Has Your Agency Considered Open Source?

Posted by admin in Uncategorized on August 21, 2010 

August 21, 2010 - by Eric Updegrove - Director, Public Sector Solutions, Shadow-Soft

By leveraging Open Source, Federal, State and Local agencies are able to accomplish more while spending less.


In the spring of 2010, the National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO) surveyed 40 state CIOs on topics ranging from IT governance to emerging technologies.  The overwhelming conclusion from the survey was this: state budgets are down and costs are up.  In fact, the survey found that two-thirds of state CIOs expect lower IT budgets in 2011 through 2013.  Strategies to deal with these deficits will likely revolve around reductions in staff, agency consolidations and attempts to increase shared services.  The problem with these strategies is they only address near-term short-falls and do not provide a permanent “fix” to state budget deficits.  Real solutions decrease long-term budget constraints by lowering the overall TCO of their IT infrastructure.


Enterprise hardened and supported, Open Source solutions absolutely provide these lower TCOs.  They achieve this by off-loading the large R&D burden to the open source community, taking the best new features and making them enterprise ready.  And while savings is the primary impetus for most Open Source converts, many others make the move to achieve added functionality, better interoperability and flexibility.  Shadow-Soft’s competencies lie in helping State CIO’s realize these benefits through Open Source.


In his 2009 Department of Defense memorandum, DoD CIO David Wennergren stated that “To effectively achieve its missions, the Department of Defense must develop and update its software-based capabilities faster than ever, to anticipate new threats and respond to continuously changing requirements.  The use of Open Source Software (OSS) can provide advantages in this regard.”  Mr. Wennergren asked that DoD executive level personnel identify the “barriers” that were in place that were hindering the adoption of Open Source Solutions so that they could “continue to increase the benefits from the use of OSS.”


Our Government team urges you to contact Shadow-Soft and to discuss Open Source as an alternative to the proprietary and expensive solutions oftentimes used today.  These Open Source Solutions provide cost savings at the same, or greater value as the proprietary solutions you are using; without the vendor lock-in.


If your agency would like to discuss how Open Source Software can lower TCO while providing the service and support you require, please feel free to call or email me using my contact information below.


NASCIO Survey of State CIOs

DoD Policies Relating to Open Source Software

State of Tennessee – Winner 2010 Jboss Innovation Award

Eric Updegrove
Director, Public Sector Solutions
Shadow-Soft, LLC
703-286-5588 Direct
678-559-0326 Fax

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Shadow-Soft Earns First Red Hat Catalyst Partner of the Year Award By Helping CIOs Do More with Less

Posted by admin in Uncategorized on July 23, 2010

Atlanta, GA (July 19, 2010) – Shadow-Soft, an Atlanta-based Open Source Software (OSS) sales and consulting firm, recently earned the 2009 Red Hat Catalyst Partner of the Year Award at the Annual Red Hat Summit in Boston, MA.  Red Hat’s recognition showcases Shadow-Soft’s commitment and dedication to OSS and Red Hat-based solutions and to furthering Red Hat’s elite partner ecosystem.  More than a plaque and applause, the award confirms the organization’s competencies as it seeks to help customers leverage performance gains and cost savings available with OSS.

Shadow-Soft founders, James Chinn, CEO and Erik Wallin, COO weren’t thinking about awards when they began Shadow-Soft in 2008.  With their shared vision clearly defined, they focused on the emerging Open Source Software marketplace, the value it brings to an organization and how to offer the best of breed OSS solutions.  Against the grain of firms tightening their reins, Wallin and Chinn have now positioned themselves as the “go-to” experts in Open Source.

“Red Hat’s Catalyst Program aligns perfectly with Shadow-Soft’s business direction allowing us to engage more broadly and deeply with our customers looking for open source alternatives,” says Wallin.  “The Red Hat Catalyst Program was designed to connect the community of Red Hat partners and customers, to offer marketing resources and to fuel innovative solutions.  By focusing on this consultative, comprehensive client approach, we were able to triple our Red Hat sales in 2009.”

Open Source Software, has moved beyond the early adopter phase and now more and more enterprises are leveraging affordable and robust open source technologies.  Enterprise hardened and supported, OSS is a proven solution set that is scalable and often times more easily interfaced than traditional, proprietary, high-priced solutions.  And while savings is the primary impetus for most Open Source converts, many others make the move to achieve added functionality, better interoperability and flexibility.  Shadow-Soft’s competencies lie in helping today’s CIO in business, government and education realize these benefits through OSS solutions.

