My thoughts on open source

by Bruno Lima

Long an acquaintance and ally of government institutions, open source is no longer considered rocket science by the enterprise.

Companies find open source attractive because they’re not tied to one vendor, can make improvements in the system at any time and realize cost savings, all helping boost market penetration. And, of course, there’s the benefit of communities continuously improving the products.

In the outside world, governments are strong sponsors of this type of initiative, especially in Brazil, where the use of free and open source software is encouraged to make the market more democratic. And, of course, the market has become increasingly more open to open source. While there were once concerns about the reliability, security, and functionality, those fears are all gone. Red Hat has made it possible to combine the benefits of these technologies with the necessary support for mission-critical environments, developing platforms and the specific demands organizations face.
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Building the intelligent enterprise: easy and inexpensive?

by Alan Hale (Red Hat)

The following article originally appeared here in the UK and here in Germany.

Who could have predicted the impact on mainstream businesses of data coming in via social media and mobile technology, the escalating importance of trends such as ‘big data’ or the move towards cloud computing that is now gathering momentum?

The sources of data coming into the enterprise IT infrastructure are proliferating, with new channels and touch-points constantly emerging at an unprecedented rate. Clearly, in an uncertain world, flexibility is a critical component of any business IT strategy.

With today’s customers choosing to interact through multiple channels, businesses are wasting time and budget ‘hand-carrying’ information from application to application, frequently without adding value at best and introducing human error at worst.
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Introducing the Red Hat Innovation Center

by Justin Hayes (Red Hat)

Like many organizations, Red Hat Consulting constantly seeks ways to eliminate organizational inefficiencies in our business operations. These inefficiencies typically deal with how our consultants are trained on cutting edge technologies, how our sales force demonstrates product capabilities to our customers and prospects, and how our technical groups request operational environments (virtual machines, platforms, etc.)

To attack this problem, a team of architects and consultants set out to design, implement, and operationalize a system that will reduce these inefficiencies. This system is called the Red Hat Innovation Center (RHIC). Its vision is twofold:

1. To demonstrate Red Hat products’ features and capabilities through a solutions-oriented approach based on real world use cases.
2. To enable our consultants to quickly and efficiently learn our technologies by lowering the barriers to entry to internal training.
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Getting Your Company In Open Source Shape

by Guy Martin (Red Hat)

The holiday decorations are now (hopefully) put away, and fond memories of merriment from the past month or so are behind us.  All that remains now is the time-honored tradition of the New Year’s Resolution. This should not surprise most of you, but the perennial favorite is usually a combination of ‘lose weight, eat healthier, get in better shape.’  Pondering my own resolutions to continue on a healthier path got me thinking about what it means to get your company in ‘Open Source Shape.’

There are many parallels to successfully getting yourself in better physical shape and getting your company started on the right foot to more successful and productive use of open source.  Let’s take a look at a few of these examples below,  pulling some lessons from the exercise world that you can apply in your enterprise.

Running shoes

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