Like many people, we are big fans of Open Source Software (OSS) here in the Replify office. One of the greatest successes of OSS has be the Linux operating system. Not only does it have all the typical benefits of OSS. It’s also one of the most popular, secure and performant server operating systems out there. Validation of this can be seen by its use on up to 66% of public servers on the internet. (see https://w3techs.com/technologies/overview/operating_system/all) Those are some of the reasons why we’ve always deployed the Replify Accelerator Virtual Appliance on Linux.

It’s not just Linux alone that Replify takes advantage of. A myriad of other open source technologies are also used to provide a wide range of functions within the product. Popular software we use includes Erlang (the runtime most of the product executes on), GCC (the compiler most of the product is built with), Perl (the language that acts as a glue between the runtime and OS). If we didn’t have these then we’d need to put much more time and money into developing a product of the same calibre. Importantly, because these technologies are open source, they benefit from the skills of many developers, teams, and end user testers over a long period of time to make them the best at what they do.

Many product vendors see slow networks affecting their product’s performance and damaging user perception. The core of the product may not be about WAN optimization and that might not be part of the company’s skill-set to improve.

This is where Replify comes in. Our OEM model allows partners to embed our optimization engine inside their own product, allowing them to achieve faster time-to-market and deliver a product that performs as the company intends over slow and congested WAN links.

While it would be great to be able to say that Replify is Open Source, our investors and employees might think differently. However, our OEM partners do get many of the same benefits.

Ability to extend code

Our OEM partners can obtain relevant sections of our source code.  They can modify this, tweak it, extend it, re-package it etc, all independently of Replify.  However we’re always on hand to help if you need access to our expertise.

Security

Through our partners, we have some fairly large deployments in some important places.  Our partners often carry out security assessments and penetration testing on Replify Accelerator.  We look forward to these as they validate the good work we are doing.

Flexibility

Because our product is built on top of open source technology, this means that we inherit a lot of the flexibility of an open source product.  e.g. You want to deploy on a platform that isn’t Debian Linux.  That’s fine, we can port our technology and it’s dependencies to a wide range of platforms.  e.g. Other Linux distros, other architectures, even other OSes such as Raspian, Pfsense etc.

You want to integrate with Squid, Syslog, SNMP etc, that’s also fine.  They have easy to use APIs.

Stability

Because we have a close relationship with all our partners, many of whom are very technically savvy, we are able to benefit from their experiences, take their feedback on board and fix issues that they identify before they become an issue for customers.

We apply all these changes to our main code stream.  This means that all our partners and their customers can indirectly benefit from each others’ expertise.

Cost

Yes, we aren’t free, but we’re much cheaper and easier to work with than the other commercial alternatives.

However there is an upside here. Our OEM partners are among a select group of people who can access our product in this way.  If we were open source, your ROI may well be less because having a WAN optimization capability wouldn’t allow you to command such a premium when charging for your own product.

If you want to find out more about our OEM model and how it could enhance your own offering, please contact sales@replify.com