open Studio, which only contains the ETL tool, is licensed under the GPL. The other editions are covered by commercial licences. Three solutions are available: an ETL (TIS, Talend Integration Suite), an MDM (Talend MDM) and an ESB (Talend ESB). The scope of TIS includes the definition of data integration processes (jobs), business models,
SMILE process roll-out, and roll-out administration. It also covers data quality. The MDM solution . contains an additional layer that manages reference data and workflows. Finally, the ESB makes it possible to set up your own service bus, based on SOA architecture. All these solutions are currently bundled together on Talend's unified platform. These latest editions incorporate the concept of cloud computing and also support the technologies inherent to big
data (Hadoop, Hive, etc.). WWW
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SMILE . Pentaho Data Integration Version studied: 4.3.0 Website: http://kettle.pentaho.com
Vendor driven solution (Pentaho) WWW
Pentaho Data Integration (PDI) is an open source ETL tool used to design and execute data manipulation and transformation operations. At the time when these lines were written, the latest available version of Pentaho Data Integration was 4.3.0. Thanks to a step based graphical model, data import/export jobs can be created without additional programming, along with various transformation operations like conversions, joins, filtering and even the execution of JavaScript functions. A planner is also available to schedule job execution. A commercial module, Agile BI, provides a graphical view of data transformation results beginning with the first steps in any development. PDI is a complete tool with advanced functionalities like the clustering of ETL processes. These functionalities, available in the open source edition of PDI, can also be found in the commercial editions of other products. A GPL edition of PDI is available; the Agile BI module is distributed under a commercial licence.
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FR .
SMILE .
WWW
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BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE: REPORTING
One of the key bricks in business intelligence is report preparation. Reporting tools like BIRT not only generate reports
(configured or unconfigured) in HTML, PDF, XLS, DOC, PPT and other formats; they can also build dynamic
FR pivot tables. . The displayed data can be retrieved from different databases and queries. Further, reporting tools generally have plug-ins to allow them to attach easily
to external sources and applications. SMILE
. Tools like JasperReports go as far as offering multidimensional analyses, which make it possible to take full advantage of the possibilities of a Mondrian
server, directly in a company’s reports. WWW
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BIRT Version studied: 4.2 Website: www.eclipse.org/birt Foundation driven solution (Eclipse)
BIRT (Business Intelligence and Reporting Tool) is an Eclipse community project that includes a graph generator, a report generator and a design environment. The project was launched in 2005.
The BIRT engine is a library that generates configured and unconfigured reports in HTML, PDF, XLS, DOC and PPT formats. These reports can be complex, containing multiple tables,
FR advanced graphs, and images. BIRT is also able to create dynamic pivot tables. The displayed . data can be retrieved from different relational and multidimensional databases (HOLAP and MOLAP) and queries. The BIRT engine can be integrated with any application developed in Java, whether it’s a web application or a “fat client” style app. This engine is already integrated with the SpagoBI and Pentaho business intelligence platforms. The report designer
SMILE is a plug-in that integrates with Eclipse (and can also be run as a stand-alone solution). . BIRT is available under the GPL.
WWW
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FR
.
SMILE
. WWW
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JasperReports / iReport Version studied: 4.7.1 Website: http://jasperforge.org/project/ireport Vendor driven solution (Jaspersoft)
JasperReports is a report engine developed by Jaspersoft and distributed under an open source licence. iReport is Jaspersoft's report designer. These tools have been around since 2001 and are already widely used in the reporting segments of many business applications.
The JasperReports engine can generate reports in PDF, HTML, XML, CSV, RTF, XLS, ODT, ODS, Flash, DOCX, XLSX and TXT formats. It uses JFreeChart to generate graphs and can be
FR integrated with any application developed in Java. In addition to the classic databases, it also . supports multidimensional analytical servers, which makes it possible to take full advantage of the possibilities of a Mondrian server, directly in a JasperReports report. The report designer, iReport, is used to lay out the reports.
The new version of the solution has, in particular, made reporting more dynamic in the web SMILE
. interface published by Jaspersoft: users can now sort the columns on their reports, and can also hide or delete them. JasperReports has a community edition (under the GPL) and a commercial edition (under a proprietary licence).
WWW
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Pentaho Report Designer Version studied: 3.9 Website: http://reporting.pentaho.com Vendor driven solution (Pentaho)
JFreeReport joined the Pentaho project in early 2006. The name, JFreeReport, has gradually been abandoned in favour of Pentaho Report Designer (PRD). PRD allows for the development of complex reports and, when used with the Pentaho platform, can publish
them directly on the decision server. At the time of writing, PRD was available in version 3.9.
Pentaho Report Designer is an easy to use tool that is fully integrated with Pentaho's BI suite
FR for parameter management and online publication. It can generate reports in PDF, HTML, . XML, CSV, RTF and XLS formats and supports multiple data sources. However, the creation of dynamic pivot tables is not user-friendly (hidden functionality) but is expected to be improved in version 4. It now includes the big data components from the latest version of PDI.
Pentaho Report Designer has a community edition (under the GPL) and a commercial edition SMILE
. (under a proprietary licence).
WWW
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BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE: SUITES
Business intelligence suites generally cover the two categories presented above, i.e. ETLs and reporting. This means the scope of these suites is extremely broad: report execution, OLAP analysis with Mondrian, query assistance, ETL, publication workflow
management module, etc. FR
. There is a wealth of open source business intelligence tools including four of very high quality: Jaspersoft, SpagoBI, Palo and Pentaho.
SMILE
. WWW
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SpagoBI Version studied: 3.6 Website: http://www.spagoworld.org/ Vendor driven solution (Engineering Ingegneria Informatica)
SpagoBI is a business intelligence suite developed by Italian firm Engineering Ingegneria Informatica. The project was launched in 2005. At the time of writing, SpagoBI Server was available in version 3.6.
SpagoBI is described as an open platform, so it integrates a large number of open source engines: execution of JasperReports reports (created using iReport) and BIRT reports, OLAP
FR analysis with Mondrian and JPivot or JPalo, a query creation assistant (Query by Example, . QbE), advanced graphs, metadata management, geolocalised analyses, etc. The default ETL tool is Talend. In addition, this suite also offers a publication workflow management module (draft reports not visible on the web portal).
SpagoBI is available under the LGPL, i.e. only open source, no commercial edition. SMILE
. WWW
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Jaspersoft Version studied: 4.1 Website: www.jaspersoft.com Vendor driven solution (Jaspersoft)
JasperServer is the business intelligence platform published by Jaspersoft, the company that also develops the report generator JasperReports, available since 2001. This platform delivers reporting and analytical functionalities.
The community edition offers report design and generation (using iReport). The commercial edition can create business domains, and semantic and technical layers over relational SQL
FR databases, which can simultaneously define a business lexicon, separate the user from the . technical side and from SQL, and easily add in data access security. Using these domains, the end user can create his or her own (ad hoc) reports on a user-friendly web interface. The Enterprise edition also includes the possibility of creating dashboards that return multiple data sets on a single page. The latest version separates data presentation from data access.
SMILE This results in reports that can be reworked online (column deletion, field renaming, changes . in format, addition of a calculation or new filters, etc.). In addition, like other BI platforms, Jasper can create OLAP cubes (Mondrian bricks) and integrates Talend for ETL.
JasperServer comes in a community edition (under the GPL) and a commercial edition. WWW
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Pentaho Version studied: 4.8 Website: www.pentaho.com Vendor driven solution (Pentaho)
Pentaho, published by the company of the same name founded in 2004, is a software suite that distributes functionalities and business intelligence documents to a large number of people.
Pentaho provides all the functionalities of a BI suite:
. ETL (Pentaho Data Integration); FR
. . multidimensional analysis (Mondrian OLAP engine, Analyzer interface in the commercial edition, Saiku Analytics plug-in available on the community edition); . ad hoc reporting (development of reports in drag and drop mode based on a data dictionary written in natural language and offering an abstraction);
SMILE . classic reporting (Pentaho Report Designer, BIRT plug-in also available); . . data mining (Weka). Pentaho has a community edition (under the GPL) and a commercial edition (under a proprietary licence).
The analytical and ad hoc querying functionalities in the community edition are less powerful WWW than those in the commercial edition, which integrates Analyzer, in particular, but are also significantly enhanced by complementary modules (Saiku, CTools, etc.). As a whole, the Pentaho suite's community edition is more complete than that of the Jasper suite.
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FR .
