CA upbeat on open source strategy

HYDERABAD: Computer Associates International Inc., one of the largest management software companies offering products and services in infrastructure, security, storage and life cycle management, is upbeat on its open source database solution Ingres. The company has decided to provide this freely downloadable open source component along with its three lines of business products-end to end infrastructure management, security and storage solutions.

Giving details, CA consulting director Rajendra P Dhavale said, "All future products of CA will have Ingres database and customers no longer need to invest on the operating systems (read Microsoft) database licensing costs. Equally, solutions either running on Microsoft or Linux can be accessed using Ingres."





According to Dhavale, companies are taking note of the advantages of open source applications. Particularly in large enterprises, where license costs for operating system and databases, can run up to millions of dollars per year. "If a company is using an open source application, it may not turn that expensive," remarked Dhavale.





Research on Ingres was initiated by a company called ASK, which was later acquired by CA in early 90's. Ingres was developed to foster innovation in the open source database community, and encourage developers and application vendors. It had earlier in August 2004 released the general availability of Ingres r3 for Linux and Windows operating system.