This document presents open source software options for consideration by the UK government. It discusses options for servers, databases, middleware, application servers, and other categories. The goal is to encourage more evaluation of open source alternatives when designing IT solutions. Feedback on the options listed can be provided to the given email address. Real-world examples of significant open source use by governments, businesses, and organizations are provided for many of the software options.

1. Open Source Options
Version 1.0
October 2011
1

2. Open Source Software Options for Government
Aim
1. This document presents options for Open Source Software for use in Government but should
not be considered to be prescriptive or definitive.
2. It is presented in recognition that open source software is underused across Government
and the wider public sector, despite the current and previous administrations intention to
promote its use.
3. This set of options is primarily intended to be used by Government to encourage IT suppliers
and integrators to fully evaluate open source options when designing solutions and services.
4. Note that this publication does not imply preference for any vendor or product because
open source software, by definition, is not tied inextricably to any particular commercial
organisation. Any commercial entity can choose to support, maintain, or integrate open
source software.
5. It is understood that the software market is a rapidly developing environment and any
options list must be continuously maintained. However, given the lack of open source
uptake, this options set is useful for encouraging IT suppliers to consider open source, and to
aid the assurance of their proposals.
Context
1. The Coalition Government believes Open Source Software can deliver significant short and long
term cost savings across Government IT.
2. Typical benefits of Open Source include lower procurement prices, no license costs,
interoperability, easier integration and customisation, compliance with open technology and
data standards giving autonomy over your own information and freedom from vendor lock in.
3. OSS is not currently widely used in Government IT, and the leading systems integrators for
Government Departments do not routinely consider open source software for IT solution
options, as required by existing HMG ICT policy.
2

3. 4. There are significant and wide ranging obstacles to Open Source in Government. Some of these
are lack of procurement guidance, resistance from suppliers, concerns about license obligations
and patent issues, and a lack of understanding of open source maturity and its development
ecosystem.
How to Use
1. This document presents suggestions for open source software to consider for meeting
business requirements, or as replacements for closed proprietary software. References to
real world significant use of the open source software are also provided.
2. This set of options can be used to:
a. Inform the design of new IT solutions.
b. Suggest opportunities for IT service or solution refreshes.
c. Challenge a proposed solution that does not use open source technology.
3. This document does not present a list of pre-approved or selected software. This document
does not remove existing requirements for due diligence and assurance on the part
Government. In particular it does not transfer any technology risk from IT integrators and
suppliers to Government. It aims to improve the capability of Government to select the best
technology from a wider set of options.
Feedback
Please provide feedback to:
opensource@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk
3

4. 4

5. Contents
Table of Contents
Server............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 6
Data & Databases........................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 10
Middleware.................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 13
Application Servers...................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 15
Application Development............................................................................................................................................................................................................ 17
Cloud............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 18
Business Applications................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 21
Network....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 27
Web............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 30
Desktop Office............................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 34
Specialist Applications................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 37
Education..................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 39
Health.......................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 40
Service Management................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 40
5

6. Server
Sector Software Consider as Alternative to Comments Real World Use
Server • RedHat Enterprise Linux • Microsoft Windows Server • General purpose Unix-like • London Stock Exchange has
Operating operating system with proven moved from a Microsoft
Systems higher performance, availability .Net based infrastructure to
• Canonical Ubuntu Server • UNIX - Sun Solaris, IBM AIX, and security record. a Novell Linux based
HP UX infrastructure to improve
speed and stability.
• Enterprise Linux distributions are Reference
• CentOs Linux
tested more than cutting edge http://bit.ly/e2KL7w
distributions aimed at developers
or home use.
• Novell SUSE Linux
• Linux powers the global
Wikipedia site. Reference
• CentOS is a rebuilt from RedHat http://bit.ly/13ynJh
enterprise versions of the source
code but without Redhat
trademarks, and usable without • CentOS is used by the
commercial support subscription Mexican Federal Power
costs. Commission. Reference
http://bit.ly/hrXBgb
• Netcraft Survey March 2011
shows top 5 most reliable
web hosting providers run
Linux. Reference
6

