OStatic

GroundWork Open Source, which provides commercial open source network management software, has announced the launch of MonitoringForge.org, which it bills as a unified hub for open source monitoring. While the site is primarily aimed at IT administrators who want to compare open source system and network monitoring tools to proprietary alternatives, it may also serve several useful purposes for open source project leaders that don't have community web sites and need to automate aspects of projects. Here are more details.

Recently, we covered research showing that nearly half of open source developers are focused on applications for delivery in the cloud. Software as a Service (SaaS) applications are increasingly either employing open source or are built entirely on it. And all of this adds up to an increasing premium on web development skills and good tools for web development in the open source community. The good news is that there are many? open source tools to help you with your web project, and given the costs of web development environments and the like, they can save you a lot of money. Here are over 15 good examples of tools and tutorials, with a few that we've covered before appended at the end, in case you missed them.

We've written before about the challenges that proprietary virtualization playersﾠ such as VMware face from open source virtualization applications. The problem for the proprietary players is that the free, open source virtualization offerings are now very good tools, and are increasingly built right into popular operating systems. Aside from appearing as utility-like modules in operating systems, though, virtualization is becoming a central part of open source network and systems management platforms.

This morning I sat back and noticed the increasing rate at which I am getting notices about open source software making big headway in the trading and financial services industries. For example, the folks at GroundWork Open Source--which does commercial open source and network management software--sent me notice of these brand new customers of theirs: Prager Sealy, Commonwealth Financial, National Australia Bank, Royal Bank of Canada, Stark Investments and Sterling Savings Bank. Also, this post from The Linux Foundation provides an eye-popping look at big trading exchanges now running Linux. One of the big drivers for this trend, I think, is how even minute reductions in the cost of transactions can be huge cost savers.