Our professionals from Munich are active in the open source area since 1991. We advise companies on the use of open source software when it comes to optimizing their innovation and product development. We help with the strategic use of Open Source technologies in software development with the goal to sustainably increase the innovative power of your company and to reduce development costs in the long run. We make sure that you make the right choice regarding your planned goal.
Typical tasks for us are
- Development of Open Source Strategies
- Introduction of suitable open source tools for development (e.g. Git, Jenkins, Ansible, Redmine, Drupal, Ruby)
- Code analysis with specialized tools
- Support of the team in operation, e.g. administration, release management, improvement suggestions and service control
- User training for the use of Open Source Software
Profit from our knowledge in Open Source software
- Open Source software is much easier to implement than proprietary software tools.
- Open Source software offers the best possibility to scale up quick.
- Open Source software guarantees more security than proprietary tools.
- Open Source software licences are mostly free of charge and helps you to reduce your costs up to 50% even if you spent money on implementation, consulting, support etc
- Open Source software is the best way to test something new. Because it’s quick and easy to install, has in general no time limitation if you use it and can be tested extensively and cheap - even if you would switch to something else afterwards.
Open Source versus proprietary software solutions
Many decision makers even don’t know that there is an equal open source solution for almost every commercial product on the software market. For those we do offer the following list of well-known proprietary products and a possible Open Source candidate to do the same job. Our focus lies on professional solutions. For some mentioned technologies we do offer professional services, products or support.
| Function | Proprietary software | Open Source solution |
| Examples* | ||
| Data bases | Oracle | PostgreSQL, MySQL, Hadoop |
| Web server | Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) | Apache web server, Nginx |
| Application Server | Oracle Application Server, IBM Websphere | JBoss, Tomcat |
| Virtualisation | VMware | KVM, VirtualBox, OpenStack |
| Groupware | Microsoft Exchange, Lotus Domino | Kolab |
| Continuous Integration | Bamboo, TeamCity | Jenkins |
| Project management and bug tracking systems | Jira, Remedy | Redmine |
| Team work and Wiki | Confluence | Redmine (Wiki), MediaWiki, CodiMD Pad |
| Security, Encryption | TrueCrypt | GPG, OpenSSH, OpenSSL |
| Content management systems (CMS) | SiteCore, FirstSpirit, CoreMedia | Drupal, Joomla, TYPO3, Wordpress |
| Source code management | Bitbucket, Stash | Gitlab, Redmine with Git hosting support |
| System software | Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X | Linux (Debian, Ubuntu, RedHat, SUSE) |
| Web analysis | Google Analytics | Matomo (formerly known as Piwik) |
| File upload / document management / Cloud storage | Dropbox | Sparkleshare, Nextcloud |
| Office Suites | MS Office | LibreOffice, OpenOffice |
| E-Mail communication | Microsoft Outlook | Firefox Thunderbird |
| Instant Messenger | Microsoft Teams, Slack | Mattermost, Rocket.Chat, Discord |
| Video conference tools (Online-Meetings, Homeoffice, Homeschooling) | Zoom, Skype, Microsoft Teams | Jitsi (Data protection-friendly operation on your own server) |
| Image editing | Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Lightroom, Corel PaintShop Pro | GIMP, Inkscape |
| *) All mentioned names, brands, trademarks used herein are the property of their respective owners. | ||
Important reasons why you should use Open Source software
- Open standards (interoperability)
- Community (for knowledge exchange)
- Cost savings (cost reduction in IT)
- Independence from the supplier (avoid foreseeable dependence on the manufacturer)
- Increased security (faster updates for security holes)
- Easier adaptability (to own needs)
- Increased stability (thanks to fewer errors)
- Transparency (thanks to public source code)
- Data protection-friendly / DSGVO-compliant use possible (Open Source tools can often be run on your own server and thus be used in a data protection-friendly manner)
Source: Open Source Study from Switzerland 2018, according to swissICT and /ch/open