Prospect City - Systems Architecture

TESTIMONIALS

"I have installed, secured, and maintained Linux, Windows NT and OpenBSD in highly secure environments. OpenBSD is absolutely rock solid and there are no known "remote" vulnerabilities. I would feel perfectly happy to have one of my [novice] interns do a basic OpenBSD install on a PC (no extra security work after the install) and then put the company's crown jewels on that machine and then walk away for a year. I know full well that machine won't crash, be broken into or be in need of an OS upgrade. You can't say that about NT or Linux."

" I looked at many security products. In the end, it came down to "secure and stable" that took the prize. OpenBSD was installed. Since then, I've run it on everything from production servers to laptops. We've never (repeat: NEVER) had a break-in."

"A co-worker setup a RedHat based box to test his skills at setting up SSL and a secure web site. It was hacked literally overnight, and by the next morning was attacking other sites. Our OpenBSD servers were probed and then left alone."

"OpenBSD is the most secure operating system our company has ever used. With all of our products, OpenBSD has allowed us to focus on our customers instead of tweaking the OS to make it secure. Internally we use OpenBSD for everything imaginable. With its rock solid performance, we never have to worry about a file server, proxy server or application server crashing."

"It is impossible not to notice Ruby on Rails. It has had a huge effect both in
and outside the Ruby community..."

" Rails has become a standard to which well-established tools are comparing themselves to."

"Rails is the most well-thought web web development framework I've ever used. That's over a decade of creating web applications. I've built my own frameworks, helped develop the Servlet API and have created dozens of web servers from scratch. Nobody has done it like this before."

"Rails is not your run-of-the-mill, proof-of-concept web framework. It is the next level in web programming and the developers who use it will make web applications faster and better; single developers can be as productive as whole teams. I believe that there hasn’t been an improvement in productivity like this in recent programming history."

"To explain Ruby on Rails, I could say it is a highly integrated model-view-controller web application framework. That would be like saying a Ferrari is a 4 wheeled internal combustion vehicle: true, but misses whole the point. It's amazing."

"Ruby on Rails is astounding. Using it is like watching a kung-fu movie, where a dozen powerful frameworks prepare to beat up the little newcomer only to be handed their asses in a variety of imaginative ways."

Our Technology Platform

Open Source Technology

Our operating systems and code are based solely on open source technology. Open source is a set of principles and practices on how to write software, the most important of which is that the source code is openly available.

Why Open Source?

This development approach has helped produce the most reliable, high quality software quickly and inexpensively. It offers the potential for a more flexible technology and quicker innovation.

Reliability

It is more reliable since it typically has thousands of independent programmers testing and fixing bugs of the software. Most closed-source technology is commercially driven and therefore requires that bugs and fixes be held and grouped for periodic release, often leading to long delays for the customer. Open source technology can be fixed and tested immediately, without the constraints of a large commercial effort.

Flexibility

Open source is flexible because modular systems allow programmers to build custom interfaces, or add new capabilities and it's innovative because open source programs are the product of collaboration among a large number of independent programmers. The mix of divergent perspectives, corporate objectives, and personal goals speeds up innovation.

Security

Open source software is developed in accord with purely technical requirements, so it does not require its creators to think about commercial pressure that often degrades the quality of the software. Commercial pressures make the traditional software developer pay more attention to marketing requirements than to security requirements, since such features are somewhat invisible to the general market.

What Open Source Software Do We Use?

OpenBSD Family
OpenBSD is widely known for the developers' insistence on open source code and quality documentation; uncompromising position on software licensing; and a focus first on security and code correctness. OpenBSD includes a number of security features absent or optional in other operating systems and has a tradition of developers auditing the source code for software bugs and security problems. OpenBSD's security enhancements, built-in cryptography and the pf firewall suit it for use in the security industry, particularly for firewalls, intrusion-detection systems and VPN gateways. It is also commonly used for servers which must resist cracking and DoS attacks, and due to including the spamd daemon, it sometimes is used in mail filtering applications.

Ruby on Rails
Ruby has been popularly known as object-oriented general purpose programming and scripting language since 1995. Ruby is innovative and commonly used in many sectors including artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning programs. Written in a simple syntax, Ruby is easy to create, maintain, and edit.

Ruby on Rails has grown as the most reliable web development framework, making the task of development simpler and more fun too. Ruby on Rails has had a remarkable impact in the presence of various web application frame works. The credit goes to the conversion from a tiresome job of a typical developer to one that’s focused on functionlity and real results.

Asterisk
Asterisk is the world's leading open source PBX, telephony engine, and telephony applications toolkit. Offering flexibility unheard of in the world of proprietary communications, Asterisk empowers developers and integrators to create advanced communication solutions. Asterisk is the most popular open source software available, with the Asterisk Community being the top influencer in VoIP. Asterisk runs on a wide variety of operating systems including Linux, Mac OS X, OpenBSD, FreeBSD and Sun Solaris and provides all of the features you expect from a traditional PBX including the advanced features that are often associated with a high cost proprietary PBX.

Is Open Source Technology Proven?

Open source technology is a growing trend among companies of all sizes. While small and mid-size companies have the highest use of open source technology, every Fortune 500 company has some open source components - not because of cost but because of the reliability, stability and security it offers. If you have any reservations about open source technology we recommend that you source your contacts in IT.

Related links