SMILE
. WWW
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Jedox Version studied: 4 Website: www.jedox.com/ Vendor driven solution (Jedox)
Jedox, a German company founded in 2002, publishes the Jedox business intelligence suite which is called Palo in its community edition. This suite comprises the following: an OLAP server to manage multidimensional databases (in
the form of cubes and dimensions), an add-in for Microsoft Excel and OpenOffice.org Calc (supports cube reading and writing), an “Excel-like” web spreadsheet programme
FR incorporating all the functions of Excel (formulas, graphs, macros, etc.) that allows for online . entry and access of data on the OLAP server, an ETL tool for interfacing with operational databases in order to feed data to Palo’s DBs, and an event observer (Supervision Server) that can also trigger events based on certain user actions.
The key strengths of the Jedox suite are its simplicity for functional users, thanks to its Excel SMILE
. interface, as well as its dynamic nature: data are modified in real time, users can switch from a consolidated data view to a detailed view in just one click, and they can also enter data directly using the Excel interface. Palo BI Suite is available in a community edition (under the GPL) and a commercial edition.
Over and above the community edition's functionalities, the commercial edition includes an WWW OLAP database manager and a Supervision Server.
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E-COMMERCE
The field of e-commerce is another very plentiful one. Whether e-merchants want to advertise their e-shops and increase their traffic, inform customers about their products, give clients a terrific shopping
experience, conclude sales, provide customer service or perform any number of other actions, many
FR solutions are available to them today. . However, in this category we have nonetheless focused on open source e-shop solutions, presenting the leading products including Magento and
PrestaShop. SMILE
. The scope of e-shops has been expanding, now encompassing functionalities like advanced categorisation, the definition of product groups, management of configurable products, cross-selling and up-selling functions, promotional engines, multi- WWW shop management, advanced currency and VAT rate management, and more.
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Magento Version studied: 1.7 (Community edition) and 1.12 (Enterprise edition) Website: www.magentocommerce.com Vendor driven solution (Magento Inc.)
Beginning with its first beta versions in 2007, this tool, driven by US based Magento Inc. (formerly Varien), generated tremendous buzz worldwide, which allowed it to bring together an extremely active community in record time.
Magento's great strength lies in its superior modularity and its robustness. It was clearly devised to support ambitious, large scale merchant sites with functionalities like advanced
FR categorisation, the definition of product groups, management of configurable products, cross- . selling and up-selling functions, a powerful promotional engine, multi-shop management, advanced currency and VAT rate management, etc. Initially distributed exclusively under the OSL, Magento's gamble paid off upon its release,
capturing a large share of the market. In April 2009, Magento announced the release of an SMILE
. Enterprise edition. In return for an annual fee, this version provides a number of additional functionalities and a support contract. The solution is based on the Zend PHP framework and boasts many innovations in terms of participatory functionalities.
WWW
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PrestaShop Version studied: 1.5.2 Website: www.prestashop.com Vendor driven solution (PrestaShop)
Released a few months after Magento (in July 2008), PrestaShop is a French e-commerce solution that quickly won over a large number of users thanks to its easy implementation and
its complete alignment with the needs of e-merchants, which have since established strong
ties with the product (125,000 websites worldwide use the solution). FR
. From a functional perspective, PrestaShop has also proven to be quite complete: in terms of catalogues, account management, orders, logistics and reporting, all the functionalities of an e-commerce platform are covered. The tool even includes native management of functions like shop locators, SMS alerts and customer rewards programmes. And if that were not
enough, nearly a thousand ready to use modules are also available.
SMILE . PrestaShop is distributed under the OSL. PrestaShop is 100% developed in PHP/MySQL. It has an API and provides complete web service cover, which makes it possible to adjust the tool to meet new needs and specific
contexts. WWW
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OXID Version studied: 4.6.5 Website: www.oxid-esales.com Vendor driven solution (OXID)
Released in November 2008, German solution OXID quickly conquered the German-speaking market thanks to its great functional depth. After becoming the leading e-commerce solution
in Germany in a very short period of time, OXID arrived in France in mid 2011, in an edition
completely localised for the specific characteristics of the French market. FR
. Without a doubt, it offers the greatest functional depth of any solution, after Magento. OXID was devised for use as a multi-channel system: web, mobile, interactive kiosks, etc. Everything in it is designed to allow users to serve their catalogues to multiple devices. Although there is some room for improvement in its back office ergonomics, OXID remains
suitable for even the most ambitious of merchant sites.
SMILE . OXID is distributed under the GPL v3. OXID is 100% developed in PHP/MySQL. It integrates jQuery’s Ajax framework, has an API and provides complete web service cover, which makes it possible to adjust the tool to meet new
needs and specific contexts. WWW
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FR
.
SMILE
. WWW
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RBS Change Version studied: 3.6.2 Website: www.rbschange.com Vendor driven solution (Ready Business System)
The open source model has attracted many different software companies. RBS joined their ranks when it released its Change CMS and e-commerce applications under an open source licence in February 2010. The fruit of five years of development work and more than a hundred projects, this solution is
very promising from both a technical and a functional perspective. The aspects that FR
. differentiate this solution are the following: fully integrated and joined CMS and e-commerce systems, a management back office that uses Ajax technology, an Enterprise edition with advanced functionalities (ability to preview a site as it will appear on a given date, automated management of promotions, etc.) and so on.
SMILE RBS Change is published under the Affero GPL v3. Because of the newness of its turn toward . open source, RBS Change has few members in its community, meaning it has not yet developed this key component to ensuring the longevity of its open source solution. Version 4, announced for 2013, appears very promising and may confirm the dynamic processes started in 2012. WWW RBS Change is written in PHP and is based on a PHP5 framework developed by the vendor and that offers an advanced development environment.
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FR .
SMILE
. WWW
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Drupal Commerce Version studied: 1.4 Website: www.drupalcommerce.org Vendor driven solution (Commerce Guys)
Released in August 2011, Drupal Commerce is the e-commerce branch of the globally renowned CMS, Drupal. The successor to the Ubercart extension, Drupal Commerce enjoys the support of two companies: Commerce Guys for its roadmap management and community
moderation, and Acquia (created by Drupal's founder, Dries Buytaert) for its support services.
Although the functional scope of Drupal Commerce remains slightly smaller than its elders, it
FR is, along with RBSChange, the only solution to offer real content management functionalities, . backed by the recognised efficiency of Drupal. Like the CMS, Drupal Commerce is also an extremely modular solution with a very active community. Drupal Commerce is licensed under the GPL v3.
SMILE Drupal Commerce is 100% developed in PHP/MySQL. It is distributed as a Drupal 7 module. .
WWW
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osCommerce Version studied: 3.0.2 Website: www.oscommerce.com Community driven solution
It would be hard to omit osCommerce in a discussion of open source e-commerce solutions. This tool, first released in March 2000, was quickly established as the must-have e-commerce solution and the standard bearer for open source supply, which was only just beginning to
blossom at the time.
But in recent years, the community has begun to break apart from the development team, FR
. developing a multitude of forks. Development of the solution itself has slowed substantially since 2006. As the ageing code makes the application very difficult to maintain, the team embarked on a complete overhaul of the tool, whose third version was recently released after several years’ wait.
SMILE Distributed under the GPL, osCommerce relies entirely on a once very large and very active . community. Wholly developed in PHP/MySQL, osCommerce owes a great deal of its success to the lack of open source alternatives and to the explosion of e-business in the early 2000s. Today it remains the most commonly deployed webshop in the world,. WWW
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Other Among the different products available in the field of e-commerce, the following tools can also be added to the list:
Name URL / Website
Thelia http://thelia.net FR . OFBiz http://ofbiz.apache.org
Spree http://spreecommerce.com
Broadleaf Commerce http://www.broadleafcommerce.org
SMILE .
WWW
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ERPS
The world of enterprise resource planning (ERP) has in turn been overwhelmed by open source solutions that have now reached maturity. Open source ERPs initially provided small SMEs with complete management tools at the lowest cost,
thereby rapidly stepping up their competitiveness. But FR
. these solutions are already climbing the ladder, currently targeting SMEs with staff of more than 1000, in the industrial, distribution and services sectors. Because the playing field is so vast, differences in
SMILE functional cover can turn a product more toward a
. particular sector of activities. But one of the most important selection criteria is flexibility/expandability, in other words the technological bases that will allow a given product to be adapted to a variety of different contexts with a limited number of custom WWW developments. Products like Compiere, OpenERP, Openbravo and ERP5 set the bar for open source ERPs.
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Compiere Version studied: 3.2 (Community Edition) Website: www.compiere.com Vendor driven solution (Compiere Inc.)
