OPEN SOURCE - Job Scheduler - White Paper
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| Open Source is open for Business and it is here to stay! |
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The lure of open source applications is easy to understand: you don't have to pay for the product; everyone can use or
even modify the source code according to their own needs and you are not tied to the vendor for the rest of your life.
On top of this, you have a worldwide community watching and improving open source applications – often faster than
proprietary vendors would. Sounds great, doesn't it?
Yes, it is great! However, it would be simple-hearted to think open source software is in its nature unavoidably
good or suitable for every infrastructure. Another pitfall would be to think that a quick download solves your problems.
The truth is, if you want to implement open source software for mission-critical applications in your company
infrastructure, you have to go through all the stages of evaluation - just as you would with proprietary software.
While big companies and governments have actively and successfully been using open source software for many years,
a more recent development is that small and mid-size companies are seriously considering open source solutions.
The time is ripe for this change now, because more software vendors are making open source software available with
all the professional services they would normally provide for proprietary software. There are completely new
opportunities arising through the availability of open source solutions for business, allowing you to take a new approach
to the management of your IT infrastructure.
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| Taking on the Challenge |
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One of the most challenging and time-consuming tasks must be handling the growing complexity of IT-structures within
a company. In fact, the need to stay organized is a central issue and if you want to run a smooth and efficient operation
and target budget-conscious strategies, then you need solutions that can be seamlessly integrated.
From the outset you have to dare a critical view at your present approach: for example, are your workflows organized to
reflect your business processes closely, have you optimized your business processes so that a good part of the daily
chores can be automated? Do you have to waste time by maintaining isolated, non-integrated solutions?
One of the most critical areas involves using a central tool to do both for you: integrate and automate.
In other words, you need a job scheduler. Mind you, I hasten to add that job scheduling is nothing new.
If you are not a babe in the IT business, you know that mainframe systems have been using job scheduling
and batch tasks as a standard to organize the automation of processes for decades. Entirely new, however,
are sophisticated open source solutions for job scheduling. We want to introduce you to the open source
Job Scheduler from the SOS GmbH, Berlin.
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| Exceptional Job Scheduler Features |
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Let's first have a look at standard job scheduling tasks: basically a job scheduler will launch executable files and
create job chains to serialize the processing of jobs. It can trigger job starts by calendar or events. Events
can be started manually, by API events or your job scheduler will monitor directories, which is of particular
importance if you want to integrate legacy applications into your business process. The jobs will be logged and
e-mail notifications sent in case of success or error.
So far so good, but how are you supposed to go about integrating this technology with your existing software?
For example, if you have already implemented Web Services for your business processes and if you are orchestrating
them with BPEL, you will not want to give this up, and in fact you shouldn't need to. At this point you will need
a job scheduler that can encapsulate existing programs and scripts as a Web Service. This is the solution to
embedding legacy software seamlessly into SOA architectures. The SOS GmbH, Berlin Open Source Job Scheduler
covers this requirement uniquely.
Apart from the integrated Web Services, the Open Source Job Scheduler features expandability. In other words,
jobs can be implemented with the Job Scheduler API using the full range of built-in functions
such as logging, conditional job starts and parameterization. These additions to the Job Scheduler
are contributed by the community and by SOS GmbH, and
result from practical needs in everyday use. There are no restrictions to the creativity being brought in and the
potential is remarkable.
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| Solution Stacks and the Job Scheduler |
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With such wide open possibilities for integration, a whole new aspect surfaces, namely the creation of solution stacks.
The benefits are easy to see: software stacks provide you with a predefined combination of solutions, solutions that are
contributed and developed by specialists devoted to their field of expertise. Stacks are tested and validated for easy
deployment. So apart from solving specific requirements with a stack of your choice and exercising frugality pure in
regards to your budget, you can freely combine other open source solutions without vendor or product dependency.
Solution stacks provide you with a dynamic basis for frequent updates and the integration of new features for
the Job Scheduler.
Three ready to go solution stacks are currently available for the Job Scheduler: for example, one stack combines
the Job Scheduler and network monitors (Hobbit, Nagios). The Job Scheduler send notices (warnings and failures) to a
central monitoring board. Another stack automates the creation and shipment of reports for you (JasperReports).
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| Your Choice: Implementation Services & Support |
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With an open source product your are circumventing the purchase of the product. Instead you start your evaluation
and implementation immediately. You have the choice of purchasing services for implementation, customizing or support.
And here lies the key difference between Open Source products and proprietary software:
you spend your budget on implementation – not on the product.
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Office Automation - Document Delivery - Job Scheduling - Systems Integration - Output Management - Enterprise Application Integration - Connectivity |
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