Paragent Announces Open Source

Paragent, LLC, has released an open source version of its desktop management software. Previously, the product was only available as a proprietary hosted software service.

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The Paragent IT management application, known for its sophisticated web-based interface and ease-of-use, eschews the traditional complaint of open source software being difficult to use, or only for those comfortable at the command-line. “This isn’t a half-hearted move,” said Tim Ritchey, CEO of Paragent. “The open source community is getting the same code we run on our production servers.” Paragent is hosting the open source project on Google Code at http://code.google.com/p/paragent. The open source code is available free for download by anyone.

Paragent is joining companies such as Red Hat, MySQL, Zimbra and Sun in adopting the open source model. Ritchey said he is excited about the move to open source. “We use and contribute to many open source projects within Paragent, and we have benefited from the high-quality operating systems, applications and libraries available to us. It is very satisfying to be contributing back to the open source community with the Paragent code base.

Paragent is one of the few Software as a Service (SaaS) companies pursuing an open source strategy. “We believe in the SaaS model but think the closed source providers have it wrong,” said August Zehner, vice president of sales for Paragent. “Our strategy is to provide flexibility and long-term options to our hosted customers. The value is providing hosted services that help people get their job done, not selling them a software program. By going open source, the entire Paragent community benefits.”

Established in July 2003, Paragent (www.paragent.com) is a privately held, Muncie, Indiana-based company specializing in IT management software. The company recently expanded, adding offices at the Flagship Enterprise Center. Paragent provides IT professionals with real-time, on-demand data and information about their networked computers. Information can be accessed securely from any web browser in the world. For more information, contact August Zehner at (800) 839-9625 ext. 8991.