Compiere was originally developed by Jorg Janke of Germany, backed by his 20 years of experience at SAP then Oracle and his proficiency in the products ADV/Orga, Unisys, R/2 and R/3.
The concept of the application dictionary (a Compiere based meta-programming model used to align relational persistence with the structures of personalised business data and data
FR interfaces) was prototyped in 1988 for SAP, then used in service of the Compiere open source . project. The latter has been extremely successful in recent years (especially in the distribution and services sectors), thanks in particular to its support of the Oracle database and its Java base. From a functional standpoint, Compiere is relatively comprehensive, particularly for SMEs/SMIs, for example with sales management, purchasing functions, inventory and
SMILE logistics functions, accountancy and financial management, production management, etc. . Compiere is distributed under the MPL and is written in Java.
WWW
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FR
.
SMILE
. WWW
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Openbravo Version studied: 3.0 Website: www.openbravo.com Vendor driven solution (Openbravo)
Openbravo is a Spanish solution based on Compiere's ERP (another open source product presented in this paper) and created in 2001. The project, initially called Tecnicia, went open source in 2005.
Openbravo forked all Compiere's business PL/SQL source code, as well as its entity manager, and transposed it to a web interface set up on a Java server. These interfaces are the
FR product’s strong point, as they are perhaps the most attractive and most ergonomic on the . market. Despite major fund-raising activities in 2005, the product’s dynamics are only moderate, particularly in terms of its client lists. Openbravo targets the ERP market for SMEs and has quite a large scope, although smaller than that of OpenERP.
Openbravo is published under the Openbravo Public License, based on the MPL (v1.1). The SMILE
. vendor is solid and capable of supplying professional level support. Openbravo is based on web technologies including JEE and Ajax.
WWW
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OpenERP Version studied: 6.1 Website: www.openerp.com Vendor driven solution (OpenERP)
OpenERP (formerly Tiny ERP) was founded in Belgium in 2005 by Fabien Pinckaers. OpenERP combines the strength of a vendor with that of a large community – including its integrators based around the world – that outline all the ways the tool is used and provide precious feedback, particularly in the form of reusable modules. All this is made possible by
real technological innovation based on recognised standards in terms of databases and web FR
. services. OpenERP covers all needs, such as sales, purchasing, HR, projects, accountancy, logistics, inventory, production, billing and more, and its framework allows for rapid adaptation to unique contexts, whether by configuring new workflows or new information, or by means of dashboards, resulting in the constantly increasing effectiveness of the ERP in a
business setting. SMILE . OpenERP is distributed under the AGPL 3.0 (version 6 of the tool and onward). OpenERP is written in Python and is supported by a powerful object oriented framework. The PostgreSQL database is used.
WWW
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Other Among the different products available in the field of ERPs, the following tools can also be added to the list:
Name URL / Website ERP5 http://www.erp5.com/fr
OFBiz http://ofbiz.apache.org
FR .
SMILE
. WWW
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CMSS
Content management now covers a wide range of needs: information sites, corporate sites, service sites, secure extranets, participatory intranets, community
spaces, etc.
To cover this scope, there are a number of excellent
FR open source solutions with very broad scopes like . Drupal, eZ Publish, TYPO3, Jahia, SPIP, Hippo CMS, Joomla and WordPress, which have all become standards in the world of content management, given their domination as a result of their capacities,
SMILE modularity, and their functional and technical scopes. . Over the years, they have become more than serious alternatives in the field of enterprise content management: they now dominate the market.
WWW
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Drupal Version studied: 7.17 Website: www.drupal.org Community driven solution
Drupal is a multi-faceted CMS. Originally designed as a collective blog, it has a wide variety of possible applications today: from the corporate website to the community portal, Drupal does it all! It was designed in the 2000s by Dries Buytaert and has enjoyed worldwide success ever
since. An enormous community has formed around the product.
The main strength of this CMS lies in its expandability. It can easily host numerous
FR complementary modules (forums, photo galleries, polls, forms, newsletters, messaging, chats, . surveys, online payments, shared calendars and more). In particular, it has well designed, highly appreciated modules developed by the community, that make it particularly well suited to corporate social networks. Version 7 has won over a multitude of large companies and the product is now considered to be more complete and better balanced. Version 8 is scheduled
SMILE for release in September 2013. It will focus heavily on mobility and be built in part on the . French framework, Symfony. Drupal is published under the GNU GPL and is 100% open source. Support is available from Acquia (www.acquia.com).
Technically speaking, Drupal is built around LAMP technologies (PHP and MySQL in WWW particular).
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FR .
SMILE
. WWW
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eZ Publish Version studied: 5.0 Website: www.ez.no Vendor driven solution (eZ Systems)
eZ Publish was created in 1999 by eZ Systems. eZ Publish stands out from other open source CMSs for its possibilities in terms of configurations and extensions: it is presented as a ready to use tool, but also as a development framework for the creation of lightweight business
applications.
In terms of the fundamentals of content management, eZ Publish is one of the most powerful
FR open source tools available today, with its structured content, workflows, categorisation, . version management, etc. But the main strength of eZ Publish over other solutions is its highly CXM (Customer Experience Management) oriented positioning. Since version 4.5, eZ Publish has included a large number of functionalities in its Enterprise edition that foster web surfer loyalty for retail, marketing or, quite simply, editorial purposes: real time site analysis
SMILE (eZ Live Viewer), complex mapping of user routes and management of hot/cold zones (eZ . Odoscope), a recommendations engine (eZ Recommendation Service), and CRM and marketing campaign management integration (eZ Marketing Automation). Technically, eZ Publish is written in PHP and runs on Apache and MySQL (PostgreSQL 8 and Oracle 11g are supported). The new branch – 5.x – is now based on the French framework,
WWW Symfony.
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Hippo CMS Version studied: 7.8 Website: www.onehippo.com Vendor driven solution (OneHippo)
Hippo CMS is an open source CMS that is a member of the family of CMSs written in Java. It was created in 1999 by Dutch vendor OneHippo. It is heavily used in the Nordic countries and especially in the Netherlands, and is now beginning to penetrate the French market.
Hippo CMS includes most of the functionalities that one might expect: document model publishing, content creation, multilingualism, templating, publication workflows, multiple
FR sites, content import/export, direct content publishing, etc. The user interface is less . extensive than in some of the other products, but it remains ergonomic and functional, and includes most of the expected common functionalities. Starting with version 7.8, Hippo CMS is positioning itself on the CXM segment with advanced targeting functions and real time analyses of user behaviours. Its marketing function can configure "personas", profiles that are
SMILE automatically assigned to visitors and that personalise the content served to them. . Hippo CMS is distributed under the Apache License 2.0. Two editions are distributed: a Community edition and an Enterprise edition that provides stability, support and a warranty. Technically well designed, Hippo CMS offers real benefits for the integration of functional
needs by developers. Hippo CMS complies with standards (JEE), uses proven tools like Spring, WWW Jackrabbit and Maven, and defines a clear, scalable architecture. These efforts make it easy for developers to take charge of the tool.
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FR .
SMILE
. WWW
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Jahia Version studied: 6.6.1 Website: www.jahia.com Vendor driven solution (Jahia)
Jahia is a Franco-Swiss product created in the 2000s, which occupies a place apart in the world of JEE portals and CMSs. Jahia’s finishing touches and packaging are impressive. Jahia stands out from other CMSs
thanks to its content administration interface, which is merged with the site itself. In
functional terms, Jahia is one of the most compete CMS solutions, incorporating multi-site FR
. management, versioning, effective workflows, structured data, multilingualism, highly detailed rights management, etc. In particular, version 6.5 saw the arrival of a very user- friendly interface and a very complete template publisher. Version 6.6 has a strong emphasis on mobility.
Jahia makes for an excellent alternative to the portal solutions available from the major SMILE
. proprietary vendors, with the possibility of viewing and modifying its source code (under the GPL for the Community edition), thereby ensuring the tool’s longevity and alignment with real needs on the ground. Jahia also has an Enterprise version available under a commercial licence that provides stability, support and a warranty. In November 2012, Jahia also released
Jahia Wise, a collaborative work solution centred on document management. WWW Jahia is built on JEE technologies: persistence via Hibernate, support for JSR 170 standards, Apache Lucene search engine, support for JSR 168 portlet standards, etc.
