MS seeks open source companies

Microsoft`s detente with the open source world is growing stronger by the minute, says CRN.

CEO Steve Ballmer said today he wouldn`t consider an open source-based business model a deterrent to buying a company Microsoft found interesting.

"We will do some buying of companies that are built around open source products," Ballmer said during an onstage interview at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco.

VOIP solutions that use open source software are slowly being adopted by more firms, reports Telappliant.

The presence of only a few open source providers at the VoiceCon Sprint 2007 Conference in the US was taken by Computer Weekly as a hint that the technology has yet to be fully accepted.

Senior network analyst at 3M, Murray Butler, said at the conference: "The drive for open source solutions to real problems is seeping out of the desktop and server racks into other areas of IT that are traditionally closed platforms."

Enterprise data centres are usually joined at the hip to high-priced, feature-heavy backup software, says Infostor.

For large data centres, this arrangement works quite well: There is money in the budget for costly licensing and support; the enterprise is deeply invested in proprietary hardware and software; CIOs and storage managers need to quote Tier-1 vendor names to executives; and specialised administrators are on hand to support the complex software.

For businesses needing flexibility and low cost along with some enterprise-level backup features, an open source application can provide significant benefits.