Web retailers go open-source

Design firm offers free, Java-based e-commerce platform to online retailers as alternative to Microsoft

By Carol Sliwa

February 23, 2004 12:00 PM ET

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Computerworld - Fry Inc. has been using Microsoft Corp. software to design, develop and host e-commerce sites during much of the past eight years. But that's expected to change.
The Ann Arbor, Mich., company, whose clients include retailers Eddie Bauer, Crate & Barrel and Brookstone, tomorrow plans to launch a Java-based offering called Open Commerce Platform that carries no licensing fee for the customer. And Fry is happy to run it on freely available open-source technologies such as the Linux operating system, Tomcat application server and Apache Web server.
That means that an online retailer that hires Fry to build, refresh or reconstruct its e-commerce site can avoid all software licensing costs if it decides to go with a completely open-source package. That's not insignificant, since licensing fees can run as high as $300,000 per year for a major retail Web site, according to CEO David Fry.
So far, only one customer has opted to go the fully open-source route. Maidenform Inc. in Bayonne, N.J., will run OCP on a Tomcat application server and Red Hat Linux, with an open-source MySQL database server on the back end.
Another customer opted to use open-source software only for the Web and application servers running the Java-based OCP. Olean, N.Y.-based Vector Marketing Corp., which does business under the name Cutco Cutlery, chose to stick with Sun Solaris and an Oracle database, since it already had licenses for them.
Two new customers, whose sites won't be ready until May or June, also chose a mix of open-source software and previously licensed commercial products.
One is a retailer that had a marketing site based on Microsoft's Active Server Pages technology. The company plans to switch to the OCP platform running on IBM's WebSphere application server on an Intel-based Linux server for the e-commerce site that Fry is building. On the back end, the company plans to use Microsoft's SQL Server database, its corporate standard.
'Interesting Combination'


Maidenform will turn to open-source for its site.

"It's an interesting combination," said Rudy Pataro, Fry's chief technology officer. "We like to point to it as an example of the flexibility."
Another Fry customer, a durable-goods manufacturer, is sticking with its IBM DB2 database and its SAP AG NetWeaver application server, but it will run them on Linux.
Retailers haven't exactly been pounding down Fry's door requesting open-source software. But the CEO said the open-source alternative is gaining acceptance.
"They don't start the conversation by saying, 'I want to move to open-source,' " said Fry. "But once they're looking at making a

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