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SMILE . Joomla Version studied: 3.0 Website: www.joomla.org
Community driven solution WWW
Joomla is a CMS developed from Mambo in 2005. It was created after a disagreement between the lead developers and the company coordinating the development. Today, the majority of developers in the community devote their work to Joomla, which clearly tips the scales in its favour. This tool chiefly stands out for the user-friendliness of its admin interface. The mantra is to “give full product control to non-technicians”. Page creation, categorisation, searches, access stats, meaningful URLs and a multitude of modules are integrated directly and do not require any special knowledge for their implementation. In version 3.0, Joomla has further increased its professionalism, with native multi-site management, better multilingual management and, above all, revisited front office interfaces (with modifications now possible from this channel) and back office interfaces based on Twitter Bootstrap, providing for mobile compatibility, drag and drop functions and more. Joomla is a 100% community based solution published under the GNU GPL. The latest version, 3.0 (Joomla went directly from 1.7 to 2.5 and then on to 3.0) is a "short term" version. Version 2.5, however, is an LTS. Joomla is written in PHP and uses a MySQL database. It now supports PostgreSQL databases.
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SMILE
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SPIP Version studied: 3.0.5 Website: www.spip.net Community driven solution
Originally, in 2001, SPIP was primarily used by web surfers to manage their own personal websites and on associations’ websites. It is now used by private and public organisations of all sizes, to manage their professional websites.
SPIP enjoys a strong reputation, particularly in France. This success can be attributed to the product's simplicity, in terms of use as well as deployment and adaptation. The flip side of this
FR simplicity is that SPIP has a number of limitations in respect of certain key content . management functionalities (e.g. structured content and workflows). It is, however, remedying these gaps from one version to the next. For example, version 3, released in mid- 2012, offers a new management interface (rewritten on its own framework), stronger modularity (with better APIs) and numerous enhancements and developments like a data
SMILE loop that can display all sorts of external data (from .csv, .xls, Google doc files and more). . SPIP is an open source project created in France (and licensed under the GPL). Its community is relatively active, with multiple versions released each year and hundreds – if not thousands – of members.
SPIP’s software is written in PHP using MySQL, PostGreSQL and SQLite databases. WWW
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TYPO3 Version studied: 6.0 Website: www.typo3.org Community driven solution
TYPO3 is the fruit of several years of labour by a Danish guru by the name of Kasper Skårhøj. The product was released late in 2000, since which time a very active community has developed, particularly in the Germanic countries.
In terms of ready to use functionalities, TYPO3 is one of the richest CMS tools on the market. It offers just about everything one might want, all of which is nicely polished and with very
FR few limitations: rights and contribution management, caching, authorisations, templates and . more. TYPO3's major strength lies in its modular expandability. A module can add a series of functionalities to TYPO3, but it can also modify a previously integrated functionality without altering TYPO3’s source code, thus maintaining its compatibility with future versions of the tool. The new version 6.0 has better ergonomics, offers external cloud and other storage
SMILE options (Amazon S3, etc.) and includes a new extensions manager. In addition, the quality of . the code has been further enhanced, with more than 5,000 automated tests performed. TYPO3 is a 100% community based solution published under the GPL. TYPO3 is written in PHP and uses a MySQL database.
WWW
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WordPress Version studied: 3.4.2 Website: http://wordpress.org Community driven solution
WordPress was created in 2003 as a fork of the software solution, b2. Developed primarily by Matt Mullenweg, WordPress has experienced growing success over the years and is now supported by a sizeable community.
WordPress is an extremely complete and rich blogging tool, which also allows it to be used to build websites. It is one of the most advanced blog tools there are. The product's roadmap is
FR very dynamic, with new versions released roughly every six months. Version 3, released in . June 2010, saw the merger of WordPress and WordPress MU, providing for native integration of multi-blog management. More and more companies are using WordPress as their CMS, over and above its initial blogging capabilities. It is true that, with its fundamentals and the richness of its modules (more than 18,000 listed), WordPress is a real alternative to "classic"
SMILE CMSs. The latest versions (3.4 and 3.5) are orientated toward mobility and ever-increasing . simplicity (new drag and drop multimedia library, theme editing, etc.). Additionally, Twitter – like Slideshare and Instagram – can now be integrated with posts (publications). WordPress is distributed under the GPL.
It is developed in PHP, on a MySQL database. It includes a number of APIs and a highly WWW evolved system of plug-ins and portlets, with thousands of extensions available.
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FR .
SMILE . Other In the world of content management, open source supply is particularly strong. By way of example, over and above the products presented above, the following tools can also be
added: WWW Name URL / Website
Ametys http://www.ametys.org
Plone http://plone.org
InfoGlue http://www.infoglue.org
Mambo http://www.mamboserver.com
Apache Lenya http://lenya.apache.org
Zope http://www.zope.org
SilverStripe http://www.silverstripe.com
MODX http://modx.com
CMS Made Simple http://www.cmsmadesimple.org
Sympal http://www.sympalphp.org
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Apostrophe http://apostrophenow.com
Cayaha http://cahaya-project.org
Magnolia http://www.magnolia-cms.com
Silverpeas http://www.silverpeas.com
umbraco http://umbraco.com
Centurion http://centurion-project.org
OpenCMS http://www.opencms.org FR . DotNetNuke http://www.dotnetnuke.com
Lutece http://lutece.paris.fr
Concrete5 http://www.concrete5.org SMILE
. Liferay http://www.liferay.com WWW
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EDM & ECM
Enterprise content management (ECM) is characterised by a combination of electronic document management tools (EDM or DMS) and
content management systems (CMS).
ECM can increase an organisation’s efficiency by
FR offering its personnel a practical and efficient solution . for creating, locating and using information – whether or not it is structured or included in a document. At present, open source EDM solutions have reached an extraordinary level of maturity and can compete
SMILE on equal terms with the main commercial products, . providing unique benefits in terms of openness, longevity and pricing. Alfresco, Nuxeo, Knowledge Tree, Maarch, Jahia and more: the available supply of open source document WWW management solutions is expanding every day.
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Alfresco Version studied: 4.2 Website: www.alfresco.com Vendor driven solution (Alfresco Software)
Alfresco is the ECM solution created in 2005 by British vendor Alfresco Software, itself founded the same year by former executives at Documentum and Business Object. Alfresco offers all the expected document management functionalities: metadata, document
types, document workflows and advanced workflows, category management, collaboration tools, searches, management of multiple, independent databases, web content management
FR and more. The tool stands out for the presence of collaborative sites, spaces that contain . document libraries, blogs, forums, wikis, calendars, etc., and a Records Management module. Version 4 attempts to simplify access to documents, wherever the user may be, thanks to synchronisation functions using a cloud instance and a mobile interface. Now in preparation: offline access, DAM functions for multimedia documents and a new version of the Records
SMILE Management module that will be Moreq compatible. . Alfresco comes in two editions: a free Labs edition under the GPL and an Enterprise edition that gives access to the vendor’s warranty and to certain modules. Alfresco is written in JEE and has strong development dynamics as well as a large community
of users and developers. The Alfresco Forge site is also worthy of note, with its wide variety of WWW plug-ins.
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FR .
SMILE
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Nuxeo Version studied: 5.6 Website: www.nuxeo.com Vendor driven solution (Nuxeo)
Nuxeo is a French company that has been publishing an open source EDM solution since 2001. Nuxeo Enterprise Platform is the result of the migration of the Zope based version in Python to Java. The company currently operates in France and the United States.
The solution provides for complete enterprise content management, incorporating metadata, document types, advanced workflows, category management, collaboration functions,
FR searches, complex content management (web, multi-file, structured, etc.), multiple database . management and more. The tool sets itself apart thanks to various special aspects: a theme editor, the concept of typed “relationships” between different contents, vocabulary management, the concept of the publication section, completely modular architecture, etc.
Nuxeo is published under the LGPL. SMILE . Nuxeo is built on JEE technologies and uses open source components from the JBoss, Apache and Eclipse projects and from Sun’s open source projects.
WWW
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FR
.
SMILE
. WWW
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Knowledge Tree Version studied: 3.7 Website: www.knowledgetree.com Vendor driven solution (Jam Warehouse)
Knowledge Tree is an EDM solution developed by the South African company Jam Warehouse. Knowledge Tree has a complete set of functionalities and multiple modules that provide for good integration with an office environment. The application is well crafted and provides for
simple and efficient EDM. We particularly appreciated the streamlined, immediately FR
. operational standard interface, the advanced search functionality that will meet the most demanding needs for complex searches, the admin functions, the default virtual navigation modes and the ergonomics of the module when integrated with MS Office, to name but a few aspects.
