Open source software solution vendors can provide many advantages to organisations and businesses that wish to access such technology.
These non-proprietary solutions require no licensing fees, enabling users to benefit from the software’s tools, features and services at little to no cost. In addition, some of these tools can be utilised as alternatives to closed-source applications and may offer performance benefits that outweigh those of their popular counterparts. For example, services like Linux, Brave, MongoDB, Red Hat, Thunderbird and Firefox are popular open-source vendors with solutions that are accessed daily by organisations and enterprises to support their business processes and meet their objectives.
The rise in popularity of open source solutions can be seen within the UK, as more and more open source platforms and solutions have been impacting the European economy in recent years. According to the OpenUK’s third ‘State of Open Report’ from October 2021, the UK held the number one position as open source software contributor in Europe, and was the fifth biggest global contributor to open source software. Additionally, the report found that 89% of UK companies run open source software, and 69% of UK SMEs contribute to open source software.
This theme of open source technology involves many diverse types of software, offering services and solutions to organisations and businesses. The UK is home to vendors of open source business intelligence tools, storage solutions, application development technology, and a wide array of other open source products. Thus, the UK’s open source software market is likely to continue flourishing in the future.
Read on to learn about ten of the top open source options available.
Open Source Software and Tools in the UK
Best for Liquidity Solutions
Aave
Aave is an open-source cryptocurrency project featuring a non-custodial liquidity protocol. The decentralised tool enables users to build applications, borrow assets and earn interest. Depositors provide liquidity to liquidity pools generated by the software, to earn interest. Borrowers can gain liquidity from these pools and pay variable and interest rates. Borrower deposits are tokenised as tokens in the system, which can accrue interest and generate money. The Aave protocol is fully decentralised and community governed, and various markets have deployed Aave on their networks. In addition, the solution has features for security and audits to protect its users.
This open-source solution enables interaction with user interface clients, API integrations or with smart contracts on the Ethereum network. Users can additionally build third-party services or applications to interact with the Aave solution. Interacting with the protocol does involve fees for transactions and Ethereum blockchain usage, based on the complexity of the transaction and the network status.
Customer reviews online appreciate Aave for its open source features and transparent financial protocol. However, the product has been described as not-user-friendly.
Best for Visual Outputs
Easy SoftwareÂ
Easy Software is an open source business software company that provides professional tools and visual outputs within its Easy Cloud solution. The company has a project management software product as well as a product for Redmine project management plugins, cloud and solutions. The project management product is configurable to match the user’s needs and is based on Gantt, Kanban, WBS, SCRUM and other best PM practices. It also has extension models for B2B CRM, Resources, Help Desk, Finances and DevOps toolset. Its features include project reporting and controlling, project management, agile management, work management, time tracking, personal dashboards, project templates and more.
Easy Software’s project management solution integrates with other software products and apps using Zapier to synchronise and migrate data. Some of its third-party system integration options include Jira, Excel and Outlook. Additionally, the Easy Project software is fully compatible with the Redmine project tool. Easy Software does have costs associated with pricing models for advanced key project management tools or additional security, portfolio, analytics or integration functionality. The product is priced per user per month after a 14-day trial period.
The product mainly received 4 and 5 star ratings online, and reviewers seemed to appreciate the interface’s project visualisation features. However, some reviewers desired more report and page customisation options.
Best for Line-of-Business Applications
Jmix
Jmix offers an open-source rapid application development program for businesses and organisations looking to create line-of-business apps. Its software is capable of supporting various digital initiatives for organisations, and developed apps are supported independently using its open-source runtime utilising mainstream technologies. It can be used through Java or Katlin and to modernise and migrate legacy applications. It works through open-source stack and API, and comes with ready-to-use tools and components.
The tool can work with already-developed business applications and integrates with LDAP. No licensing costs or fees are involved with applications that are created with the product.
Users seem satisfied with the product, as reflected in the mostly 4 and 5 star reviews online. Reviewers especially express approval with the product’s wide range of features for creating enterprise applications and new features constantly being released.
Best for Digital Asset Management
ResourceSpace
ResourceSpace provides an open source software solution for digital asset management. Its features and capabilities include customisation options, advanced privacy settings to secure files, a DAM system for workflow and version control, automatic file previews and conversion for various file formats, and advanced tagging and categorisation of metadata.
The ResourceSpace open source solution can integrate with an array of third-party systems for brand templates, content management, AI image recognition, social media, creativity, collection management and more. In addition, the ResourceSpace REST API enables access to the solution’s internal functions and connections with its integration partners. Examples of the system’s integration partners include MovingMedia, DML and Prima-IT. Pricing for the product begins at zero for the free solution, with limited storage and features. Still, this can be an excellent choice for remote workers or users just looking to try the product. Other plans exist based on storage and included features, with the Team Cloud plan starting at £263 per month, the Business Cloud plan starting at £571 per month, and the Enterprise Cloud plan starting at £996 per month.
Reviewers online expressed appreciation of the product for its ease-of-use, wide range of features and helpful customer support team. However, while some reviewers described the product as being user-friendly, others expressed dissatisfaction with its usability. Therefore, it may be a better option for more tech-savvy users.
Best for Machine Learning Models and Experiments
Seldon
Seldon Core is an open-source platform for deploying machine learning models and experiments on Kubernetes. Seldon Core is built on Kubernetes and runs on any cloud or on premises. The platform may be used to convert machine learning models or language wrappers into production REST/GRPC microservices. In addition, users may utilise Kubernetes features and capabilities, including custom resource definitions for managing model graphs, the ML algorithm library, A/B tests, advanced metrics, outlier detectors, request logging and more.