7. http://bit.ly/fyHGxK
• FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD • Microsoft Windows Server • General purpose Unix-like • Force10 routers and
operating system with proven switches have an OS based
performance, availability and on NetBSD. Reference
• UNIX - Sun Solaris, IBM AIX, security record. http://bit.ly/fDjqZN
HP UX
• BSDs have a particular record in • FreeBSD used in products
internet and network services, from major companies
and underly many commercial including Apple, Blue Coat,
network products. Citrix, Ironport, Juniper.
McAfee and NetApp.
Reference
• FreeBSD is considered stable and http://bit.ly/e2wFtE
reliable and powers some of in
internet’s busiest sites, including
for a while Microsoft’s Hotmail. • FreeBSD powers busy sites
Reference http://bit.ly/iev6qZ including Yahoo! Reference
http://bit.ly/3eCauv
Desktop • RedHat Desktop / Workstattion • Microsoft Windows XP, • Alternative desktops are likely to • 220,000 Canonical Ubuntu
Operating Linux Vista, 7 be successful when their role or desktops deployed in
Systems use is known to not require Andalusia, Spain. Reference
Microsoft applications. Examples http://bit.ly/ghu4lg
• Canonical Ubuntu are contact centre desktops with
access to a web based
application.
• CentOs Linux
• Novell SUSE Linux
Virtualisation • Linux KVM • VMWare vSphere / ESX / • KVM is rapidly gaining industry • IBM uses KVM as basis for
support as the leading it’s IaaS cloud platform.
7

8. • Xen Server alternative to the incumbent Reference
virtualisation platforms. The http://bit.ly/d9yNqL
Open Virtualisation Alliance
which aims to promote KVM over
VMWare has more than 160 • KVM leads other
members inlcudig iBM, Redhat, virtualisation technologies
Intel, HP and BMC. in SPEC benchmarks.
Reference
http://bit.ly/ovT81B and
• Xen pioneered virtualisation but http://bit.ly/vBEtu9
is considered to overtaken by
KVM based platforms. Citrix
offers commercial support for
Xen based virtualisation.
• Virtualbox • VMWare Workstation, • Desktop virtualisation, developed • Oracle’s VDI enterprise
Parallels for desktop by Sun, now managed by Oracle. product is based on
Supports features comparable to Virtualbox. Reference
commercial software including http://bit.ly/sQHcGI
device passthrough. Compatible
with a Vmware (vmdk), Microsoft
(vhd) and Open Virtualisation
Format (OVF) virtual machine
images. Light client only software
is ideal for development and
testing environments.
Virtual • SPICE (http://www.spice- • Citrix • KVM with SPICE will become the • TBA
Desktop space.org/) strategic enterprise grade VDI
Infrastructur offering from RedHat
e
Remote • rdesktop • Citrix ICA • Rdesktop is a client for • TBA
Desktop Microsoft’s RDP protocol.
Access
Clients
8

9. • RealVNC, TightVNC, UltraVNC • VNC servers and clients enable
platform independent remote
desktop use. Handshaking allows
• VirtualBox interoperability between
different VNC implementations.
• Most clients will fall back to the
common RDP protocol for
accessing remote desktops
virtual or physical.
Backup • Amanda, Bacula • NetVault Backup • Amanda and Bacula are • Corporate and public sector
compatible across Linux, Unix, testimonials for large scale
MacOS and Windows systems. deployments including
Belgian Government
backing up 30TB. Reference
http://bit.ly/gp64Jy
9

10. Data & Databases
Sector Software Consider as Alternative to Comments Real World Use
Relational • MySQL • Microsoft SQL Server • General purpose, long • Some of the largest and user
Databases established and proven. intensive online services use
Mysql, including Google,
• Oracle DB Facebook, FLickr, Wikipedia,
• Component of established LAMP Nokia, Youtube. Reference
pattern stack, supporting many http://bit.ly/gZf5T7
• IBM DB2 common patterns including
Joomla, Wordpress, Drupal.
• Other users providing
studies and testimonials
• Optimised for read speed. include NASA, UN FAO, US
Historically not designed to be Navy, Whitehouse.gov, New
feature rich. Zealand Ministry of Justice,
Ericsson, Cable & Wireless,
Nokia. Reference
http://bit.ly/rE8XM
• PostgreSQL • Microsoft SQL Server • Long established and proven. • Large data oriented services
Historically developed for feature use PostgreSQL including
completeness to compete with Yahoo!, MySpace, Sony
• Oracle DB commercial databases. Features Online, Skype, International
include streaming replication, Space Station. Unmodified
triggers, table partitioning and PostgreSQL scaling to
stored procedures resembling petabytes. Reference
• IBM DB2
10