SMILE The open source edition of Knowledge Tree incorporates the majority of its functions, . although a number of modules, namely those concerning workstation integration (hot folder, navigation, MS Office integration, a scanner management application, etc.), are distributed under a commercial licence. The vendor’s website posts a comparison of the different editions.
WWW Knowledge Tree is distributed under its own licence, based on the Mozilla Public License. Knowledge Tree is written in PHP and runs on a LAMP platform.
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FR .
SMILE
. WWW
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Maarch Version studied: 1.3 Website: www.maarch.com/en Vendor driven solution (Maerys)
Maarch is an ECM solution developed by the French firm Maerys. Its product line includes Maarch Enterprise and Maarch Framework. Different modules are also available including Letter Box, a vertical mailroom management
application.
Maarch Enterprise is dedicated to application design. This distribution also includes the FR
. functions that are essential to corporate EDM. The solution is licensed under the GPL v3. It should be noted that the solution’s community is rather small, revolving closely around the vendor.
Finally, Maarch is built on the Maarch PHP Framework. This orientation provides a solution SMILE
. for the design of corporate document applications.
WWW
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Other In the world of document management, open source supply is particularly strong. By way of example, over and above the products presented above, the following tools can also be added:
Name URL / Website
Jahia Wise http://www.jahia.com FR
. eXo DMS http://www.exoplatform.com
Freedom http://www.dynacase.org
Quotero http://www.quotero.com SMILE .
WWW
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LIBRARIES & DOCUMENTATION
Built upon the world of document management, open source library and documentation management tools have emerged in recent years. The most notable examples of these are Koha and
PMB.
FR The main functionalities of these tools include notice
. imports and UNIMARC cataloguing, disk management, borrower management, lending/returns with fines, Z3950 Client and Server, OAI-PMH server, thesaurus management, OPAC (user search interface), DSI
(interest based displays), management of periodicals SMILE
. and purchasing, etc. WWW
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Koha Version studied: 3.10 Website: http://koha-community.org Community driven solution
This ILS (integrated library system) was created in 1999 by a consortium of four libraries in New Zealand. Koha is chiefly designed for libraries that want to comply with the UNIMARC cataloguing standard.
Koha’s main functionalities include notice imports and UNIMARC cataloguing, disk management, lending/returns with fines, periodicals and ordering, OPAC, Z3950 Client and
FR Server, OAI-PMH server, and so on. With the exception of thumbnail retrieval, Koha does not . offer any EDM functions. It is recommended that OPAC searches be replaced by a CMS (for example, a Drupal connector already exists) for more user-friendly ergonomics. Although there are few new functional developments (social network icons), a real effort has been made toward improving the ergonomics of the professional interface, enhancing the
SMILE solution's performance levels and boosting its management of style sheets. . Distributed under the GNU GPL v2, Koha is maintained by its community. Two French companies have built their businesses around Koha. Koha is developed in Perl and runs on Debian Linux, but can also be installed on OpenBSD,
FreeBSD, Mac OS X, Windows, etc. The databases it supports are MySQL and PostgreSQL. WWW
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PMB Version studied: 3.4 Website: www.pmbservices.fr Vendor driven solution (PMB Services)
Created in 2003 by French company PMB Services, this very complete ILS was chiefly designed for document resource centres and specialised libraries that do not require UNIMARC cataloguing.
PMB’s main functionalities include the cataloguing of all types of documents (text, multimedia, web, etc.) with file attachments, confidentiality by user category, thesaurus
FR management, OPAC (user search interface), DSI (interest based displays), borrower . management, management of periodicals and purchasing, OAI server and harvester, Z3950 Client, and RFID interfacing. Its most noteworthy additions include full text indexing of attachments, an OCR service and
an API for Drupal. Slated on its roadmap are the circulation of periodicals, improved order SMILE
. tracking and supplier follow-ups, suggested purchases for web surfers, and OPAC views dependent on the user. PMB is distributed under the CeCILL License. It should be noted that, at the time of writing, it had no established network of partners.
WWW PMB was developed around a LAMP/WAMP platform (Apache, PHP, MySQL, etc.) that can therefore run on Linux, Mac OS X or Microsoft Windows.
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FR .
SMILE . Open Flora Version studied: 1.1.0 Website: http://www.openflora.com/
Vendor (Ever Team) and partner (Serda) driven solution WWW
This ILS (integrated library system) is the fruit of the 2010 open source release of a portion of the proprietary solution, Flora Library, itself a successor to Loris and Doris. A number of its functionalities are still marketed as proprietary. Open Flora is chiefly designed for use by libraries. Its open source functionalities include: UNIMARC cataloguing, inventory management, XML and MARC imports/exports, thesaurus management, SDI (selective dissemination of information), and management of loans, memberships and acquisitions. Its complementary proprietary functions offer OAI and Z3950 servers and clients, classification plan management, publication to office automation software, EDM, purchasing suggestions, RFID interfacing and LDAP. Open Flora is distributed under the CeCILL(-A) License. The external components and libraries are each governed by their respective licences. Open Flora is a Java application that runs with a Tomcat 6 server using Linux or Windows XP and above. It supports the databases MySQL and PostgreSQL, Oracle and SQL Server (connectors available for a fee).
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FR .
SMILE
. WWW
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PORTALS
A portal is a website that brings together a variety of resources, either pertaining to the same subject (real estate, job offers, etc.) or with no specific subject, i.e.
a general interest portal such as Yahoo!.
Portals provide access to resources that they do not
FR necessarily own: they offer services from other . websites, and their own added value stems from the selection and compilation of these tools. Finally, portals also incorporate a degree of more or
less advanced personalisation. SMILE
. A combination of content and service packaging, links to third party resources, and personalisation: these are the aspects that typically define a portal. A number of open source tools are available for the
creation of this type of project. The top examples WWW include Liferay, eXo Platform and, more recently, Silverpeas.
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eXo Platform Version studied: 3.5.3 Website: www.exoplatform.com Vendor driven solution (eXo)
eXo is an open source French vendor founded in 2003. The company has offices in France, the United States, Vietnam, Ukraine and Tunisia. It publishes a collaboration and content management software suite for businesses.
The latest version of eXo Platform (3.5) incorporates four applications in a single package: eXo Collaboration, eXo WCM, eXo Knowledge and eXo Social. The solution’s ergonomics are
FR slightly behind the competition, but the product’s functional collaboration and exchange tools . make it a viable candidate for any project of this type. eXo Platform is distributed under a double licensing model. The source code and a packaged edition are freely accessible via an open source licence (Affero GPL), whilst an enterprise
edition is sold by subscription.
SMILE . eXo Platform is written in Java and complies with standards JSR 168 and 286 and WSRP 1 and 2. It also integrates a content repository in alignment with JSR 170.
WWW
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Silverpeas Version studied: 5.9.2 Website: www.silverpeas.com Vendor driven solution (Oevo Group)
Silverpeas is a collaborative and social portal. Developed between 2001 and 2003, the solution first came to life as proprietary software before its recent transition to open source. Silverpeas stands out for its significant functional depth and generally user-friendly ergonomics. Although the product’s visibility remains chiefly national at present, Silverpeas is
a very interesting option for quick builds of simple collaborative portals. Silverpeas is not just FR
. a portal, a CMS or a collaborative work tool. In reality, it is at the crossroads of these three dimensions. It is a portal, because it can compile heterogeneous resources. It is a CMS, because it provides for easy builds of mini-sites with a simple WYSIWYG interface. It is a collaborative tool, because it includes project management tools with tasks and an integrated
Gantt diagram, a shared calendar, a forum, a blog and a common directory. SMILE . Silverpeas is distributed under the Affero GPL v3. It is written in Java and complies with standards JSR 168 and 286.
WWW
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Liferay Version studied: 6.1 GA2 Website: www.liferay.com Vendor driven solution (Liferay Inc.)
Liferay is a good-level open source corporate portal solution that can be used, among other functionalities, to compile content and information, to share resources and for collaboration. Liferay was originally created for an American church in 2000. One of its strengths is the simplicity of personalisation by the end user. Liferay also offers
more than 60 portlets including a full range of collaborative and social tools (blogs, forums, FR
. wikis, tasks centre, notifications, resource reservations, etc.), and intuitive management of communities of practice and of the hierarchical organisation of the entity using it. In addition, Liferay is highly flexible in terms of rights management and the adaptability of the graphical appearance of pages, and it also provides a powerful staging solution. Liferay is an excellent
corporate portal solution, allowing for the standardised integration of any existing SMILE
. application. The latest version introduces a marketplace and, among other points, an overhauled document management function with a client that synchronises its elements: Liferay Sync. Liferay is distributed under a double licensing model. Its open source edition (Liferay Portal
WWW Community Edition) is available under the LGPL. Liferay is written in Java and complies with standards JSR 168, JSR 286 and JSR 170.
