Dick, Hello. I have a few questions and I am not sure where to go first. I guess that I would first like to tease out a little more of your thinking around the connection between supporting individual users that expect a unique experience and using open source software. You started your post by illustrating the importance of system reliability and how you and your team ensure this by recasting the notion of running a “system” into running a “service,” which is supported by excellent monitoring. The need in your context is derived by the challenges of supporting an environment that a) requires customized experiences (there is no place else to go for your learner is the learndirect platform is down, unlike somebody seeking sports scores or news), b) requires high reliability, and c) supports high volume.
You then point to the advantages of in-sourcing these parts of your infrastructure using open source software. Here is my first assertion. It seems that the “customization” criteria in the above mix is most critical, after all, high volume and high reliability are pretty typical reasons to out source. Is that correct? Through your experience, what advantages does OSS potentially provide that proprietary options do not? And, when you are evaluating OSS options, what are some of the evaluation criteria that you prioritize?
Thanks, Ken
- 848 reads