11. Oracle’s PL/SQL. http://bit.ly/6ttyNn
• EnterpriseDB variant aims to • 2011 Police Crime Map site
replace Oracle database. uses postgresql database. At
peak demand was 220,000
requests/second.
www.police.uk
Distributed • Hadoop • Google MapReduce • Hadoop is the leading platform • Hadoop is used by leading
Large for petabyte scale distributed large scale operations
Storage data storage and processing. It is including Amazon/A9
• HBase, Cassandra • Google BigTable designed to detect and manage product search, Adobe, AOL,
failures in commodity compute Baidu at 3000TB/week, Ebay
nodes, thus not relying on 532 node cluster and 5.3PB,
expensive high-availability Facebook 1100-node cluster
• Redis NoSQL
hardware. Compatible with 12PB data, Hulu media
MapReduce APIs. service, IBM Blue Cloud
Computing, Last.fm,
LinkedIn, New York Times,
• During 2001, several commercial Microsoft Powerset,
offering provide support around Rackspace, Twitter, Yahoo
Hadoop components, or Hadoop- with more than 40,000
like components, including from nodes . Reference
EMC, Oracle and IBM. http://bit.ly/zI1Wp
• HBase is modelled after Google’s • Adobe, Powerset,
distributed database BigTable. Stumbleupon, Yahoo!,
Twitter, and Facebook use
HBase. Reference
http://bit.ly/15mgo5
• Cassandra developed and open
sourced by Facebook provides
faster large storage balanced by
“eventual consistency”. It follows • Users of Cassandra for large
the NoSQL concept. The multi- data stores include Cisco
master architecture has no single WebEX, Digg, Facebook,
points of failure, and zero- Rackspace, Twitter.
11

12. downtime failed node Reference
replacement. Designed for highly http://bit.ly/g1HATc and
consistent durable storage http://bit.ly/a7Ii4X
through data centre failures.
• Redis NoSQL store is governed by
VMWare
12

13. Middleware
Sector Software Consider as Alternative to Comments Real World Use
Message Bus • RabbitMQ • IBM MQ • AMPQ is the establishing open • RabbitMQ is used by NASA
standard for Message Queue for their cloud platform, and
technologies. RabbitMQ is a by the BBC for its
• JBOSS • BEA Weblogic leading implementation. newsfeeds. Reference
RabbitMQ can be supported by http://bit.ly/o77FY5
a VMWare company.
Service Bus • WSO2 Carbon • IBM, Oracle • Java OSGi • Leading Danish bank uses
JBOSS ESB for mission
critical applications.
• JBOSS Reference
http://red.ht/uZ6qUI
SOA • JBOSS • BEA Aqualogic • • IBM reference: Camden
Council used JBOSS created
a single view of the citizen
• IBM ESB, IBM EII to reduce avoidable contact
with the contact centre and
improve the citizen
experience. Reference
http://red.ht/ueg4sz
13

14. • Oystercard web services
have been migrated to the
JBOSS SOA platform with
80% cost saving, serving
approx 10m customers per
day.Reference
http://red.ht/vhfAgY and
http://bit.ly/ueHOKa
14

15. Application Servers
Sector Software Consider as Alternative to Comments Real World Use
Java • Redhat JBoss • IBM Websphere • JBoss implements the Java EE 6 • Testimonials for Glassfish
Application stack. Fully featured, it supports include social networking
Server clustering, failover, load sites, technology
• Sun / Oracle Glassfish • Oracle / BEA Weblogic balancing and the range of EE consultancies, software
components including JMS, JAAS, vendors, Peugeot Citroen,
JSP and JDBC. US health network, Suncorp
insurance. Reference
• Apache Tomcat
http://bit.ly/PTDz2
• Glassfish supports Java EE 6
specification and is known for
• Apache Geronimo
scalability and speed. Supports • Siemens uses large scale
clustering and load balancing. physical mail processing
system using JBOSS
Application Server,
• Apache Tomcat is a popular and processing 700,000 mail
proven servlet container items per hour, with 99.8%
implementing the Java Servlet availability.Reference
and JSP specifications. It is http://red.ht/sjAsYb
known to be embedded in
commercial products.
• New York Stock Exchange
Euronext uses JBOSS
• Apache Geronimo is a full Java EE platform. Reference
suite, currently implements Java http://red.ht/ugXJX1
EE 5 specification.
15

16. • JBOSS Application Server
use quoted by RedHat with
the following: (i) Autotrader
in the UK currently runs its
high volume website and
over 120 applications on
JBoss Application platform,
(ii) UFI / Learndirect runs
online education courses
and advice sessions for up
to 2 million users using
JBoss technology, (iii)
Siemens have built a high
volume, highly performant
and highly available (99.8%)
mail sorting application for
up to 700,000 pieces of mail
per hour. Reference
http://red.ht/seYxXk
16

