Redington Value, the value-added distribution division of Redington Gulf, along with its Kuwait partner, KuwaitNet, discussed the importance of open source solutions in business at a recent conference in Kuwait.

The conference, entitled ‘An Opportunity to re-invent IT with open source during the current economical challenges’ was attended by over 80 CIO’s and IT professionals from across the country.

The event was divided into two main programs - a seminar that catered to IT enthusiasts, managers and students; and a roundtable discussion among CIOs.

The conference revolved around how open source solutions is an option that IT decision makers should consider as part of their IT strategy, and how it can unlock the potential of existing IT infrastructure. It was presented in context of Red Hat, a leading open source vendor.

Redington Value and KuwaitNet stressed that open source solutions were key to boosting performance, reliability, security and cost- effectiveness among regional businesses.

In the face of present challenges as far as freedom of choice, performance, security, innovation, consolidation and reliability are concerned, open source solutions work to lower costs across the board, the duo stated.

In addition it enables the accurate assessment of energy requirements, improves performance and reliability, consolidates infrastructure, promotes interoperability and collaborative development and enhances security, it added.

'The growth of open source adoption worldwide in the middle of the financial crisis has driven us to create a greater buzz for it in the local market. Also, it is key that people in the region are able to benefit from the latest global developments in the IT domain,” said Talal Al Awadhi, business director, KuwaitNET.

“The selection of Red Hat will help our local IT executives and specialists to know how our region was able to get Open Source in mission critical projects and replace many legacy systems with it.'

“Open source solutions relieves economic pressure, handles increasing demand for IT and reaches every corner of the infrastructure,” said Ramkumar B, general manager, Value Business, Redington Gulf.

“In line with this, our participation in this initiative underlines our commitment towards pushing for rapid innovation in the region’s IT infrastructure by helping IT professionals explore source software that address the needs of their enterprise,” he explained.

Red Hat discussed on how the open source solutions were helping in building the next generation of cloud computing and virtualisation for service providers as well as building business intelligence using Jboss SOA solutions.

'Open Source is about fostering communities and offering enterprise level support for mission critical environments and such a setting was an ideal platform,' said Anuj Kumar, Red Hat senior director (Middle East & Africa).-TradeArabia News Service