Heterogeneous Environments--The New IT paradigm.
An observation made roughly 2500 years ago by the ancient Greek Philosopher Heraclitus, that the only constant is change, holds as true today as it did then. The Information and Communication Technology (“ICT”) industry is an exemplar of this. Today the entire ICT landscape is witnessing change. Yesterday's paradigms are today's history. Traditionally, we have witnessed a vertical divide between Open Source Software and commercial software, with commentators from both sides espousing the merits of their model as a one size fits all solution. While both models had their respective merits, the divide resulted in precious little interoperability between them, except where mandated by standards bodies. However, The ICT world is witnessing a change. Environments that often include a mix of Windows, Linux and UNIX are becoming more prevalent. Applications being deployed today are often a mix of open source and commercial software. Customers are increasingly looking for software p