Continuous integration and deployment tools can be integrated with the system, and platform integrations exist with Kubeflow and Red Hat OpenShift, for scaling and updating users’ deployment. Examples of supported toolkits that can be used with the system include TensorFlow, Java, ABD Apache Spark, to name a few. After a 30-day free trial, users can purchase Seldon’s solutions for oversight and governance, with costs based on the amount of models they wish to deploy.
Best for Open Source Expertise and Support
Sirius
Sirius provides organisations with open source services for application development, network, infrastructure deployment and technical support. The open source software offers technology for identity management, business infrastructure, online/internet infrastructures, data management, digital channels, enterprise search and sector-specific solutions. The company aims to help clients achieve their missions through use of open source software, offering support, strategic consultancy, deployment and systems integration, training, managed services and outsourcing.
Sirius can integrate open source and proprietary software components to act as a coordinated whole and support the user’s organisation. It can also design and build systems entirely or mainly from open source components.
Customer reviewers of Sirius seem to enjoy its project technology and managed services support.
Best for Security Solutions
Snyk
Snyk offers a solution that enables users to detect variabilities automatically across the SDLC and increase their security throughout their application development process. It comes with code management features to test and monitor projects and automated CI/CD to prevent vulnerabilities from passing through the build process. Vulnerable dependencies are detected in users IDC or CLI, and users can test their running environments with the software to verify that they are safe from vulnerabilities. Its features enable users to analyse their data for security decision-making based on dependency health, runtime prioritisation, exploitability data and more. Users can receive security alerts that are highly accurate, as Snyk’s security research team verifies and qualifies each alert to minimise false positives. Additional features and capabilities help users fix security issues and clear vulnerabilities to reduce their exposure. It continuously monitors for vulnerabilities to maintain users’ code security level and automates their security management and governance processes.
The product has integrations with various popular business applications for the purpose of reporting, CI/CD, code management, coding, container and deployment.
Reviewers seem to love this product for its automated security features and ease of use. Some reviewers did express concerns, though, regarding the software’s reporting and user interface, as they wished they had provided more details on their security status.
Best for API Gateways
Tyk
Tyk provides a solution that aims to reduce the limitations of software use with its Tyk Open Source API Gateway. This solution enables users to design, deploy, and scale their own APIs with the API Gateway. The cloud-native product is flexible, configurable and automatable, to be used within users’ customised CI/CD pipelines. Users can install the Gateway solution with Debian/Ubuntu, RHEL, CentOS, K8s, Docker and Ansible. It can also run independently with a Redis database. Tyk’s open source components, available under Mozilla Public Licence 2.0, include its API Gateway, Tyk Pump for connecting API traffic to external systems, Tyk Operator for managing API configurations, Tyk Identity broker for connecting third-party IdP systems, and Tyk Sync for API configuration version control. In addition, ita Gateway has no feature lockout, and users can control who accesses their APIs, when and how.
The open source Enterprise API Gateway product supports TCP, gRPC, REST and GraphQL protocols. The only third party dependency is Redis for distributed rate-limiting and token storage. It provides many enterprise features and functionality included as standard, and Tyk can be used with additional tools as well. Users can use the Open Source Cloud or Self-Managed Tyk solutions by signing up for free with no credit card required to get a 14-day free trial. After this, the software comes in several plan options with prices based on traffic, number of users, number of environments and product capabilities.
Best for Bare Metal Cloud Infrastructures
Ubuntu
Ubuntu is a modern enterprise open-source solution that enables users to build bare metal clouds and manage their own infrastructures. The company’s open-source Enhanced Platform Awareness (EPA) tool provides various benefits to the users, including improved performance, greater security and more control. Additionally, the EPA grants users more utilisation capabilities and value to their Open RAN Infrastructure for bare metal computing.
Through the Tray Platform’s universal connectors, Ubuntu can be integrated with any SaaS apps or tools by connecting them with any database, webhook, API, etc. Popular integration options include connections with Snowflake, Firebase, JumpCloud, BMC Remedy, Atlassian Confluence and more. Costs and fees may be involved if users decide on services like security maintenance and support, software-defined storage, fully-managed infrastructure or MAAS.
Customer reviews of Ubuntu express appreciation for the software’s automation features and flexibility. However, some wished for training to be made available for new users to learn to operate the interface.
Best for Data Virtualisation
Xen Project
Xen Project provides data virtualisation solutions to businesses and organisations within the UK. The software can be used for various commercial products, with Xan distributions for Linux, Commercial Server Virtualisation, Security Products and Embedded Distributions. Its community supports an open source type 1 or bare-metal hypervisor to enable multiple operating systems at a time on a single machine host. It can be used for many different application purposes, including Infrastructure as a Service, security applications, server virtualisation, desktop virtualisation, hardware appliances and embedded appliances. The software is equipped with services and features for isolation, fault-tolerance, maturity, and flexibility for supporting the creation of embedded and automotive systems. In addition, the system has security features, a lean architecture and a security disclosure process.
Its tools are advertised as being ideal for hyperscale cloud use, such as Amazon Web Services, IBM Softlayer, Oracle Cloud, Tencent, Alibaba Cloud and Rackspace’s public cloud, to name a few.
Reviewers online enjoyed the Xen Product’s ability to run and migrate virtual machines, though some expressed a desire for more management tools.
