Software und Automatisierung, Austria Export Nr 137

AUSTRIAEXPORT Further information on Austrian companies: www.advantageaustria.org
Open source, free software -
and all that can be done with it
Open source-based products offer real and inexpensive alternatives for all
business processes. This means that the IT market can benefit from opensource
commercial software in a number of different ways.
Free software liberates clients from the
risk that a manufacturer of proprietary
software can disappear from the market,
taking the product with them”, explained
Thomas Graf, CEO of Vienna’s kopiRight>.
“We develop, service and make use of advanced
open-source solutions that are employed
around the world. Our clients benefit
from this strategy because of a long-term
guarantee of quality and continued development
of the solutions.”
On the basis of its experience with opensource
standard applications and successful
projects, DMS Decision Management Systems
GmbH, founded in 1989, developed a
new business model for all-around service
with medium-sized companies in mind, at
the same time renaming the company kopi-
Right> Managed Solutions GmbH. GNU/
Linux is the heart of the server, and it is
much more powerful, stable and secure than
commercial operating systems. SAP developed
the relational database MaxDB, used in
materials management and accounting, as
an open-source database for applications
that must have maximum functionalitiy.
At present, MaxDB is supported jointly by
mySQL and SAP.
Vienna’s LINBIT Information Technologies
GmbH, founded in 2001, also works
with open source and Linux exclusively; in
other words, what they do is not affected by
or dependent on multinational corporate
strategies. LINBIT makes use of this independence
to price their products in such a way
that IT decision makers choose intelligent
OS solutions more often. Clients can, as a result,
employ their IT infrastructure for a
much longer period without having to constantly
upgrade expensive hardware.
Open-source software - when custom tailored
to a company’s needs - is normally less
expensive and more efficient than off-therack
proprietary products. Just one example
is a project that LINBIT completed in 2009
for Salinen AG: development of a monitoring
system based on Nagios 3. Salinen’s previous
system had reached the limits of its
performance, and interruption-free monitoring
of 370 hosts and 2,200 services was no
longer reliable. The special feature of the
LINBIT solution: for the first time ever, tactical
and strategic monitoring was combined
in a single solution.
LINBIT has developed a special solution
for Porr too, for which they won the renowned
Constantinus consulting award.
Authorised Porr employees have access to
Porr’s intranet through a secure extranet. To
make this possible, LINBIT installed a special
Linux server which can read the internal IP
addresses. LINBIT’s solution will give the
internationally active construction group
security standards equal to those common in
the banking sector. At the same time, Porr
will save the expense of a costly virtual
private network (VPN). LINBIT has had a
subsidiary on the US west coast, in Beaverton,
Oregon, for a year now.
Linz’s Silbergrau Consulting & Software
GmbH were one of the first companies
to recognise the significance of open
source for commercial uses. Strategies are
currently being made available that produce
real benefits, openness and vendor independence
(and savings on a corresponding
scale) by means of long-term, secure use of
open source. Silbergrau offers an extensive
range of services in this area, from consulting
and training to coaching and implementation.
The company received the innovation
award of Germany’s Initiative Mittelstand
for the development system it created for ebusiness
applications, Silbergrau blue. This
software greatly simplifies and accelerates
the development of applications, and also
provides an integration layer with which
open-source base systems can be integrated
as seamlessly as commercial versions. �
© Stockexpert
In the field of R&D in particular, small
countries such as Austria enjoy good
opportunities to expand upon their
international market presence
through international cooperation.
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