Open Source / Free Software information.

Today's business is all about cutting costs and saving money. Frequently IT Managers are tasked to do this, while still providing the same services to your employees and customers. Using Open Source software, you can reduce your total cost of ownership, and provide the same, and in many cases better, services to your employees and customers.

If businesses are going to survive, they have to meet many needs. Open Source / Free Software can meet these needs while saving your company money. For these reasons, using Open Source software can be your companies technology solution.

Some of the most popular programs used today are Open Source / Free Software. Some important and useful kinds of software are: Server, Desktop, Database and Security Software.

NEEDS

In the world of Information Technology, there are typically many needs. Customers need to find out about and communicate with companies; Employees need to be able to do work, IT Staff need to effectively manage employees technology needs, Managers need to know that Technology is being used effectively and efficiently, and Executives need to know that the company is generating revenue.

Customers
Typically, if a customer is interested in a product, they will do an Internet search, or if they know about a company, just go directly to that companies' website. Once customers are aware of a companies website, they may need to communicate with people at that company. After a business relationship is developed, a customer may have a need to access data within a company, or to upload or download files from a that company.

Employees
Employees on the other hand need to be able to print documents for presentations or meetings. They need to be able to communicate with external customers and internal co-workers electronically, they need to be able to do research on the Internet, and download or upload files from other companies. They also need a way to access to shared files within their organization, and a method to electronically collaborate with a group of people if they are working on a large group project.

Technology Managers
IT Managers typically need: peace of mind through knowing their infrastructure is secure, and measurements of network and resource usage, as well as historical data to justify existing staff and future budget. Often times IT Managers need access to archived data, or data that should have been archived. In addition, they often need an easy way to monitor the critical services that external customers and internal employees use.

Executives
Executives needs are often times in line with IT managers, but are more concerned with expenses and public relations, making sure the shareholders are happy, and making sure the bottom line is being met. Executives IT needs often revolve around making sure that the needs of their Managers, Employees and customers are met.

Growth
Often times, businesses grow in such a way that the amount of data used by customers, employees, or managers becomes large enough that it needs to be managed more effectively. Typically, a database vendor is picked, software licenses are purchased, and the software is installed.

SOLUTION

All of these needs can be met using Open Source / Free Software.

There are many reasons to use Open Source / Free software. The primary reason is cost savings. With no licensing fee to pay, annual IT budgets can be reduced dramatically.

Additionally, because the source code for the software is available, you have control over how the software is compiled, and if specific customizations are necessary. Custom compilation can often times improve the efficiency of the software if some of the extra components that sometimes cause "bloat" can be removed. This level of customization usually isn't the case with closed proprietary software.

Through mailing lists and discussion groups, you have access to the developers of the software. If your company wants specific functionality added, or if you have an unusual configuration issue, the best place to go for support is to the people who wrote the code. With closed / proprietary software, the developers are usually many levels removed from end user support. One normally has greater accessibility to the authors of Open Source software.

Hundreds of developers all over the world collaborate Open Source software, so changes or updates are subject to broad peer review. Additionally, because developers often work for free, they are intrinsically motivated to produce elegant, efficient code that appeals to their sense of beauty. Timelines based on marketing, advertisement, or financial concerns are usually not major motivating factors behind releasing a new version of the software. More often, it is the measure of quality of the code.

SERVER

Naming Services
A customer's needs often have to do with a companies web presence. A companies web presence is most directly related to naming and web services. Domain Naming Services, or DNS is the software that translates the numbers computers use for communication over the Internet into names that are more readable for humans. DNS is what makes 207.228.42.5 available as www.simonsontech.net. The Berkeley Internet Name Daemon, or BIND server is open source; and is "used on the Vast majority of name serving machines on the Internet".

Windows® File Sharing
Because Windows® is so pervasive in corporate work environments, it is pretty much a given that your company will be sharing files using the "Network Neighboorhood", which uses the CIFS protocol. The Common Internet File System is a native file sharing protocol in Windows® 2000, and is the Windows® standard for sharing files across corporate internets. Corporations with a heterogenous environment of UNIX/Linux servers and Windows® clients need to share files just as easily. The solution is SAMBA. Samba is an Open Source/Free Software suite that runs on UNIX/Linux and provides seamless file and print services for Windows® clients. The great news is that with official release of Samba 3.0, Samba actually outperforms a Windows® 2003 Server by a factor of up to 2.5 times.

Web Services
Another part of web presence is a companies website. A web server in conjunction with DNS is what responds with text and graphics when a web browser like Mozilla, which has features like tabbed browsing and builtin pop-up blocking features, and also happens to be Open Source, points at an address such as http://www.simonsontech.net. According to a November 2003 survey by Netcraft, the Open Source Software, Apache is the most popular web server with 67.35% market share. Open Source Software has dominated the web server landscape since Internet use has become mainstream.

Electronic Mail
The rapid exchange of specific information is an absolute necessity in todays business. Customers need to communicate with employees, employees with customers, and employees with each other. The most common form of this information exchange is via e-mail. The Open Source Software, Sendmail is likely the most popular Mail Transport Agent in use on the Internet today. According to a 2001 September / October survey by D. J. Bernstein of 1 million random IP addresses, Sendmail has 42% of the MTA Market Share. Other popular OSS MTA's are Postfix, and Courier. The popular software, qmail is not Open Source, but freely available.