Chinn adds, “When you meet clients’ needs, growth comes with it.  By leveraging open source, companies are able to accomplish more while spending less, which is particularly important in today’s economy.   By drilling down to the real needs and challenges of the organization, we are able to help craft affordable, customized solutions.  Utilizing this approach, we’ve built an Open Source practice that spans a wide variety of application verticals including Infrastructure & Virtualization, Middleware, Database, Email & Collaboration and Identity Management & Authentication, just to mention a few.”

Likewise Software, another Shadow-Soft partner, comments on Shadow-Soft’s ability to resell their Open Source solutions and implement Likewise for mixed environments:  “Our partnership with Shadow-Soft helps us with the growing demand in the enterprise marketplace for educating customers on how to address the authentication needs of organizations with mixed networks — securely integrating Linux, Unix, and Mac with Microsoft Active Directory,” said Tracy Lothringer, director of Strategic Alliances at Likewise.  “Shadow-Soft’s end-to-end Open Source and consulting practices combined with our enterprise-class identity and access management technologies enable customers to quickly, easily and inexpensively tie together diverse networks.”

About Shadow-Soft

Shadow-Soft was founded in 2008 by IT professionals James Chinn and Erik Wallin.  The company is dedicated to Open Source Software, Cloud Computing, and other market disruptive IT technologies.  Shadow-Soft delivers real world enterprise solutions and consulting services by harnessing the power of Open Source, SOA and Cloud Computing to deliver proven business value for its customers.  In addition to Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Shadow-Soft has built its business by working with such core technologies as Zimbra Collaboration Suite, JBoss Enterprise Middleware, Terracotta Java Performance solutions, EnterpriseDB, the Postgres database and Likewise Identity Management and Authentication.  Their commitment to the Open Source Software movement is coupled with consulting services and hardware partners.  To discuss upcoming projects or to receive additional information on Shadow-Soft, visit their website at www.shadow-soft.com or contact them at sales@shadow-soft.com or 770-546-0077.

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Shadow-Soft Named Red Hat Public Sector Specialist

Posted by admin in Uncategorized on March 31, 2010

Atlanta, GA (April 1, 2010)

Shadow-Soft was recently accepted into the Red Hat Public Sector Specialist program.  This unique accomplishment further demonstrates Shadow-Soft’s commitment to Open Source and their expansion into the Government market.

“Offering our unique mix of Open Source Software and consulting solutions to federal, state and local government markets has always been a key objective for Shadow-Soft,” say James Chinn, co-founder and CEO.  “With tax revenues being squeezed across the country, Open Source is the best way, and often the only way, to balance shrinking IT budgets.”

Shadow-Soft has been repeatedly named as one of Red Hat’s top ten resellers and ranked number two Red Hat Premier Business Partner.

About Shadow-Soft

Shadow-Soft was founded in 2008 by IT professionals James Chinn and Erik Wallin.  The company is dedicated to Open Source Software, Cloud Computing, and other market disruptive IT technologies.  Shadow-Soft delivers real world enterprise solutions and consulting services by harnessing the power of Open Source, Web 2.0 and Cloud Computing to deliver proven business value for its customers.

In addition to Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Shadow-Soft has built its business by working with such core technologies as Zimbra Collaboration Suite, JBoss Enterprise Middleware, Terracotta Java Performance solutions and Alfresco Enterprise Content Management.  Their commitment to the Open Source Software movement is coupled with consulting services and hardware partners.  For more information, visit Shadow-Soft’s website at www.shadow-soft.com or contact the company at sales@shadow-soft.com or 770-546-0077.

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Enterprise Linux and Amanda Enterprise: The Open Source Backup Solution Webinar

Posted by admin in Industry News on January 19, 2010

Original Article – http://www.zmanda.com/blogs/?p=250

A backup server represents a very important component of any IT infrastructure. You need to pick the right components to implement a scalable, robust and secure backup server. The choice of the operating system has crucial implications. Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) provides many of the features needed from an ideal OS for a backup server. Some of these include:

Virtualization: RHEL includes a modern hypervisor (Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Hypervisor) based on the Kernel-Based Virtual Machine (KVM) technology.  Amanda backup server can be run as a virtual machine on this hypervisor. This virtual backup server can be brought up as needed. This provides optimal resource management, e.g. you can bring up the backup server just at the time of backup window or for restores. A virtualized backup server also makes it much more flexible to change the resource levels depending on the business needs, e.g. if more oomph is needed from the backup server prior to a data center move.

High I/O Throughput: Backup server represents huge I/Os, typically characterized by large sequential writes. RHEL, both as real and virtual system, provides high I/O throughput needed for a backup server workload. RHEL 5 allows for switching I/O schedulers on-the-fly. So, a backup administrator can fine tune I/O activity to match with higher level function (e.g. write-heavy backups vs. read-heavy restores).