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FR .
SMILE
. WWW
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Other In the world of portals, open source supply is particularly strong. By way of example, over and above the products presented above, the following tools can also be added:
Name URL / Website
JBoss / GateIn http://www.jboss.org/gatein
Apache Pluto http://portals.apache.org/pluto
FR Sakai http://sakaiproject.org . Jetspeed-2 http://portals.apache.org/jetspeed-2
Lutece http://lutece.paris.fr
SMILE .
WWW
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CORPORATE SOCIAL NETWORKS (CSNS)
The success of social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc., speaks for itself. They show the interest people have in connecting to one another, meeting new people, communicating
and working together.
CSNs (corporate social networks) were born of the FR
. realisation that companies could also use this type of resource to generate value. This is how social networks are used by companies: to create wealth. The use of social networks is now an
established fact and as a result companies are SMILE
. encouraging their staff to use them to communicate. In response to this need, more and more quality open source solutions have appeared on the market, the likes of Drupal Commons, Elgg and Liferay Social
Office. WWW
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BuddyPress Version studied: 1.5.6 Website: http://buddypress.org Community driven solution
BuddyPress was designed in 2008 by Andy Peatling while he was working on adding networking functionalities to the famous WordPress blog engine. The first official version (v1), released in May 2009, has enjoyed increasing use ever since.
BuddyPress is delivered standard with a number of functionalities which are very easy to activate, such as activities feeds, profiles, groups, friends management, messaging, blogs,
FR forums, etc. BuddyPress enjoys an active community. A roadmap is available on the . community website. The latest version has an enhanced admin interface, namely introducing drag and drop functions, and now offers mobile compatibility with responsive design. BuddyPress is published under the GNU GPL v2.
SMILE BuddyPress has the special feature of being built on the WordPress tool. It therefore has a . similar architecture, using PHP, Apache and MySQL.
WWW
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Drupal Commons Version studied: 3.0 Website: www.acquia.com Vendor driven solution (Acquia)
Drupal Commons is a Drupal oriented social networks distribution published by Acquia (a services company founded by Drupal's creator) in 2010. Drupal was designed in the 2000s by Dries Buytaert and has enjoyed worldwide success since then.
The scope of the community portals that can be created using Drupal depends on the available modules (more than 10,000 – although not all of them concern CSNs). Some
FR relevant examples include Homebox (for personalised pages), Invite Friends (friend . management), Content Profile (profile data management), FriendList (list of friends), Organic Group (groups management), Privatemsg (private messaging), and more. The Drupal Commons distribution has a broad native scope capable of rapidly implementing a real social network. Version 3.0 also introduces responsive design, thus offering compatibility with
SMILE mobile devices. . Drupal is published under the GNU GPL and is 100% open source. A support option is available from Acquia. In fact, it was the full package configuration, Drupal Commons, which we examined here.
Technically speaking, Drupal is built around LAMP technologies (PHP and MySQL in WWW particular). The latest version, v7, will offer greater stability and a broader functional scope.
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FR .
SMILE
. WWW
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Elgg Version studied: 1.8.9 Website: www.elgg.com Vendor driven solution (Curverider Ltd)
Elgg is one of the most well-known and most successful open source social networking solutions. It was created in 2004 by Dave Tosh and Ben Werdmuller, who subsequently went on to create Curverider Limited in order to maintain and enhance the product.
Elgg offers most of the functionalities expected of a social networking project. Its modular design provides for its expandability, and it has a very active community that produces a large
FR number of interesting plug-ins (www.elgg.org). These include profile management (with the . possibility of attribute definition), activities feeds, blogging and microblogging, groups management (with restricted access spaces), rights management, a complete API, etc. Elgg is published under the GPL v2. On the support side, publisher Curverider offers a number
of services such as bug fixes and hosting.
SMILE . Elgg is written in PHP and runs on LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP) technologies. Its architecture is plug-in enabled, making it possible to easily and rapidly extend product functionalities (more than 900 plug-ins).
WWW
Liferay Social Office
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Version studied: Liferay SO 2.0 / Liferay 6.1 Website: www.liferay.com Vendor driven solution (Liferay)
Liferay Social Office is a product of Liferay, which already has the Liferay portal to its name. Social Office is its corporate social cooperation solution. The Liferay portal was launched by Brian Chan in the early 2000s. At the end of 2008, Liferay launched a variation on its portal with specific packaging for cooperative work: Liferay Social Office. Its functions are very business orientated: activities feed, profiles/members, document
management, calendar, events, groups, notifications, chat function, wiki, etc. In addition to a
completely overhauled profile page, the latest version also integrates a contacts centre that FR
. allows users to either add contacts as connections or just follow their activities, and to send them private messages or even block them. Also worthy of note are the quality of the embedded Liferay chat function, and the microblogging function based on the use of #hashtags and @mentions.
SMILE The Community edition of Social Office (current version 1.5 is in beta) is distributed under the . Affero GPL. A corporate version also exists, which includes vendor support. On the technology side, Social Office uses the Liferay portal, in other words JEE architecture. It supports around a dozen databases and application servers.
WWW
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Other In the world of corporate social networks, open source supply is particularly strong. By way of example, over and above the products presented above, the following tools can also be added:
Name URL / Website
eZ Teamroom http://www.ez.no
eXo Social http://www.exoplatform.com FR
. LovdbyLess http://lovdbyless.com
Mahara http://mahara.org
NoseRub http://www.noserub.com SMILE . Pligg http://pligg.com
Spree http://project.askspree.de
WWW
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BLOGS, WIKIS AND FORUMS
Blogs, wikis and forums have ceased to truly be "presented" as such, now that they have become such a firmly integrated part of corporate life. It is said that they are a component of Web 2.0 in their own right.
A blog is a type of website comprising posts, i.e. notes
that are accumulated over time and displayed in FR
. chronological order. A wiki can also be defined as a type of website, although its unique feature is its openness to others: wiki pages are usually modifiable by visitors, in the
interest of collaborative contributions. SMILE . A forum is (typically) a public discussion area in which exchanges are arranged by subject. In this category, we will present the best open source
solutions available today: Dotclear, phpBB, XWiki, etc. WWW
Given the diversity of the tools selected for this category, the graphs below do not display the average scores.
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Dotclear Version studied: 2.4.4 Website: http://dotclear.org Community driven solution
Dotclear is an open source web publishing solution created in 2002 by Olivier Meunier. Dotclear’s software was designed first and foremost for its users, who regularly contribute to its development. In June 2009, Xavier Plantefève took over the project.
Dotclear's functional depth makes it a high quality publishing tool, equal and in some cases far superior to other tools of the same type. Over and above its functionalities, Dotclear was
FR designed for maximum user comfort, with its two step automated installation. In addition, . many themes and plug-ins are available for easy personalisation. It generates pages with a structure that optimises their natural referencing. Dotclear is distributed under the GPL v2.
SMILE It is developed in PHP and supports PostgreSQL (8.0 and above), MySQL (at least 4.1 with . InnoDB) and SQLite databases.
WWW
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phpBB Version studied: 3.0.11 Website: www.phpbb.com Community driven solution
phpBB is a tool in the forums family. In addition to the usual functions, phpBB can be used to create surveys, adverts and post-its, with the latter two locked at the top of the page for enhanced visibility.
Emoticons are used to make the content more visible. phpBB also handles an optional email system that can send notifications whenever a reply is posted on a subject (or subjects)
FR tracked by the user. Where cookies are enabled, new messages (i.e. those posted since the . last time the page was viewed) can quickly be accessed. Going a step further, a private messaging system between users eliminates the need to publish personal email addresses. BBCode (similar to HTML code) can be used in these messages for an enhanced layout. Graphically, there is complete support for different visual themes: the graphics segment is
SMILE completely separate from the software itself, and so can be personalised at will. . phpBB is distributed under the GPL v2. It is built on LAMP architecture and is written in PHP.
WWW
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FR
.
SMILE
. WWW
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TWiki Version studied: 5.1.2 Website: http://twiki.org Vendor driven solution (TWiki)
TWiki is an open source software solution launched more than 10 years ago, that uses the principle of a wiki to build all sorts of collaborative applications, from document management to knowledge bases. TWiki is an international project, used in over 100 countries. In France it
enjoys a more modest success.
