Vendor lock-in makes companies unable to switch suppliers without substantial costs or inconvenience. While standards bodies and an increased focus on interoperability have helped reduce the threat of application lock-in, website and web application development can still be a minefield. Often, site owners only realise the dangers of lock-in once they are trapped with rising support and maintenance costs, slow and expensive change processes, and the prospect of prohibitive costs to develop an equivalent solution from scratch.

In this white paper, Ian Barber, one of the technical consultants in Ibuildings' Professional Services delivery unit, looks at eight ideas that can help companies avoid vendor lock-in:

• Separate suppliers


• Integrate rather than extend


• Retain ownership of your data


• Retain ownership of intellectual property


• Look for mindshare


• Document the processes


• Prefer extensibility to features


• Get a second opinion

Following these guidelines, it is possible to realise the benefits of working with external suppliers without fear of lock-in.

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The main concept behind Continuous Integration, as described by Martin Fowler, is simple: "Every developer checks in their code, every day." Adopting this policy allows teams to improve the quality of the software they deliver, as well as increases the ROI of the team by reducing the cost of developing internal software.

This new white paper discusses the policies and systems that together make up Continuous Integration. It explains how Continuous Integration can allow your teams to build projects faster and cheaper, and also covers several best of breed tools for PHP-based companies to use to implement such a system.

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Every company starts with a single website or web application, but as a company's online presence grows, many different applications and sites are deployed. With a traditional approach of treating each of these applications as separate solutions, a number of problems occur:

• Inconsistencies in common functionality
• High maintenance costs
• Long time-to-market

Service APIs can help you reuse a set of common functionality, which is implemented only once into the service layer. They can also help integrate third party applications in a consistent and robust way, and work around possible performance limitations.

This new white paper, written by Ivo Jansch, explains the steps required to successfully migrate to a service API, from functional analysis all the way to documentation. It gives examples of common problems in the media and travel industries which can be solved with a service layer solution.

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