Open Source and Standards: A Marriage Made in Heaven (Spring 2010)

As those with IT responsibilities attempt to balance increased demands with increased costs, the topic of open source solutions usually enters the conversation. However, this very familiar term is still wrapped in a high degree of misunderstanding. This session will cover the best practices necessary for identifying the need for open source, evaluating open source options and integrating solutions based on standards like SMI-S and Cloud. The presentation also will examine the risks and benefits companies face when developing these products, and why open source and standards are a marriage made in IT heaven.

Learning Objective #1: Identifying the need for open source
• Understand how open source decreases the time-to-market
• Evaluate how open source lowers the total cost of ownership
• Learn how open source requirements are driven by end users

Learning Objective #2: Evaluating open source options
• Review the various pricing and business models
• Examine how the open source model produces more robust products
• Determine how the combination of open source and standards results in an interoperable solution

Learning Objective #3: Integrating standards-based open source solutions
•Review end user benefits for standards-based solutions
•Benefit from experiences several companies faced when integrating these solutions
•Identify shortcuts and tools that can assist in rapid deployment
•Learn how open source and standards help manage storage networking environments