Open source software expands from its traditional webserver
and operating system roles to provide the e-commerce application
that manages the electronic storefront.
Beverly Hills florist Floral & Hardy is migrating
their website, florist.com, to Akopia’s Interchange 4.6 open source
e-commerce software. Floral & Hardy is renowned as the
florist of choice to a number of Hollywood stars; it counts among
its clients Michael Douglas, Drew Barrymore, Joan Rivers, and
George Clooney. The florist.com website is now set to cast open
source Interchange in a starring e-commerce application role —
with open source stars Apache and OpenBSD likely to be cast in
their usual supporting roles. MySQL as the database just might
round out the open source cast.
The current florist.com website is running Apache on OpenBSD.
When contacted by phone, Larry Huffman, the Akopia system architect
who is handling the florist.com migration to Interchange, said the
decision on the operating system and webserver for the new site had
not been finalized. Huffman said it was likely, though, that they
would stay with Apache and OpenBSD.
Likewise, Huffman said, a final decision had not been made
regarding the supporting database software. The non-public staging
site where the new design is being worked out runs Red Hat 6, with
Interchange using the Akopia internal database format, GDBM. But
switching to any of the other databases that Akopia supports before
the site goes live would be simple, according to Huffman, who noted
that MySQL is the database most commonly used with Interchange.