"One of the major barriers to utilizing open source software is confusion of what options are available to IT managers and the benefits that these solutions bring to the enterprise,” said Bruno von Rotz, vice president of Optaros Switzerland, as Optaros this week announced the release of its Open Source Catalogue 2007.

“The 2007 Open Source Catalogue fills this void," he continued, "delivering unbiased reviews of the growing number of current open source products that we view as being ready to transform the enterprise.”

The catalogue is compiled by Optaros’ worldwide consulting and integration organization and addresses the need for IT Managers to have a deeper understanding of current enterprise-focused open source projects and products, von Rotz added.

"The document specifically reviews 262 projects in four software categories including operating systems and infrastructure, application development, infrastructure solutions and business applications," he said.

“Open source continues to see increased adoption in the enterprise and we are extremely encouraged by this fast growing trend,” said Dave Gynn, director of enterprise tools and frameworks at Optaros. “Our goal in publishing this catalogue was to create a resource to help guide organizations looking for viable technology options.”

Currently there are in excess of 140,000 open source projects, a number of which are enterprise-ready but hard to identify from the multitude of others that are more untested concepts. Projects in Optaros’ catalogue match its enterprise-ready benchmark in terms of functionality, community backing, as well as maturity and is the result of hundreds of project reviews from over the last few years. Optaros’ consultants also conferred with communities and reviewed project structures and approach.

The catalogue is available now for download from Optaros’ Web site at www.optaros.com.

John Eckman (pictured), currently the Practice Director for Next Generation Internet at Optaros, will be answering at the upcoming AJAXWorld Conference & Expo 207 East in March the question: what's the business benefit of Rich Internet Applications?

Eckman has over a decade of experience designing and building web applications for organizations ranging from small non-profit organizations to Fortune 500 enterprises and his expertise includes user experience design, presentation-tier development, software engineering, and project management.

His talk at the East coast AJAXWorld Conference & Expo - the most comprehensive meeting on the most significant technology subjects of recent time: AJAX, Rich Internet Applications, and Web 2.0. - will show how large-scale enterprise clients from multiple industries can benefit from AJAX and related technologies.

Over 1,000 developers, architects, IT managers, and software professionals of every stripe are expected to attend. Delegates will hear first-hand from the creators, the innovators, the leaders and the early adopters of AJAX, and a slew of leading vendors will provide sneak peeks of new frameworks, tools, products and applications during the conference, which will have over 100 sessions and presentations given by 125 different speakers.

Last week SYS-CON Events announced the "charter sponsors" of AJAXWorld Conference & Expo 2007 East, which included; Laszlo Systems (Diamond Sponsor), JackBe (Platinum Sponsor), Google (Gold Sponsor), Nexaweb (Gold Sponsor), ICEsoft (Gold Sponsor), Sun Microsystems (Silver Sponsor), Parasoft (Silver Sponsor), Lightstreamer (Exhibitor Plus Sponsor),  IT Mill (Exhibitor Plus Sponsor), and FrogLogic (Exhibitor Plus Sponsor).

First International AJAXWorld Conference & Expo which took place on October 1-3, 2006 at the Santa Clara Convention Center, in Santa Clara, Calfornia was sponsored by Adobe, Amazon, Apress, Backbase, ComponentArt, Cynergy Systems, Google, Helmi Technologies, IBM, ICEsoft, ILOG, Infragistics, JackBe, Laszlo Systems, Nexaweb, OASIS, Parasoft, Sun Microsystems, telerik, TIBCO, U7 Web Technologies, Visible Measures, Zapatec; including media sponsors AJAX Matters, AJAXWorld Magazine, BZ Media, ColdFusion Developer's Journal, DevtownStation.com, Eclipse Developer's Journal, Eclipse Review, Enterprise Open Source Magazine, Integration Developer News, ITtoolbox.com, Java Developer's Journal, LinuxWorld.com, Methods & Tools, Network World, Open Enterprise Trends, Sarbanes-Oxley Compliance Journal, SD Times, Software Test & Performance, SOA Web Services Journal.