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No Open Source? You’re Fired!

Online retailer uses Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP (L-A-M-P), a completely free eCommcerce combination, and it stands tall during the holiday rush. This is another success validating why CIOs and CTOs who don’t shift their infrastructure towards such a solution must be fired.

HUNTSVILLE, AL January 20, 2004--The debate is over. Companies that don’t use Open Source are at a distinct competitive disadvantage and will lose in the long term. Any CIO or CTO who does not shift their company’s infrastructure towards using such free solutions must be fired.

One manufacturing company that recognized this is reaping the rewards. Los Tomases Candle Makers LLC (a 60 year old candle manufacturer, http://www.OnlyVotives.com) left a proprietary package just before their busiest season and rebuilt their eCommerce site based on a totally free combination known as LAMP, Linux-Apache-MySQL-PHP. The LAMP setup provides everything: an operating system, web server, database, and a server side processing language ideal for eCommerce all at zero cost.

“It gives us a huge advantage: while our competitors have to buy their software and pay licensing, maintenance, and support fees with their vendors year after year, we don’t … we take those same dollars and apply them towards marketing” says Bill Peer, President and CEO of the candle company. Peer acknowledges there were some risks. “Not having a vendor that we could hold responsible to fix issues if they occurred was disconcerting at first. However, if something had happened, I trust my team’s commitment to fix our system more than any vendor’s commitment.”

Using a free Open Source solution does not imply an inferior eCommerce site. Key contributors to a customer’s perception of a web site’s quality include presentation and response time. On both of these fronts, http://www.OnlyVotives.com excelled. The candle company used the free Open Source PHP eCommerce solution known as osCommerce (http://www.oscommerce.com/) to provide the default layout. Peer says, “We receive email compliments all the time about how easy it is to use our site.” As far as performance, Peer admits to some apprehension at first. “We spent a lot of marketing dollars to drive traffic to our site and we received press coverage from multiple sources … there was a lot of traffic coming in.” As the hit counts grew, Peer’s team became more and more confident that the site could handle the load. They monitored server resource usage and used external monitoring tools from companies like Gomez, Inc. (http://www.gomez.com/) to measure site latency under live user load.

It is easy to put a vendor on the hook. However, for companies like Los Tomases Candle Makers LLC who are willing to take the risk and ownership for their own software choices and mistakes, the reward will directly impact the bottom line. Peer proudly states, “I swung for the fences going with the LAMP approach, and I hit a grand slam!”