RapidCMDB

We've used number of different technologies to provide persistence service in our products. Our main concerns/requirements can be listed as:

1. performance. The persistence mechanism should perform well since we manage real time monitoring data. Number of write/read operations per second as well as performance of the queries are key performance aspects for us.
2. A fixed/static schema is not suitable for our products since they support dynamic modeling. Mapping from Object to its storage should be flexible.
3. Querying the object storage should be easy and should not require developer skills.

In the first iteration of our products, we had used a database. However, relational databases have a rigid schema structure, hence modification of the schema by the users was problematic. The performance of the solution was also not ideal. Both read/write and search performance were not adequate for many use cases that we have.  read more »

Can we have a single unified model to describe all IT "assets", everything IT cares about? The idea is certainly appealing, and excites any IT management geek, this one included. Cote has a post where he articulates the advantages of having one standard model to model everything in IT and argues one of the big 4 open sourcing their CMDB solution may be the fastest way to get there. Can this happen? Stranger things did happen but I'd put likelyhood of this one as very low. It would certainly shake things up if a major CMDB became open source and if (this is a big if as well) the model used by it gained traction. One can only hope, not much more we can do.  read more »

It's been almost three weeks since we've announced our intention to start releasing our products as open source. I had finished my previous post by hinting that RapidCMDB, a federated CMDB solution was going to be the first open source project to be released. So what happened in the last three weeks? What's the hold up?
The delay is primarily due to a major architectural decision we have taken. All our previous products share a common server platform called RapidServer. RapidServer is all java application server that includes all the needed components to run our applications, and not having external dependencies mean quick and easy deployment.  read more »

I'm excited to announce that iFountain has decided to go down the road not so less traveled and embrace the open source model. Being open has always been in our DNA, and we've agreed that embracing the open source model is the best manifestation of this objective.

As part of being open and transparent, I'll try to journal the road to open source for us. We'll try to get this done right. No doubt that it would not be difficult to post all the source code somewhere, stick on the GPL license, make a press release and declare the mission accomplished. But outcome of that alone would be no good for anyone. It takes more than declaring a license to turn closed source products into useful open source projects. Based on lessons learned from other projects, here is what we intend to do:

Open development infrastructure  read more »