Security: Securing a backup server is critical in any overall IT security planning. In a targeted attack, a backup server provides a juicy target because data that is deemed to be important by an organization can be had from one place. Security-Enhanced Linux (SELinux) in RHEL implements a variety of security policies, including U.S. Department of Defense style mandatory access controls, through the use of Linux Security Modules (LSM) in the Linux kernel. Amanda supports RHEL SELinux configuration. It allows users to run backup server in a secure environment.

Scalable Storage: Storage technologies built into RHEL provide scalability needed from backup storage. The Ext3 filesytem supports up to 16TB file systems. Logical Volume Manager (LVM) allows for backup storage on a pool of devices which can be added to when needed. System administrators can also leverage Global File System (GFS) to provide backup server direct access to data to be backed up, by-passing the production network.

Compatibility: RHEL is found on compatibility matrix of any modern secondary storage device – whether it be a tape drive, tape library or a NAS device. RHEL also supports wide variety of SAN architectures, including iSCSI and Fibre Channel. This, along with Amanda’s use of native drivers to access secondary media, gives IT managers the widest choice in the market for devices to store backup archives.

Manageability: Easy update mechanism, e.g. using yum, from Redhat Network makes it easier for the administrator to keep the backup server updated with latest fixes (including security patches). Amanda depends on some of the system libraries and tools to perform backup and recovery operations. A system administrator can pare down a RHEL environment to only have bare-minimum set of packages needed for Amanda, and then use RHN to keep these packages up-to-date.

Long Retention Lifecycle: Many organizations need to retain their backup archives for several years due to business or compliance reasons. Each version of RHEL comes with seven year support. This combined with open formats used by Amanda Enterprise makes it practical for IT managers to have real long-term retention policies, with a confidence to be able to recover their data several years from now.

In summary, if you are in the process of making a choice for your backup server, RHEL should certainly be in the short-list for operating systems, and (yes, we are biased) Amanda in the short-list for backup software.

Please join Shadow-Soft, Red Hat and Zmanda on January 21st for an introduction to Amanda Enterprise and learn how you can save up to 80% as compared to similar proprietary backup solutions. Red Hat is warming up this webinar by offering a $10 Starbucks card for every attendee.



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Shadow-Soft Named Red Hat Premier Business Partner

Posted by admin in Uncategorized on December 9, 2009

Atlanta, GA (December 2009) — Shadow-Soft announces that it has been named Red Hat Premier Business Partner for its continued year to year growth and ongoing commitment to providing open source solutions & services.

The Red Hat Premier level is for partners that have a strategic relationship with Red Hat and provide the highest contribution to Red Hat and the Red Hat partner ecosystem.  Premier partners have the highest level of visibility at Red Hat and in the marketplace.

“We are honored to be named Premier partner by Red Hat. We had to meet strict criteria from Red Hat to receive this title including revenue minimums and services & sales teams that include a certified and trained staff.  There are only a handful of Premier partners in the United States, so this was a major milestone for Shadow-Soft,” said Erik Wallin, Shadow-Soft Co-Founder.

Another noteworthy milestone is Shadow-Soft’s recent partnership with EnterpriseDB (www.enterprisedb.com).

“EnterpriseDB is the leader on products and services based on PostgreSQL, the world’s most advanced open source database,” says Wallin.  “This is an exciting partnership for us, and we are confident that our affiliation with EnterpriseDB will bring Shadow-Soft and our customers continued success.”

For more information, visit Shadow-Soft’s website at www.shadow-soft.com or contact Gretchen Howard at 770-546-0077 or pr@shadow-soft.com.

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About:  Shadow-Soft, LLC is Atlanta-based and dedicated to Open Source Software, Cloud Computing, SaaS and other market disruptive IT technologies. Shadow-Soft delivers real world enterprise solutions & consulting services by harnessing the power of Open Source, SOA, Web 2.0 and Cloud Computing to deliver proven business value for its customers.  For more information on Shadow-Soft, please visit us at www. Shadow-Soft.com

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Google goes all-in with an open source cloud

Posted by admin in Uncategorized on November 23, 2009

Original article by Dana Blankenhorn @ ZDNet.com

Google quietly announced last week that its cloud will run nothing but open source software.

This is a big deal, but let’s first admit why Google did it.

As I have written many times, Google has a big cost advantage when it comes to delivering Internet resources.

