The open source world is experiencing some watershed developments that are pushing enterprise-level technologies into a new space that CIOs must now take heed of.
Open source, open standards, open data, open platforms and open clouds are now driving our collective technology futures forward at a pace we could not have imagined perhaps even half a decade ago.
Far less could Linus Torvalds have prophesied what he was about to create when he wrote on 25 Aug 1991 at 20:57:08 GMT, “I’m doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won’t be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones.”
Ubuntu for one has now reached 12.04 LTS in its server iteration (and desktop), where LTS stands for Long-Term Support. This means five years of cover for companies requiring official certification and audit compliance as well as enterprise-level security guarantees from Ubuntu’s commercial parent Canonical.