Aztec Software Inc., a development company that creates middleware for other software companies to brand as their own, will announce this week a new offering to help companies build or migrate applications to open-source platforms.
Dubbed AztecSource, the services package enables users to develop new product lines based on open-source code while simultaneously migrating legacy middleware applications from a proprietary to an open-source environment, according to Sharish Netke, head of U.S. operations at Aztec, in Santa Clara, Calif.
The service covers the evaluation of technology options as well as implementation and testing of the open-source stack.
The methodology behind AztecSource is a set of best practices based on a developer workbench, a unified management framework, and a set of ecosystem tools for installation and configuration, officials said.
The offering supports most commonly used open-source components such as PostgreSQL, Eclipse, JBoss and Tomcat, with more to be added in the future, according to Netke.
AztecSource enabled Jamcracker Inc., which itself develops software for companies that provide software as a service, to migrate from a fully commercial middleware platform to an open-source environment—without having to hire a massive team of developers to accomplish the transition.
“There was no way we could have hired enough of the right people to manage that ramp,” said Jamcracker President Todd Johnson, also in Santa Clara. “When you go through a transition like this, you go through peaks. Either you end up taking longer because you cant staff enough or down the road you end up with more people than you need.”
Given that its software is such a big part of many of its customers infrastructure—which makes Jamcrackers customers extremely price-sensitive, according to Johnson—open source was the way to go. However, the company still needed to maintain its commercial platform for its health care and financial services customers. AztecSource helped on both fronts.
“We were looking for two things: [the ability to] ramp [up] a pretty big team, from about zero [developers] to 30 in two months, and help making the transition from software based on Solaris and WebLogic to a more cross-platform implementation where the core platform would be open source,” said Johnson.
AztecSource provided the migration to open source, while still enabling Jamcracker to use its commercial stack.
“This is a hugely beneficial service,” said Johnson. “They have expertise that is nearly impossible to hire. Its cross-stack—not just Linux or JBoss—its across the stack.”
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