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Open Source Based Workflow Management Systems

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PCQ Bureau
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Whether it's a solution to automate workflow in the pre-press, or for multi-channel publishing, or even for monetizing your media assets, a small Delhi-based company called Mediology can do it with ease on a pay-per-use model. They manage to do this by keeping their own costs under control with the help of open source software. We interacted with the founding director of the company, Manish Dhingra to know more about their tryst with open source.

Q> What Open Source software are you using in your organization?

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Manish> At Mediology, we thrive on Open Source platforms and the corresponding stacks. We leverage LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP) for a lot of the platforms and web based applications we develop. Our workflow management system which is used by publishing houses uses frameworks like Yii and CodeIgniter to enable efficient structuring, easy configuration, high performance and auto handling of rigmorale tasks like database access. Besides this, we also leverage Memcached for in memory caching of objects, based on application needs. Our WordPress proficiency has led us to contribute a bunch of plugins to WordPress.org.

Q> Why did you chose an open source stack and what are you doing with it?

Manish> Traditionally Open Source software was never preferred, especially since serious application developers preferred enterprise software from Microsoft, Oracle and Sun Microsystems. The advent of Web 2.0 and social media led to increased confidence in using open source software for architecting and managing complex and large scale applications. The Open Source community is very vibrant and software like Linux (OS), MySQL (DB), Apache and Nginx (Web Application Server), Memcached (in memory caching), MongoDB (NoSQL), PHP (Web Scripting) and many more, have enabled a highly cohesive set of software that provide an ideal ecosystem for architecting on the SoA and SaaS principles.

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Cloud Computing furthered this drive, since it became very easy to have Linux based virtual computing systems powered using Xend. Open standards like RSS, XML-RPC, REST, SOAP and JSON provided a common messaging layer which enabled disparate systems to be seamlessly glued together. Our confidence on the prowess of the LAMP stack was so high that we didn't evaluate any other option for building our workflow solutions.

Q> What sort of benefits is your business gaining by using LAMP? Are there drawbacks that one should be aware of as well?

Manish> The benefits are definitely of reduced cost, speed of implementation since Open Source components are available and can be easily integrated. However some of the drawbacks include messy or almost non-existent documentation (which is rapidly changing) and sometimes unreliable behavior. However for those willing to experiment and learn, get their hands dirty, open source can bring a lot of elation and sense of accomplishment.

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