Application development Toolkit

Open-source LAMP a beacon to developers

Martin LaMonica CNET News

Published: 14 Jun 2005 16:50 BST

For years, the business-software development world has been split largely between Microsoft's .NET toolset and Java. Get ready for a third option.

The so-called LAMP stack of open-source software—which includes the Linux operating system, Apache Web server, MySQL database and PHP (or Perl, or Python) —is pushing its way into mainstream corporate computing.

One of several smaller companies betting on the LAMP stack, start-up ActiveGrid announced on Monday partnerships that, combined with new software, could help expand LAMP's appeal among big companies. Partners include MySQL, Apache management provider Covalent, Linux company Novell and PHP tool maker Zend Technologies.

The efforts of companies such as these to make LAMP more industrial strength—combined with growing interest among corporate customers in open source—are making LAMP a more cohesive and competitive offering to Microsoft's .NET and Java products, said Stephen O'Grady, an analyst at RedMonk.

"LAMP is still viewed as a collection of piece parts that aren't really certified to work together. But the various participants in that stack and on top of that stack are doing a good job of driving it forward and making it just another stack," O'Grady said.

The individual components of the LAMP stack have been around for many years. But the combination of components—or similar open-source stacks—is increasingly being viewed by vendors, customers and venture investors as a unified platform for building and running business applications. These "stacks" aren't so much vertical entities, with each element layered on the other, as they are a looser collection of building blocks that can be put together to build various types of Web applications.

Indeed, several companies are staking out businesses around the open-source software rather than aligning with .NET or with J2EE. In many cases, the plan is to make LAMP more battle-tested and palatable to corporate customers.