17. Application Development
Sector Software Consider as Alternative to Comments Real World Use
Web • PHP, Zend Framework • Microsoft ASP.Net • Very common component of the • Real world uses by Cisco
Application LAMP pattern. (Linux Apache, WebEx, NYSE Euronext, Fox
Developmen MySQL, PHP) Interactive Media, Fiat
t Group, IBM R&D Labs,
Mcafee. Reference
• Zend Framework provides http://bit.ly/o6TcFz
additional libraries and
components for developers.
Code • Git, Subversion • Visual Sourcesafe, Rational • Git is the leading distributed • One of the world’s largest
Repository Team Concert, Perforce version control system. Support and most distributed
and Version non-linear development, developments, the Linux
Control cryptographic authentication of kernel, is managed by git.
histories, and is suited to the
largest developments.
17

18. Cloud
Sector Software Consider as Alternative to Comments Real World Use
Cloud • OpenStack • Amazon Web Services, • Emerging standard with • Over 60 significant
Infrastructur Microsoft Azure, VMWare, significant multi-vendor backing organisations backing
e Citrix providing assurance against OpenStack. Reference
single-vendor lockin and failure. http://bit.ly/e3AMz6
• Primarily developed by NASA and • NASA production use of
Rackspace, now backed by AMD, OpenStack components.
Intel, Dell, Citrix, Cisco,
Canonical, NTT and over 60 other
organizations. • Tier 1 ISP using OpenStack
object storage. Reference
http://bit.ly/eGQ4Nr
• Provides virtual machine
management (OpenStack
Compute) and storage
(OpenStack Storage).
• Supports Xen, KVM, Qemu and
Microsoft Hyper-V hypervisors.
• Supports the open virtual
machine format, OVF, supported
by Dell, Microsoft, Xensource,
18

19. VMware, Redhat, IBM and
Oracle.
• Eucalyptus, Ubuntu Enterprise • Amazon Web Services, • Early re-implementation of the • Puma.com and related sites
Cloud Microsoft Azure, VMWare, industry leading Amazon EC2 and use Eucalyptus. Reference
Citrix S3 services for managing virtual http://bit.ly/hd9Dgy
machines.
• Now forms part of
commercialised cloud
management offerings, including
Canonical’s Ubuntu Enterprise
Cloud Services.
• Allows deployment ,
management and dynamic
scaling of private and hybrid
clouds (overflow capacity to
public clouds, eg Amazon)
• Supports Xen, KVM hypervisors
• OpenNebula • Amazon Web Services, • Interoperates with Amazon EC2, • OpenNebula is used by
Microsoft Azure, VMWare, ElasticHosts CERN which peaked at
Citrix 16,000 virtual machines
managing 400,000 jobs.
• Users manage via Amazon AWS References
compliant APIs http://bit.ly/9SalWZ and
http://bit.ly/jiB7aE
• Allows deployment ,
management and dynamic
scaling of private and hybrid
19

20. clouds (overflow capacity to
public clouds, eg Amazon)
• Supports Xen, KVM and VMware
hypervisors
20

21. Business Applications
Sector Software Consider as Alternative to Comments Real World Use
Email Server • Zimbra • Microsoft Exchange Server • Zimbra was acquired by • Zimbra is used by NTT,
VMWare. It offers email, Purdue University, Comcast,
calendar, global address lists and US Defense Department,
• Zarafa collaboration. It interoperates Bechtel and Raytheon.
through open standards with a Reference
range of clients. http://bit.ly/8VKcpy
• Zarafa aims to replace Exchange • Zarafa customers include
and integrates with MS Outlook. health sector, local
Provides webmail service with authorities, retail and
Outlook look and feel. Supports manufacturing and
ActiveSync devices and education. Examples are
Blackberry Enterprise Server. Sixt, Brabantia, and Finnish
Integrates with SugarCRM, municipality. Reference
Alfresco ECM and OpenERP. http://bit.ly/rGBRJB and
Supports mail search, http://bit.ly/tswL5J
hierarchical storage and
archiving.
Search • Lucene / Solr • Microsoft FAST • Lucene/Solr is a functionaly • Lucene provides search
Engine capable and scalable search capability for Wikipedia.
engine. Can index PDF, HTML, Reference
• Xapian • Exalead Microsoft Word and ODF http://bit.ly/erRSEd
formats, amongst others.
Lucene/Solr’s strength is in its
21