It’s like America’s nuclear advantage during the Cold War. Anyone who sought to compete with America in terms like throw-weight would bankrupt themselves. President Reagan encouraged this competition and the Soviet Union bankrupted itself.

So as Google enters the cloud computing wars with outfits like Amazon and Salesforce.com, it is to its advantage that there be no proprietary software advantage. On a level playing field it dominates. They’re the New York Yankees without a salary cap.

Openness, represented by open source and Internet standards, are all to Google’s advantage. This is why opponents of open standards, like Scott Cleland, go to such rhetorical lengths to claim that open standards are, in fact, proprietary. If open standards are proprietary you can set closed standards without harm to the market.

But open standards set terms of competition that advantage the low-cost producer of bits and processing. The question for policymakers, both public and private, is what the terms of competition will be, not who wins.

Cleland and other Bell apologists want their clients to win. Thus they support regulation based on scarcity, under which the winner is the outfit that can hire the most apologists. I own no Google stock, and I make no money from Google. Never have. Probably never will. (If I do I’ll let you know.)

We should set terms of competition that advantage consumers, not particular producers, and that reward plenty rather than scarcity. By that standard Google’s dominance is a fair one, fairly obtained, and so long as it’s not abused it’s a good thing.

In making its cloud open source, Google shows it understands this.


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Open Source Data Center Management Emerges

Posted by admin in Industry News on November 12, 2009

Original Article By Denise Dubie , Network World , 05/31/2009

Cfengine Nova couples open source with data center automation and management capabilities.

The economy isn’t the only reason open source management applications are currently garnering a lot of attention. With vendors building commercial business models around the low-cost tools, now is the time to invest in software that can manage, automate and control enterprise environments.

Forrester Research recently examined in a report a range of open source management tools; some well-known and already in use in many IT shops, some newer to come to market and others offered with commercial support packages. Vendors such as GroundWork, Hyperic (recently acquired by SpringSource) and Zenoss have spent the past few years making a business out of creating communication and packaged support for open source management applications.

Another vendor, Cfengine, also adopted this model and made a version of its IT process-based data center management available as open source. Announced in April, Cfengine Nova is designed to manage the entire server lifecycle, according to the vendor. The software can; perform pattern matching; verify that key processes are or are not running; monitor disk usages and system performance; warn about full file systems before a problem occurs; and conduct change management processes for files using “cryptographic hash checking, for security purposes or for locating human error,” the vendor says on its Web site.

According to Forrester, “With Cfengine, system administrators free up time that can be spend on data center planning and design instead of fire fighting.”

The open source management software is compelling enough, Forrester analysts say, to challenge the “Big Four” management vendors — BMC, CA, and IBM — on not only cost but also capabilities. “Cfengine [has] introduced [a] project that will be worthwhile to follow and will likely give the big four proprietary IT management solutions a run for their money,” the research report reads.

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Ray of Hope

Posted by admin in Industry News on November 10, 2009

*Shadow-Soft, Co-Founders Erik Wallin and James Chinn mentioned in recent Atlanta Business Chronicle article.

Friday, October 9, 2009

Atlanta Business Chronicle – by Thornton Kennedy – Strategies Editor

During the last six months, small to midsized businesses paddled their collective canoes over a waterfall.

Now that they have gone over the falls, most are finding it was not as bad as they had initially thought.

A survey by City Business Journals Network shows over the last six months, 52 percent of the small to midsized businesses, or SMBs, queried said business prospects over the next year will be “a lot” or “a little better.” City Business Journals Network is a subsidiary of American City Business Journals, as is Atlanta Business Chronicle. The network began regularly polling small- and midsized business owners nationwide on the economy in July 2007 when financial markets began to waiver. The survey was fielded every four to five months throughout the economic crisis, providing an overview of businesses’ reactions to the ongoing economic situation.

Atlanta Business Chronicle ran the results by two Atlanta businesses that fit the SMB criteria: Global Behavior Solutions LLC and Shadow-Soft LLC.

The 52 percent of business owners who said that business prospects will improve represented a considerable upswing from the 35 percent low five months ago when the Dow Jones industrial average fell below 7,000 for the first time since 1997.

Shadow-Soft CEO James Chinn said he has already begun to see more business, although he is not ready to proclaim the economy has turned the corner just yet.

“We’ve seen a steady increase in overall market penetration and revenue growth for most of our [open source software] partners,” Chinn said, falling into the slight majority who feel the business outlook is improving. “Thankfully, when times are good, OSS makes a lot of sense and when times are bad, OSS makes even more sense.”

Shadow-Soft is an open source software, or OSS, and cloud computing solutions firm with seven employees and revenue in excess of $2 million….

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