IT staff and developers often overlook non-technical considerations that are critical when running open source on a production system.

When we hear the word "appliances", we tend to think of things in the kitchen — blenders, mixers, juicers, espresso machines. When IBM thinks of appliances, however, they think of something else: Quick and easy software stacks, ready to run right out of the box.

IBM is to use Novell SUSE powered software appliances to deliver some of its range of applications to customers

So you've got to cut costs, but you're not a manager. You're a software developer, or a power user, or just someone who needs to keep the bottom line healthy enough to support your salary. These are ideal situations for introducing open source software solutions into your environment.

The data integration specialist has updated its data management software to version 4.0. In a further financing round, funds of $8 million have been injected into the company

No doubt, it's sometimes difficult to measure Ubuntu's business success. Canonical says Ubuntu now has about 12 million Linux users - up from an estimated 8 million users in 2007. That sounds impressive, but what does that really mean in terms of Ubuntu's market penetration, Canonical's march to profitability and Ubuntu's progress as a Linux distribution?

Sourceforge.net estimated that there are 230,000 open source projects on its site till Feb last year. Some of the projects are outdated, some of them do no not provide any support and others are in development phase. So, it is hard to find the right one for your need.