22. • Autonomy IDOL performance and scalability. It • High traffic public websites
also provides features normally that use Solr/Lucene include
only found in the most expensive AOL, whitehouse.gov, AT&T,
search engines. Ticketmaster, The Guardian,
Netflix, news.com, dig,
NASA PDS, eBuyer.com.
Other users include
Goldman Sachs, Disney,
Apple, Cisco, NASA NEBULA,
MTV. Reference
http://bit.ly/WlANZ
Intranet, • Alfresco • Mircrosoft Sharepoint, • Alfresco founded by co-founder • 30,000 public user capacity
Portal and OpenText Vignette, Oracle of Documentum and former COO at AQA - Assessment &
Internet WebCenter of Business Objects. Qualification Alliance.
Collaboratio Reference
n http://bit.ly/4FY8b8
• Islington Council. Reference
http://bit.ly/dh3W6i
• University of Westminster
Intranet. Reference
http://bit.ly/hlRkrX
• Liferay • Mircrosoft Sharepoint, • Liferay is a leading enterprise • Clients include Cisco, T-
OpenText Vignette, Oracle portal server. It provides Mobile, Societe Generale,
WebCenter functions and portlets for Barclays,French MoD,
content management, blogs, Lufthansa, Vodafone,
instant messaging, SSO, message Allianz, . Reference
boards, calendar mail, polls, http://bit.ly/cd5sW3
image gallery, tagging,
knowledge base, asset publishing
and publishing workflow. It is
JSR168 compliant.
22

23. Document • Alfresco • Mircrosoft Sharepoint, • Alfresco is CMIS 1.0 compliant. • Cisco Internet Business
and Content Opentext, Filenet, Solutions Group. Reference
Management Documentum http://bit.ly/hl250J
System
(CMS)
• French Air Force document
information system.
Reference
http://bit.ly/i8kPVZ
Records • Alfresco • Mircrosoft Sharepoint, • CMIS 1.0 and DoD 5015.02 • Islington Council. Reference
Management Documentum, Meridio, certifications. Implements http://bit.ly/dh3W6i
(EDRM) TRIM, Objective. Sharepoint protocol to act as
substitute backend.
• EADS 20,000 paper files.
Reference
http://bit.ly/hRJx4V
Workflow, • FoxOpen • • Developed by Department of • Department for Energy and
Forms & Energy and Climate Change and Climate Change (DECC)
Case used for rapid application applications include Oil &
Management development for workflow, MVC Gas Portal, FOI case
based and case handling management,
applications. correspondence handling.
Also used by BIS, MoD,
Boing and Australian Dept of
Health.
• Reference
http://bit.ly/gtU1ZY
23

24. Enterprise • OpenERP • SAP, Oracle, Microsoft • Open ERP is commercially • OpenERP customers include
Resource Dynamics, PeopleSoft, SAGE, developed and supported. La Poste, Veolia, Danone,
Planning SAP Modular capabilities include Oracle. Reference
(ERP) • Openbravo sales, CRM, project management, http://bit.ly/ej0HHR
stock management, accounting
and human resources. Also
provides vertical industry specific • OpenBravo 3 times winnder
applications over OpenERP. of Infoworld software
awards. Reference
http://bit.ly/9K9Jyx
• OpenBravo is commercially
developed and supported.
Includes finance and accounting, • Open bravo customers
sales, purchasing, inventory, include BBVA, Coapte
procurement, manufacturing, French healthcare, Basque
projects, and business City Hall. Reference
intelligence. http://bit.ly/mClVN
Customer • SugarCRM • Microsoft Dynamics, • SugarCRM is a commercially • SugfarCRM customers from
Relationship SageCRM, Salesforce successful CRM system providing comms, financial,
Manegemnt sales-force automation, healthcare, public ,
(CRM) marketing campaign professional services,
management, customer support, manufacturing, technology
mobile device CRM and and retail sectors include
reporting. uzo (Portugal’s largest
telecoms provider), One
Financial, HealthScreen
• In 2011, SugarCRM joined the (replacing Siebel),State of
IBM Global Alliance Portfolio for Oregon, InterAct (public
cloud solutions. safety and security),
Thomas Cook,
ThyssenKrupp, Avis, General
Motors . Reference
http://bit.ly/sEHA3M
Business • Pentaho BI Suite • Oracle, IBM, Informatica • Includes ETL, OLAP, reporting, • Customers include Camden
Intelligence dashboards, workflow and data Borough, US Naval Air
24