TWiki can be used as a structured wiki, but also as a development area, a document manager, FR
. an intranet, and so on. Developers can expand TWiki’s content and functionalities by means of its more than 400 extensions. In most cases, using TWiki requires no particular technical skills.
TWiki is distributed under the GPL v2. SMILE
. It is a cgi-bin script written in Perl. The information contained in TWiki is stored in text files and converted to HTML on the fly.
WWW
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FR
.
SMILE
. WWW
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XWiki Version studied: 4.3 Website: www.xwiki.org Community driven solution
XWiki was created by Ludovic Dubost in 2004. It is now primarily supported by the company XWiki SAS. A second generation wiki application, XWiki is used for work collaboration, information
sharing and online content publication (structured or unstructured). In additional to standard wiki functionalities (simplified layout, access rights management, collaborative publishing,
FR etc.), it offers the option of performing programming directly on the wiki's pages. It is this . possibility that makes it a wiki application, i.e. its adaptability to user needs. XWiki is perfect for building knowledge bases and collaborative intranets and for knowledge monitoring activities.
XWiki is distributed under the LGPL and its community is relatively active. SMILE . It is developed in Java using a Hibernate database. The programming languages used within the wiki itself are Velocity and Groovy. It includes a number of APIs and a system of plug-ins and portlets.
WWW
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FR
.
SMILE
. WWW
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Other In the world of blogs, wikis and forums, open source supply is particularly dynamic. By way of example, over and above the products presented above, the following tools can also be added:
Name URL / Website
DokuWiki http://www.dokuwiki.org/dokuwiki
FSB http://www.fire-soft-board.com
FR . MediaWiki http://www.mediawiki.org
PunBB http://punbb.informer.com
SMF http://www.simplemachines.org
SMILE . WordPress http://www.wordpress.org
Tiki http://info.tiki.org
Foswiki http://foswiki.org WWW
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E-LEARNING
E-learning, also referred to as “online training”, consists in educational activities that occur via electronic solutions, particularly web based ones. E-learning solutions are used to create and distribute
classes and various teaching materials to students,
test their knowledge, and foster learning communities FR
. using collaborative tools. The main functionalities of e-learning tools include management of teachers, students and classes, creation of educational resource types, SCORM
compatibility, questionnaires, collaborative tools SMILE
. (wikis, forums and blogs), timetables, student supervision and more. Among the available open source solutions, Moodle and Claroline enjoy an excellent reputation.
WWW
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Moodle Version studied: 2.4 Website: http://moodle.org Community driven solution
Created in 2002 by Australian Martin Dougiamas (who had previously worked on the proprietary solution WebTC), Moodle is the mostly widely used online learning platform in the world.
It can create and distribute classes and various teaching materials to students, test their knowledge, and foster learning communities using collaborative tools. Its modular approach
FR responds to needs ranging from those of individual trainers to major institutions. Its main . functionalities include management of teachers, students and classes, creation of nine types of educational resources, SCORM compatibility, questionnaires, collaborative tools (wikis, forums and blogs), timetables and student supervision.
Moodle is supported by active communities of practice that contribute to its development. It SMILE
. is distributed under the GPL. Authorised service companies offer various services such as hosting, module creation, etc. Moodle is a LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP) application. It also runs on UNIX, Linux, FreeBSD, Windows, Mac OS X, NetWare, and more, with PostgreSQL, Oracle and Microsoft
WWW SQL Server databases.
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Claroline Version studied: 1.11 Website: www.claroline.net Consortium driven solution
Created in 2000 at the Catholic University of Louvain (UCL), Claroline is the second most commonly used online learning application in Europe. It is easy to use, owing in part to its lesser functional depth in comparison to Moodle. It should be noted that it gave rise to the
Dokeos fork (now under corporate management), which in turn gave rise to the promising
fork of Dokeos 1.8.6, Chamilo.
FR Its main functionalities include management of teachers, students and classes, creation of . exercises and classes, SCORM and IMS QTI 2 compatibility, questionnaires, collaborative tools (wikis and forums), timetables and statistics on attendance and on students’ marks on different exercises.
Distributed under the GPL, Claroline's development currently enjoys the support of the SMILE
. Walloon Region and of three other Belgian partners. The consortium, created in 2007 in the form of an international not-for-profit association, unites the Claroline community, coordinates the platform’s developments and promotes its use. Claroline is written in PHP and runs on Linux, Mac OS and Microsoft Windows. It uses MySQL
WWW databases.
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Other Among the different products available in the field of e-learning, the following tools can also be added to the list:
Name URL / Website
Dokeos http://www.dokeos.com
FR Chamilo http://www.chamilo.org . Ilias http://www.ilias.de
SMILE
. WWW
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VISITOR TRACKING
There are two categories of tools that are external to applications (in the broadest sense of the term) and that are used to generate visitor statistics: log analysers, which work based on HTTP server log files,
and remote applications that collect their data using
special tags inserted on the pages. FR
. In the world of open source solutions, tools like AWStats (log analyser) and Piwik (tag analysis) are
commonly used.
SMILE
. WWW
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AWStats Version studied: 7.0 Website: http://awstats.sourceforge.net Community driven solution
AWStats is an audience tracking tool based on analyses of web logs. It was written a number of years ago by Laurent Destailleur. AWStats provides a wide range of statistics, graphs and reports generated from its analysis of
web logs (as well as FTP, streaming and email). It can natively read the log files of most web servers such as Apache, WebStar, IIS, etc. Its functionalities include measurements of the
FR number of visits, unique visitors, pages, hits, transfers, by domain/country, host, time, . browser, OS, and so on. One of the strengths of AWStats lies in the possibility of dynamically generating tables without losing out on performance, thanks in particular to an efficient caching policy. It is very popular among systems and network administrators.
The AWStats open source software is available under the GPL. SMILE . Written in Perl, AWStats can be installed and run on most systems. It is a highly mature supervision tool with packages on all Linux distributions.
WWW
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Piwik Version studied: 1.9.2 Website: http://piwik.org Community driven solution
Piwik is the successor to phpMyVisites. Under the direction of Matthieu Aubry, Piwik’s objective is to become a preferred alternative to Google Analytics. This goal has now been achieved thanks to a very active community and the major technical advances brought online
just over a year ago.
The challenge is still there, but it must be said that the solution's beginnings appear FR
. promising. In just a few clicks, users can access graphs of the most recent visits and all of the key indicators tracked on a daily/weekly/monthly/annual basis. Naturally, the interface is completely customisable. Other views include visit durations, visitor browsers, visitor countries/regions, a list of keywords used in search engines, a list of external sites and
campaigns, search engine rankings, a distribution of visits by time zone, objectives tracking, SMILE
. geographic distribution and more. But additional, more professional functionalities have also appeared in recent months: e-commerce tracking, personalised variables, internal search engine tracking, page transitions, etc. As a result, the tool has been adopted on a very large scale (more than 320,000 websites, according to its claims).
It is distributed under the GPL v3 and has been translated into more than 40 languages. WWW Piwik is built on LAMP architecture and boasts a system of plug-ins, an API and an interface that is very user-friendly thanks to its use of Ajax.
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FR .
SMILE
. WWW
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OTHER
In this final category of the “Applications” dimension, we will present other open source tools that can be of benefit to companies, although it was difficult to define a separate category for them.
In particular, we will be presenting OpenX (an ad
server solution) and LimeSurvey (an advanced tool for FR
. the creation of professional surveys and polls).
Given the diversity of the tools selected for this category, the graphs below do not display the average
SMILE scores.
. WWW
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OpenX Version studied: 2.8.10 Site Internet de la solution : www.openx.com Vendor driven solution (OpenX)
OpenX is an open source advertising brokerage solution. US based vendor OpenX publishes and supports the tool. OpenX provides good control of advertising campaigns for one or more websites, along with data on campaign results.
OpenX enjoys a relatively vast functional scope, handling multiple sites and advertisers, schedule based banner displays (with start and end dates), rotating displays in a single zone,
FR multiple formats (IAB and more), limits on the number of clicks or displays per day, . management of priority campaigns, etc. OpenX supports a wide variety of media, such as images, HTML, JavaScript, Flash, Google Ad Sense, DoubleClick, Atlas and Yahoo!). Statistics can also be calculated by campaign, with tracking of displays, clicks and clicks by channel,
reports exported in Excel, HTML or CSV format, etc. SMILE
. OpenX is distributed under the GPL v2, but also under a commercial licence and as part of a SaaS package. Unfortunately, the open source version appears to have been somewhat abandoned in favour of the latter. The application can handle hundreds of millions of impressions per month. It runs on an
Apache (or HTTPd) web server with PHP, MySQL and a PHP accelerator. WWW
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LimeSurvey Version studied: 2.0 Website: www.limesurvey.org Community driven solution
LimeSurvey (formerly PHPSurveyor) is an open source online survey solution. It was registered on SourceForge.net on 20 February 2003 under the name of PHPSurveyor. It was written by an Australian developer named Jason Cleeland.
