Open Ed

What is Open Source?

Open Source is an approach to the design, development, and distribution of software, offering practical accessibility to the software’s source code. Open source software is published under licenses that ensure that the source code is available to everyone to inspect, change, download, and explore as they wish. This is the essential meaning of open source: the code — the language in which the software is written — can be accessed and improved by anyone with the right skill set because they understand how the software works. Some consider open source to be a design approach, while others consider it a critical strategic element of their operations. The advantages of Open Source development include the long-term sustainability of the code and the fact that there is an entire development community that identifies and addresses development, testing, and bug fixes.

What is Open Service?

An Open Service, also known as Software as a Service (SaaS), is a service provided by a software application running online, over the Internet via a browser or another interface. Many open service products have a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) framework in place. An SOA provides many benefits to the user organization, such as a single sign-on (SSO), reuse of data, and the ability to plug and play applications into an enterprise service bus (ESB).

AcrossWorld’s methodology further extends the open service approach by establishing a framework that eliminates the need to reengineer content as applications, systems, and processes move in and out of the ESB.

What is SaaS?

SaaS or Software as a Service, is a software distribution model where the provider sometimes develops, hosts, and licenses applications and makes them available to customers over a network, as opposed to providing individual licensed copies of the software. SaaS products, such as EducationBridge and KnowledgeKey, allow the user to access the tool through the internet as opposed to traditional software that is downloaded and stored to a specific hard drive.

Software support and updates are provided by the vendor or developer under the terms of the license agreement. The user’s access to and use of the software ends when the organization stops paying subscription fees.

Advantages to the user include significantly lower costs as the user does not pay a single (usually large) licensing fee. Only a smaller, recurring subscription fee applies. The user does not need to store software or data on his computer so he doesn’t need large data storage facilities. There is also the convenience of not needing to constantly backup data – storage and data integrity is the responsibility of the SaaS provider. SaaS models also reduce the need for specially trained IT personnel to handle maintenance, monitoring and software updates. The SaaS vendor provides a dedicated team to handle these tasks and all updates to software and version improvements are part of the annual subscription.