FireScope seeks portlet market
The company released a Software Development Kit that lets developers integrate their own software with the Firescope interface, or blend data from other applications to generate views into IT operations.
The value-add is that Firescope handles most of the layout and security work.
As with every proprietary vendor working with Linux, marketing director Ryan Counts was ready to answer the question, if you're not open source what are you doing here?
My biggest issue with using Microsoft is you take the whole thing or nothing. With Linux you can scale down to a performance-tuned installation, dedicated to your installation. For that reason, Linux and Apache were the best fit. Also with Microsoft you have a lot of clients who are just anti-Microsoft. Conversely you don’t see that many people who say they only want Microsoft. So when developing the product it made sense to focus on Linux.
Firescope ships as a piece of hardware, not as a DVD. "Once you buy it you can hot deploy. You won’t have admin access to the box, but through the interface you can upgrade it, with an auto update system," Counts said.
Firescope is also holding a contest with a $1,000 prize for the best portlet linking Firescope to a specific application. This is in preparation for next month's announcement of a portlet marketplace.
"We open the portlets’ licensing to the person who develops it," he said. "It's similar to VMWare, in that some are open and some are for a fee."