25. (BI) mining capability. Integrates with Systems Command, Harris
Hadoop for large scale data Computer Systems, Sun
analysis. Microsystems, Specsavers,
NHS Islington, Brussels
Airport, Norways TV2.
Reference
http://bit.ly/ehITaM
Data • Talend • IBM, Oracle, Software AG, • Mature data integration tools • Customers include ebay,
Integration Tibco, Progress, Informatica, covering file migrations, data Deutsche Post, Allianz, ING,
Mulesoft warehousing, ETL, master data Alcatel-Lucent, AOL, BNP
management, data quality Paribas, Orange, Virgin
profiling. Application integration Mobile, Sony, SNCF, Land
and ESB functions. Integration Registry, UNHCR. Reference
with Hadoop aims at “big data” http://bit.ly/4odsN and
analysis. http://bit.ly/4odsN
• Talend is one of the largest
companies with an open source
business model.
Business • Activi BPM, Intalio BPM • • • TBA
Process
Modelling
(BPM)
Human • OrangeHRM • Oracle, SAP • OrangeHRM is a corporately • Customers include
Resources developed HR management Landmark property
(HR) system that covers leaving, management . Reference
joining, time management, http://bit.ly/tMal9s
recruitment, performance,
expenses, leave, reporting. There
are delivery partners across the
globe.
25

26. 26

27. Network
Sector Software Consider as Alternative to Comments Real World Use
Network • Nagios, other • BMC, CA, Orion • Nagios has heritage in many ISPs. • Nagios provides monitoring
Monitoring Often used with the ganglia for the Wikipedia
graphing system. infrastructure. Reference
• OpenNMS • IBM Tivoli, HP OpenView http://bit.ly/erRSEd
• OpenNMS is a scalable
• Zabbix enterprise class network • Zabbix is used by large
monitoring system. Integrates organisations such as DEAC
with service management IT services across four
Request Tracker. continents, leading Polish
• Hyperic HQ
telecoms Netia monitoring
20,000 parameters, NTT
• Hyperic acquired by VMware Comms, large Brazilian
• GroundWork energy company PetroBras.
also supports monitoring of
virtualised infrastructure. Reference
http://bit.ly/swdGQw
• ZenOSS
• Zabbixcis a mature monitoring
framework with agents for many • ZenOSS is used by
operating systems and software Rackspace, LinkedIn,
stacks. VMWare, Motorola, Los
Alamos, LexisNexis,
Deutsche Bank, US Army,
Broadcom, Telstra,
• ZenOSS is a leading network
CapGemini. Reference
monitoring system, deployed to
http://bit.ly/vrdvui
35,000 customers across 35
27

28. countries.
Mail • Sendmail • Microsoft Exchange • Sendmail has been powering •
Transport email globally since the early
80s.
• Qmail
Certificate • CA-Cert • • • TBA
Authorities
Network • Wireshark • • • TBA
Scanner
Network • Vyatta • Cisco Integrated Services • Provides network services and • Customers include Toyota,
Services Routers, Cisco ASA security applications based on open CBS, CSC, EMC, Dell, Nokia,
appliances source core and software, VMWare, Rackspace,
including routing, VPN. FranceTelecom, US
Homeland Security, US
Justice Department.
• Commercial support available. Reference
Considered cheaper than http://bit.ly/gbFoTu
incumbents
• Similar interface to Juniper
JUNOS and Cisco IOS, as well as
graphical interface.
Network • FreeNAS • NetAPP • Provides common storage and • TBA
Attached filer services through software,
Storage but without the high
performance and expensive
hardware. For small scale
28

29. requirements.
• Services include CIFS, NFS, iSCSI,
FTP.
Telephony • Asterisk • Cisco Unified • Asterisk is a mature software • Customers of services based
VOIP Communications Manager PBX, covering PSTN and VoIP on Atserisk include US
services. Features include Army, Symbian Foundation,
voicemail, conference calling, La Poste, University of
and automatic call distribution. Pennsylvania. Reference
Protocols supported include SIP, http://bit.ly/b8zhvN
MGCP, H323. Asterisk is known
to support commercial PBX
products.
29

30. Web
Sector Software Consider as Alternative to Comments Real World Use
Web Server • Apache web server • Microsoft IIS • Apache is the web server behind • Netcraft survey April 2011
the majority of internet websites, shows 61% of internet
and has been dominant for 15 websites hosted by Apache,
years. compared to 18% by
Microsoft IIS.
• Apache serves the global
Wikipedia site. Reference
http://bit.ly/13ynJh
• Lighttpd, nginx, Cherokee • Microsoft IIS • High performance alternatives to • Netcraft survey April 2011
Apache. Designed for shows 6.5% of the million
performance and scalability, not most active sites served by
for a wide range of functionality. nginx.
• Nginx and Cherokee have built in • Lighttpd serves static
media streaming capability to content for Wikipedia.
serve you-tube like capability. Reference
http://bit.ly/erRSEd
• Lighttpd is used by Youtube,
Sourceforge and torrent
30

