Chet Hayes

Organizations continue to wrestle with the COTS vs. Open Source question and continually look for guidance on how to select one vs. the other.  Many organizations make the frequent mistake of basing the decision on the capital investment cost or up front investment with no thought to any other criteria.  While cost is an important factor, there are other areas that organizations should consider as part of their selection process. These include: 1.    Technical 2.    Cultural 3.    Financial Technical The technical component to the decision is pretty straight forward with only a few minor issues to worry about.  This usually involves an evaluation or trade-study to ensure that the proper feature/functionality exists to support the current requirements, as well as the abil... (more)

The Beginning of the End for SOA?

The post from Anne Thomas Manes on the end of SOA has caused a bit of ruckus in the IT world over the past week or so.  Folks from eWeek and ebizq have all blogged in response to this, as well as the numerous comments from everybody in response to these postings and I figured I would join the fray. For several reasons, businesses and organizations are being forced to do more with less. Wi... (more)

Government and Open Source Software

For the past several years, US Government agencies have shown an increased interest in open source software, and with the advent of the Obama administration's call for transparency and openness several organizations believe open source software is part of the answer.  So what is the allure of open source to the government? Is it the promise of reduced cost? Is it access to the source cod... (more)

COTS & Open Source Selection Thoughts

Several of our AgilePath customers continue to wrestle with the COTS vs. Open Source question and continually ask for guidance on how to select one vs. the other.  More often than not, they tend to focus on the capital investment metric (thinking Open Source is ‘free’) and neglect other key elements of the decision.  In helping customers evaluate which direction they should go, we focus ... (more)

How Business responds to IT and SOA.

How Business views IT and SOA. A great cartoon from Geek and Poke on how Business responds to IT and SOA. ... (more)