Over the past several years, the LAMP stack of open source software components - Linux; the Apache Web server; MySQL database; and the coder's choice of PHP, Python or Perl - has moved beyond its position as a web designers creative toolkit to become a major website development platform for the enterprise. Long a cornerstone of the Web's highest volume websites (including Amazon, Friendster, Google and Yahoo), LAMP has more recently been used to create major online transactional systems for Boeing, Disney, Lufthansa and Sabre, to name only a few organizations.

What these online businesses have discovered is that open source software now offers the simplest, fastest, most flexible, affordable and scalable platform for building and deploying website based, enterprise-class applications. It's a major shift in the software landscape with implications for anyone concerned with the cost, functionality and performance of enterprise applications.