31. sites facing more than 1000
hits per second. Reference
http://bit.ly/g5bke7
• Nginx is used by
Web Cache, • Squid, Varnish • F5 BIG IP, McAfee Web • • Squid cache supports the
Reverse Gateway, Zeus global Wikipedia and Flickr
Proxy sites. Reference
http://bit.ly/dJi4U1
Flash Media • JWFlashplayer • Adobe Flash Player • JWFlashplayer is compatible with • JWFlashplayer users include
Player media sources hosted by CDNs Whitehouse, Thomson
such as Amazon CloudFront and Reuters, Avis, AT&T,
• Flowplayer Akamai. Harvard, Intel and Nasdaq.
Reference
http://bit.ly/tRAwk6
• JWFlashplayer also supports
HTML5 playback, avoiding the
requirement for Flash. This
makes it compatible with non-
Flash devices such as the iPhone
and iPad.
Web Content • Alfresco • Morello, Vignette/Opentext, • Includes web authoring, • Fox Broadcasting Company
Management Interwoven/Autonomy workflow and publishing. public site Fox.com is
System supported by Alfresco.
(CMS) Reference
http://bit.ly/ffAhmW
• Drupal • Morello, Vignette/Opentext, • Includes mature web publishing, • whitehouse.gov website
Interwoven/Autonomy blogs, content syndication, uses Drupal. Reference
discussion forums, and large pool http://nyti.ms/3NmpYO
31

32. • Joomla of community developed • Very large number of Plone
extensions. customers include Brazilian
Government, Norwegian
• Plone Archive, Kent Connects and
• Plone is particularly suited to Kent CC, Scottish National
more complex applications, Party, Warwickshire Police,
workflows. It also has a strong UK MoD Defence Academy,
security record. Plone’s interface NASAScience, Keble Oxford
confirms to accessibility standard and Bristol University, NHS
WCAG-AAA higher than most Networks. Reference
competitors. Plone has strengths http://bit.ly/vThQAn
in standards conformance,
access control,
internationalisation, and • Plone is also used by the
security. FBI, US Dept of Energey,
European Environment
Agency, United Nations, .
Reference
http://bit.ly/g0XtIr
Blog Engine • Wordpress • sss • Leading blog engine with rich • Microsoft Live Spaces
functionality. Users benefit from migrates to Wordpress blog
large pool of community engine. Reference
developed extensions. http://bit.ly/d545X0
Wiki • MediaWiki, tikiwiki • • MediaWiki is the leading wiki • MediaWiki is the software
engine. behind global scale
WikiPedia. Reference
http://bit.ly/13ynJh
Web • Open Web Analytics (OWA) • • OWA is a leading web analytics • TBA
Analytics with support for bespoke sites
and integration into WordPress,
• Piwik Drupaland MediaWiki. Offers
campaign tracking and user in-
32

33. page tracing.
• Piwik aims to clone Google
Analytics.
33

34. Desktop Office
Sector Software Consider as Alternative to Comments Real World Use
Desktop • Libre Office / OpenOffice • Microsoft Office • LibreOffice is community • OpenOffice has significant
Office developed and has significant use in some sectors across
Applications development partners and the world including,
momentum. Birmingham City, French
National Assembly, City of
Vienna, 50,000 Brazil
• OpenOffice is governed by Federal desktop. Reference
Oracle, which was originally http://bit.ly/bf0RFN
developed by Sun as StarOffice.
• IBM’s corporate Symphony
• The interoperability gap between office suite is based on
LibeOffice and Microsoft Office is OpenOffice.
continuously being narrowed.
PDF Creation • PDFCreator • Adobe Acrobat • Creation of PDFs from any • TBA
Windows application that can
print. Provides more control over
PDF creation than alternative
“print to file” solutions. Features
include digital signing, PDF/A
archives, merging PDFs and
encryption. Runs on terminal
servers.
34

