1- Web applications

Businesses, to make their information systems inter-operable and bring more mobility to their users, are heading more and more towards web application developments. Web technologies comply to standards and guarantee technological independence, giving more choice and flexibility for IT infrastructure.

Open Source software is leading-edge in this area, with regards to development platforms or CMS and portals.

1a- Interoperability

Interoperability is an essential feature when choosing an application. Source code access, best practice approaches and standards compliance are making open source software more able to work with other products and systems, easier to deploy, and easily inter-operable.

1b- Frameworks

Open Source frameworks are known to be among the best products available today. This market has been led for a long time by open source software, which are providing a wide range of languages, methods and tools for applications development.

Frameworks based on open source software make it possible to create a customized development platform, able to meet the needs of any company by selecting and integrating the best suited components.

1c- CMS and portals

CMS (content management systems) and portals are two essential elements in web application development. They allow to easily customize and integrate workspaces, and are acting as an interface between developers and users. They are also crucial in security, access and user management. Numerous top quality Open Source solutions are available in this area, as well as a large choice of technologies and architectures.

2- Infrastructure

Open source infrastructure solutions have been proof-tested and are known as the most efficient, the most stable, the most evolutive, and the most cost effective ones.

Indeed, the Internet has an infrastructure which is mostly based on open source software.

The Linux kernel is the most famous of this kind, but open source software are available for all usages : network management, monitoring, security, virtualization, messaging, grid computing, HTTP servers, VoIP…

2a- Communication

Until recently, communication tools (messaging, groupware, VoIP) were independent and rarely integrated into information systems.

As these solutions grew more numerous, especially open source ones, they became more accessible and more compatible. Thus there are a lot of solutions that are integrated and that can be integrated with business applications.

2b- Security

Software managing security must deal with new constraints coming from the evolution of needs and the increasing number of technologies.

Businesses want more flexibility and liberty. The hardware is therefore diversifying (PC, laptops, netbooks, smartphones) and users are more and more mobile, wanting to be able to work from home or while traveling with the same tools and in the same way than when there are in the office. Open Source software has dealt with this challenge, managing to adapt and evolve quickly.

3- Business Intelligence

Management reporting, data analysis, operational and executive dashboards, data mining, datawarehouses, meta data, extraction transformation & load......common terms used under the banner of « Business Intelligence »....but what does it mean in practice?  What are the benefits, the pit falls, the issues, the complexities and the approaches to get quick results that help businesses make better decisions, cost effectively?

A 2009 Gartner Group paper predicted in the business intelligence market that, because of lack of information, processes, and tools, through 2012, more than 35 per cent of the top 5,000 global companies will regularly fail to make insightful decisions about significant changes in their business and markets.

Speakers will present projects in a pragmatic way, showing what obstacles they had to overcome, how they overcame them and the difference it made to the business.

3a- Datawarehouse & ETL

Turning data into information, typically the starting point of most Business Intelligence solutions, the process of building the datawarehouse usually uncovers and has to deal with significant complexities: Multiple data source types, applications and databases; incomplete data; incorrect data; duplicate data; changing business needs; personalised secure access.

3b- Enterprise deployments

Inititially implementations are focussed on a small set of users, as dictated by the typical small scale prototype development approach.  However, once proven and tested, companies usually discover many more applications of the information than they originally planned. These include client access, deeper use within the organisation and becoming a critical part of management and decision making processes.  What are the implications of this exponential growth?  Architecturally, the solution needs to be able to scale seamlessly, with rapidly increasing demands on the resources.  Likewise, the cost of providing access to an exponentially growing user base need to be addressed.

3c- Business practicalities of Dashboard design

Knowing who, what, when, why and how information needs to be presented to different management levels and audiences is the key to success of a dashboard implementation.  The process of gathering this information and then matching it to what information is actually available can be complex and requires a structured approach with ongoing project management to maintain momentum for the project.