Open source software ready for big business

Also in the management realm is the openQRM project, a revival of an open source data center management project begun by the now-defunct company Qlusters. OpenQRM is a single-management console for infrastructure both physical and virtual. It provides an API for integrating third-party tools, including Puppet, and incorporating plug-ins.

The newest iteration, version 4.4 includes Simple Object Access Protocol -based Web services for remote control and other infrastructure management tools for cloud deployments

Gluster is another company that deserves attention. It develops a clustered file system for storing unstructured data called GlusterFS. Its unique architecture uses an index to look up files, employing a hashing algorithm to find a unique identifier for each file. Each server in the cluster knows where every file is stored.

"Because we don't have a separate meta data server we don't have updates in multiple places and this allows us to scale to very large size without worrying about reliability," says Anand Babu Periasamy, CTO of Gluster.

Also focusing on infrastructure is LikeWise, which integrates Active Directory authentication across multiple computing platforms. The company functions as a hybrid, offering a free product and a proprietary version. Likewise Open integrates authentication across Linux, Unix and Mac environments, while the enterprise version adds migration, group policy, auditing and reporting modules.