SpikeIgnite Platform*

Integration, testing and packaging of open source applications and middleware is a complex task. We have an automated build and test platform that validates our applications with over 300,000 test cases daily. The end result is a set of applications that you can trust.

• Custom Install Stack
• Automated interoperability testing.
• Graphical multi-tier installation.

The open source community, having long been a proven means of delivering enterprise-ready operating systems and infrastructure at low cost, is now beginning to produce enterprise-ready solutions for most application domains, including CRM, email and collaboration, content management, and many more. Rates of adoption are staggering, as enterprises seek to capitalize on the same promise of lower costs that was fulfilled with operating system and infrastructure.

However, open source solutions differ from operating systems and infrastructure in one important way. While the latter are relatively monolithic, consisting of one packaged component that can be deployed in a limited number of ways, open source solutions require many dependencies, i.e. many middleware components, such as databases, web servers, servlet engines, scripting languages, authentication servers, and so forth, each with its own deployment and support issues. Moreover, each open source solution was originally designed and its underlying infrastructure chosen with its own feature set and use cases in mind, resulting in a wide disparity in infrastructure dependencies, deployment and support issues.

This results in a combinatorial problem that defies the the ability of any independent end customer or solution provider to scale effectively, and adversely affects the low-cost promise of open source.

SpikeSource is a software company which distributes, integrates, manages and supports a broad portfolio of open source solutions. Our business depends on not only having a large number of solutions, but ensuring that each one is of high quality, easy to deploy and support, and ready for enterprise use. SpikeSource has recognized this inherent combinatorial problem, and has developed the SpikeIgnite Platform to enable the rapid development and delivery of open source solutions, in a manner that ensures that enterprises can benefit from the low-cost promise of open source.

For each solution, SpikeSource selects the right open source components, and then integrates, builds, tests and packages them to create stacks that are optimized for that solution. The SpikeIgnite platform is a set of tools and services that help simplify and automate these otherwise labor-intensive and complex tasks, and ensure that the resulting solutions can be deployed and used at low cost, with enterprise-grade quality and support. These solutions are also updated and managed via the SpikeNet service, so critical security fixes, updates and bugs are delivered to customers when they need them.

Each SpikeIgnited open source solution enjoys the following characteristics, which together ensure that the low-cost promise of open source can be realized by organizations who adopt them:

• The application and infrastructure components are all integrated into one stack.
• End to end interoperability and component testing performed by SpikeSource, thus ensuring a consistently high level quality across all components in the solution.
• Single integrated installer, ensuring a smooth turnkey install experience.
• Onboarded onto SpikeNet, our customers' single source for all updates, including security fixes, patches and maintenance releases, plus end-to-end testing of each and every new update.
• Single point of contact for Level 1 and Level 2 support calls.

By rapidly building and certifying business-ready open source solutions, the SpikeIgnite Platform enables SpikeSource to bring a broad portfolio of solutions to organizations which have not been able to deploy open source before. Moreover, the resulting automation allows SpikeSource to bring many solutions to market quickly without compromising quality and support, thus allowing SpikeSource to become a true single source of business-ready open source solutions.