More India IP Communications Stories

Focusing cost-saving technologies whose security this week is being adamantly defended by industry experts, an India-based IT services company reportedly is eyeing open source solutions and services.

 

Officials at Delhi-based Outshine Solutions say they’re targeting open source technologies adoption as they target the global market.

 

According to the company’s chief executive officer, Ashish Jha, Outshine feels that open source is not getting due attention, “so we have taken steps to promote and use open source technologies ourselves.”

 

“We are also planning to give something back to the open source community in the near future,” Jha said. “We are the first company to officially support open source products and services worldwide.”

 

That’s debatable.

 

But what’s clear today is that advocates of open source software feel somewhat maligned by naysayers who question their technologies’ security.

 

As TMCnet reported today, one Waltham, Massachusetts-based software risk analysis company said claims that open source software compromises security are largely false and misleading.

 

Officials with Ounce Labs Inc. say that the relative security of software – be it open source, commercial or home-grown – really just depends on whether security was a top priority during the development cycle.

 

According to Jack Danahy, Ounce’s co-founder and chief technical officer, there’s little difference in the overall security of open source programs and those developed in a more proprietary manner.

 

“Our own people, our partners, and our customers have used the Ounce Labs’ suite of tools to examine literally billions of lines of code, and there is not a stark differentiation between the two,” Danahy said. “The bottom line is this: There is an endless supply of both secure and vulnerable software across the commercial, open source and proprietary domains. The assessment of the scope, severity, and situational impact of those vulnerabilities should be a core process in any software acquisition, regardless of the source.”

 

The relative security of open source solutions is a hot topic now, as the technology picks up market share in this slower economy. Generally speaking, many organizations choose open source over commercial technology for its flexibility, cost, and enterprise-level features.

 

Officials at Outshine say that in addition to extending their support to open source, they’re launching new, around-the-clock hosting services in order to host open source applications.

 

The company’s chief marketing officer, Kuldeep Chauhan, said Outshine aims to leverage the power of open source to build strong applications for small sized businesses.

 

“Open source is great and we can use it to build strong and affordable solutions for the clients with smaller budgets,” Chauhan said. “This way we can pass the cost advantage to the clients, who in turn will finally get benefited.”