LimeSurvey is a complete open source tool dedicated to the creation of all sorts of questionnaires. The software can produce questionnaires with an unlimited number of
FR categories and questions. 20 styles of questions are available when creating a questionnaire: . dates, scales, dropdown lists, rankings, numerical input and more. LimeSurvey is used worldwide by a large number of private individuals, by major corporations, at universities and at government institutions. Its most noteworthy customer references include OpenOffice.org, Ubuntu and Gnome. Both the code and the interface have been completely refactored in the
SMILE latest version (2.0). . LimeSurvey is distributed under the GPL. LimeSurvey is written in PHP, in combination with a MySQL, PostgreSQL or Microsoft SQL Server database.
WWW
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FR
.
SMILE
. WWW
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CONCLUSION
As can be seen throughout this paper, the range of open source solutions is particularly vast, with products of very high quality boasting some of the best technical and functional bases on the software market today. As a result, opting for open source is no longer so much a question but rather a “no-brainer” for most companies. All the studies have confirmed it: open source is everywhere in companies. In 2009, a Gartner study estimated that 85% of companies were using open source solutions, and this
percentage will undoubtedly be even higher for 2012 and 2013.
FR . Thus the question has ceased to be whether or not to use or short-list open source tools for a given project, and is instead how to select the best tools that will integrate most smoothly with the existing environment. For this reason, the definition of an open source policy can be
of benefit. SMILE
. A corporate open source policy is a document that sets out the company’s rules for the deployment of open source software: selection criteria, support requirements, approved licences, developer instructions, acquisition and implementation processes, methods of contribution, and so on.
WWW This is a major task, but a crucial one. The advantages of using open source solutions are so extensive: longevity, freedom of choice, standards compliance, development dynamics, de facto standards and cost, to name but a few. Administrators and users are well aware that nothing is more reliable or effective than a Linux server when it comes to running a Java or PHP application server, for example, or operating a database. We hope that this paper will serve to guide you toward the best products and will help you to build secure, lasting and innovative architectures.
As a complement to this paper presenting the best open source solutions, we recommend that you read our other white paper on “Open source policies”, freely available for downloading. This text explains the benefits afforded to IT departments by establishing an open source policy.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
A paper like this one cannot be written by a single person, given the wide range of competencies and knowledge required, and the need to cover tools as varied as VPNs and e- learning. We would like to take this opportunity to warmly thank all those who devoted their time and effort to it.
Grégory BECUE Guillaume MAISSA Michaël BRARD
FR Benoît JACQUEMONT Eric PLAQUEVENT François-Xavier BONNET . Maxime BESSON Allaedine EL BANNA Laury MAGNE Patrick KOUASSI Jérémy SUBTIL Yanick DELARBRE Alexandre NION Marc GIBERT GINESTA Pierre FROUGE Philippe DE OLIVERIA Sylvain TACQUET Pierre BARTHELEMY
SMILE Frédéric DE GOMBERT Badr CHENTOUF Cedric DEFORTIS . Patrick NERDEN Hélène ZYSMAN Agnés FARAL Thomas CHOPPY Philippe BRIERE Simon ROY Jean-François BOSSARD Sébastien MAULION Boudjema LARID Régis DAMONGEOT Aurélien LEMAIRE Adrien FUTSCHIK
Thibaut DEMARET Aurélien FOUCRET Alexis TRINQUET WWW Julien BAGARIE Marc MAURICE Mohand LARABI Sébastien GIRAUD Sylvain BANNIER Florent BERANGER Alain ARDITI Fabien GASSER Elise BRIET Patrice BERTRAND Vincent SPRIT Pierre-Antoine MARC Barthélémy VESSEMONT Nicolas PAILLOUS … Eric DRIER DE LA FORGE Cyril QUINTIN
And to our growing team at Smile, for the curiosity and commitment they show each day to open source solutions.
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INDEX OF SOLUTIONS
389 directory server, 111 DotClear, 272 JMeter, 185 ActiveMQ, 202 Drools, 206 Joomla, 245 Activiti, 133 Drupal, 241 JORAM, 203 AIDE, 43 Drupal Commerce, 232 JPBM, 132
Alfresco, 251 Drupal Commons, 267 JQuery, 163
Ant, 135 DSPAM, 93 Kamailio, 86
FR Apache, 199 easyCA, 175 Kannel, 87 . Asterisk, 85 Eclipse, 138 Keepalived, 41 AWStats, 282 EJBCA, 176 Knowledge Tree, 253 Bacula, 32 ElasticSearch, 190 Koha, 257
SMILE Bind, 108 Elgg, 268 KVM, 77 . BIRT, 218 ESIGate, 207 LemonLDAP ::NG, 179 Blue Mind, 97 eXo Platform, 261 Liferay, 263 Bonita, 131 eZ Publish, 242 Liferay Social Office, 268
BuddyPress, 266 FreeBSD, 71 LimeSurvey, 286 WWW Cacti, 58 Fusion Inventory, 28 LinOTP, 181 Capistrano, 137 Git, 143 Linux-HA, 38 CAS, 178 GlassFish, 198 Lucene, 189 Cassandra, 120, 121 GPLI, 25 LVS, 39 Centreon, 60 GWT, 162 Maarch, 254 Chef, 33 Hadoop, 125 Magento, 228 ClamAV, 44 HAProxy, 40 MantisBT, 140 Claroline, 279 HippoCMS, 243 Maven, 140 Compiere, 236 Hive, 126 mnoGoSearch, 191 Composer, 137 Horde, 95 MongoDB, 117 Continiuum, 148 Jahia, 244 Moodle, 278 CouchBase, 122 JasperReports / IReport, 219 Mule, 155 CUPS, 105 JasperSoft, 223 Munin, 63 Cyrus IMAPd, 91 JBoss AS, 196 MySQL, 115 Debian, 66 Jedox, 226 Nagios, 59 Django, 166 Jenkins, 149 NetBSD, 72
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NetFilter, 54 Petals, 156 SpagoBI, 222 Novell Suse Enterprise Linux, pf (Packet Filter), 53 SpamAssassin, 92 68 pfSense, 55 SPIP, 246 Nuxeo, 252 Phing, 136 Spring, 161 OCS Inventory NG, 26 PhoneGap, 171 Sqoop, 128 Open Flora, 259 PhpBB, 273 Squid, 101 OpenAM, 180 Pig, 126 Subversion, 142 Openbravo, 237 Piwik, 283 SugarCRM, 211 OpenBSD, 70 Play !, 165 Symfony, 159 OpenCA, 173 PMB, 258 Talend, 215 FR OpenCRX, 210 . PMD, 151 Talend ESB, 154 OpenEMM, 97 Postfix, 90 TightVNC, 22 OpenERP, 238 PostgreSQL, 116 Titanium, 170 OpenLDAP, 112 Prestashop, 229 Tomcat, 197
SMILE OpenNebula, 82 ProFTPD, 107 Tsung, 186 . OpenNMS, 62 Prototype, 164 Tuleap, 145 OpenSearchServer, 193 Pulse 2, 27 TWiki, 274 OpenSSH, 23 Puppet, 34 TYPO3, 246
OpenSSL, 174 RBS Change, 231 Ubuntu, 69 WWW OpenStack, 81 Red Hat Enterprise Linux, 67 Varnish, 102 OpenSwan, 51 Redis, 118 VTiger, 212 OpenVAS, 46 Redmine, 144 WireShark, 47 OpenVPN, 50 Ruby On Rails, 167 Xen, 75 OpenVZ, 76 Samba, 106 XWiki, 247, 275 OpenX, 285 Selenium, 150 Zabbix, 61 Oracle VirtualBox, 78 Shibboleth, 182 Zarafa, 96 osCommerce, 233 Silverpeas, 262 Zend Framework, 160 Oxid, 229 SNORT, 45 Zimbra, 94 Pentaho, 224 Solr, 190 Pentaho Data Integration, 216 SpaceWalk, 35 Pentaho Report Designer, 220
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