Print Services
While electronic collaboration is still the primary means of communication, the ability to generate a hard copy of a document is still crucial. Historically, UNIX / Linux printing has been more than just a headache. Drivers for specific printers where hard to find, and once found, functionality was limited. CUPS, or the Common Unix Printing System, is now included with many distrobutions of Linux. CUPS is provided under the GNU GPL, the GNU General Public License, which allows generous liberties with the code. With CUPS, Linux print servers have vast flexiblity in configuring PostScript or raster printers. The framework has a modular approach, utilizing GNU Ghostscript, and a easy to use web management interface. The Linux Printing website has free drivers for over 1100 printers, and Easy Software Print Pro has 4400 printer drivers available for a fee.

Directory Services
How many times have you wished for employee information that's available in an open database format? Something that you can run queries against using a web page, or other application. OpenLDAP is the answer. OpenLDAP is an open source implementation of the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol, that unlike proprietary e-mail applications, makes database(s) of information available across the network using TCP/IP. Information that LDAP is particularly good at sharing are: user names, hostnames, phone numbers, etc. Making contact information available can be critical in improving efficiency within a company.

Backup Services
Protecting internal and customer data isn't a luxury, it's a necessity. With programs like Veritas Netbackup®, and Legato Networker®, licensing fees for backing up your production servers to your large tape library can often add up quickly. AMANDA can help. The Advanced Maryland Automatic Network Disk Archiver is distributed under the BSD License, and can provide the same functionality you have come to expect with Veritas® or Legato® with no Licensing cost.

DESKTOP

Web Browsing
A primary need of any employee is to gain access to information. Usually this information is in the form of a web page. If it's internal communications between a company, or an employee doing research on a customer or competitor. Web browsing has become a way of life. The majority of people who use web browsers these days, use Internet Explorer®. That doesn't mean it's the best at doing the job. An excellent, full featured Web Browser, E-mail / Newsgroup Client, HTML Editor is Mozilla. A slimmed down version of Mozilla that only provides web browsing is Mozilla Firebird. Mozilla is the most Standards Compliant web browser today, features builtin pop-up blocking and tabbed browsing that causes less clutter, and makes getting information online quicker and easier. and Firebird gives you all that at breakneck speeds. Other open source web browsers are Galeon and Lynx which is a text only based browser.

Mail Clients
MS Outlook® is probably the most ubiquitous e-mail reader software in use today. Ximian Evolution is the equivalent to Outlook, and it runs in the UNIX/Linux environment. Evolution is Free, and tightly integrates in to exisiting MS Exchange® environments, using the inexpensive Ximian Connector plugin. Other popular Open Source e-mail clients are Sylpheed, Squirrel Mail, Mutt, and Pine.

Productivity Software
Employees, Managers, Executives, and pretty much everyone else needs to be able to view, edit and change documents. Because of the prevalant use of Microsoft Office®, the .doc, .xls, .ppt, and .mdb extensions have become each categories document standard. With the help of Open Office, which runs on most popular platforms, anyone can read, modify and create files with the same format as people using MS Office® on Intel and they can do it for Free! Open Office is a full featured, Open Source productivity suite, that uses an XML file format natively, but can read, and save in the most popular formats used today.

DATABASES

Open Source Databases
When client, or internal information reaches critical mass, a structured framework is needed to manage that information. Proprietary databases like Oracle and DB2, can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to license. MySQL, the "World's Most popular Open Source Database"; is a very fast, multi threaded, multi user, robust Structured Query Language database server. It is available under the GPL License, or for a commercial License with support. PostgreSQL is "the worlds most advanced Open Source database software". Both of these products have proven track records, and can save your company hundreds of thousands of dollars.

SECURITY

Secure connectivity
OpenSSH is the standard for secure interactive host communication. OpenSSH stands for Open Source Secure Shell, which means that one can have secure communications and file transfer between any two clients in the world for free. A common problem with historical data transfer, and interactive login programs is that with ftp, and telnet passwords were transmitted in plain text across the network. With SSH, all communication is encrypted, so that even if someone was snooping the network, all that they would see is jumbled non-sensical garbage. In addition, OpenSSH allows features like secure port forwarding and non-interactive logins via public-private key exchange. OpenSSL is a full featured Open Source toolkit implementing the Secure Sockets Layer, and Transport Layer Security, as well as a general purpose cryptography library. OpenSSH requires OpenSSL to work.

Vulnerability Assessment
Nessus is the "Premier Open Source vulnerability assessment tool." It is a "remote security scanner for Linux, BSD, Solaris and others. It performs over 1200 checks, can generate output in HTML, and suggest fixes.

Intrusion Detection
Nowadays, intrusion detection is a regularly mentioned buzzword. Conventional "Black Box" IDS Systems, can be extremely expensive, and don't allow for many customizations or maintenance. Snort is an open source network IDS (Intrusion Detection System), that is capable of performing real-time traffic analysis and packet logging on IP networks. It can perform protocol analysis, content searching/matching and can be used to detect a variety of attacks and probes, such as buffer overflows, stealth port scans, CGI attacks, SMB probes, OS fingerprinting attempts, and much more.