Tech Watch | InfoWorld Staff » Open source still raises enterprise eyebrows

May 18, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Open source still raises enterprise eyebrows

TAGS: Platforms

Open source still brings with it concerns of exactly what its impacts are, according to two Sun Microsystems customers at the JavaOne conference on Wednesday.

Users of Sun's recently acquired SeeBeyond middleware said they initially had reservations about using open source, but their fears were later allayed.

"We definitely have concerns about open sourcing," said Mary Rich, manager of information technology at CenterPoint Energy in Houston. Sun, though, still will offer commercial support for its open source offerings, she noted.

Sun this week released several technologies to open source, including the Java CAPS BPEL (Composite Application Platform Suite Business Process Execution Language) engine acquired with the SeeBeyond buy.

At The Cleveland Clinic Foundation in Cleveland, management had the same concerns, said Albert Edwards Jr. director of the Office of Clinical Integration & Interfaces in the IT division at the foundation. But the organization has been using open source offerings from MySQL and JBoss and found that they still could get support, he said.

"Open source was a scary and unknown term in IT. Management was pushing away from it," Edwards said. The availability of support eased tensions, he said.

Commenting on the Sun-SeeBeyond merger, Edwards was not encouraged by the lack of feedback right after the deal.

"The first four or five months after the acquisition, there was a lot of silence in the merger." Edwards said.

Edwards said he no idea where Sun or SeeBeyond were going. But since February, there has been a "constant barrage" of communication, including a strategic roadmap, said Edwards.

Posted by Paul Krill on May 18, 2006 08:11 AM

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