South African open source innovators awarded a Bossie

Barney Buchan

Adjudicated and presented by InfoWorld, a respected San Francisco-based digital publisher, the annual Best of Open Source Software Awards (BOSSIEs) reward excellence in design and user experience in six categories. Warewolf won in the Best Open Source Applications category. InfoWorld reaches IT decision-makers, thought leaders and professionals and averages 4.6 million page views and 1.1 million unique visitors per month.

"Being contracted to develop for Warewolf was a great opportunity for us," says Barney Buchan, CEO of Dev2. "The international award is an acknowledgement of the work our team has put into making Warewolf such a versatile and innovative software tool.

Warewolf ESB was released in open beta in February last year. It is an open-source service bus and orchestration engine built for Windows using innovatively visual and flow-based programming, says Buchan. It eliminates slow lead times caused by the need to rewrite integrations for new customers, business systems or locations. "Warewolf ESB's prebuilt tools offer a faster and more cost-effective platform," says Buchan. "It accelerates business application development by up to 400 percent."

A major element of Warewolf ESB's success is using crisp visuals instead of strings of code, he says. This allows Warewolf to bridge the gap between the IT and administrative teams within an organisation when developing business applications, from reporting or performance management software to payroll, debit order and debtor administration applications.

"After Warewolf ESB was made open source in October last year, we received great responses from developers round the world helping us fine-tune the platform," says Buchan. "Harnessing inputs from the user community through open-source development has always been a core Dev2 belief. It's like the ultimate peer review - and now that process has proved itself at a global level for Warewolf."

In his introduction to the BOSSIE recipients, InfoWorld editor-in-chief Eric Knorr agreed: "Open source has become the preferred way of germinating hot new technology." The win is also a vindication for technological development skills in South Africa, Buchan believes.

For more information visit Warewolf ESB