35. Media Player • VLC, Openshot • Quicktime, Adobe products • • TBA
for Audio &
Videos
Project • Project.net • Microsoft Project • Project.net is an anterprise scale • Project.net is listed in
Management project management application. Gartner Magic Quadrant for
IT Project and Portfolio
Management Applciations.
Reference
http://bit.ly/cX3O8w
• Customers include FT
Services, Genesys
Conferencing, City of San
Francisco, Trak, Penn State
University. Reference
http://bit.ly/uORUMi
Encryption • GnuPG/GPG • Symantec / PGP Corporation • There are several • TBA
products implementations of the
OpenPGP standard RFC4880.
GnuPG is an open source
implementation and Windows
interfaces are available.
Email • Outlook plugin for email • Boldon James • Outlook plugin is developed by • The National Archives
Labelling labelling from The National The National Archives
Archives
Web • Firefox, Chrome/Chromium • Microsoft Internet Explorer • Firefox,w hich grew out of the • Guardian reports that in
Browser Mozilla/Netscape efforts, Europe Firefox has
became the leading browser overtaken Internet Explorer
noted for it’s standards as most widely used
35

36. compliance. browser. Reference
http://bit.ly/fQ2hXH
• Recently during 2011, Google’s
Chrome browser was measured • 2011 IE has only 38.9% user
to be on track to become the share, trends show Chrome
leading browser. will become dominant
browser soon.
http://bit.ly/rqnlQj
• Historically, Internet Explorer has
been considered by many not be
as standards compliant as
alternative browsers. It’s use of
ActiveX as a mechanism has led
some to consider it to have a
greater attack surface. It is best
practice for web developers to
test against a range of browsers,
with IE-only support considered
bad practice.
Assistive • NonVisual Desktop Access • Dragon • Screen reader for Windows, • NVDA has received
Technologies (NVDA) providing feedback through significant global
synthetic speech and Braille. recognition and awards.
Supports over 20 languages. Yahoo! Uses NVDA for
Integrates with Internet Explorer, testing and demonstration.
Outlook Express, Microsoft Word References
and Excel, LibreOffice and http://bit.ly/fJKfhq
OpenOffice, Thunderbird and
Firefox. Protocols supported
include WAI-ARIA for web
applications, Microsoft Active
Accessibility.
36

37. Specialist Applications
Sector Software Consider as Alternative to Comments Real World Use
Statistics & • GNU R • S/S-plus, SAS, SPSS • GNU R is the leading and mature • Gnu R is becoming teh
Data Analysis statistics and numerical defacto statistical
computing system. It is now the programming environment,
established lead in academia and as evidenced by subject
increasingly in industry, texts and it’ use in
displacing commercial products. universities.
Data Mining • RapidMiner • SPSS, SAS PASW, SAS • Leading data mining and • KDnuggets leading
Enterprise Miner, MATLAB, exploration toolkit, providing professional newsletter for
Oracle DM, , Excel access to proven tools, such as data mining sector poll
WEKA, through a graphical user shows RapidMiner as most
interface. Includes text mining used tool. Reference
capability. http://bit.ly/dy9XwP
Programmmin • Eclipse • Microsoft Visual Studio • • TBA
g IDE
• KDeveleop
Image & Photo • GIMP • Adobe Photoshop • GIMP is a very capable image • sss
Manipulation editor and for many use cases
can be used instead of
proprietary software. Installers
37

38. • Krita for Windows are available.
Desktop • Scribus • • • TBA
Publishing
Vector • Inkscape • Adobe Illustrator • • TBA
Drawing
Diagramming • Dia • Microsoft Visio • Support for open standard • TBA
formats such as EPS and SVG.
Installers for Windows are
available.
CAD • QCad • AutoCAD • Simple CAD application uses • TBA
AutoCAD DXF common file
format. Windows installer
available.
3DModelling, • Blender • Maya • Comparable to commercial • Feature films have used
Rendering & software, used to render Blender for support,
Animation production quality scenes and animation and effects.
animations. Reference
http://bit.ly/huBi3R
• TV commercials. Reference
http://bit.ly/gA5ze2
38

39. Education
Sector Software Consider as Alternative to Comments Real World Use
Course • Moodle • • Learning management system for • Moodle has significant use
Management course creators and in the education sector,
administrators. including Open University,
Australian National
University, London School of
Economics. Reference
http://bit.ly/gXRiAV
Elearning • Moodle • • • TBA
39

40. Health
Sector Software Consider as Alternative to Comments Real World Use
Patient • VistA • --- • VistA is used globally. • TBA, Wikipedia has
Records references
• OpenEHR • • • TBA . Brasil, UK leeds
Service Management
Sector Software Consider as Alternative to Comments Real World Use
IT Service • OTRS ITSM • --- • Includes change request and SLA • TBA
Management management, self service,
dashboards and imact reporting.
• Conforms to ITIL.
40

41. File Audit • DROID • • TNA developed for Digital • TBA
Continuity Programme, DROID
inventories and analyses files
held by an organisation by
intrinsic pattern analysis. NO
known commercial competitor.
41