Reasons to choose OpenRate
It is "Commercial Open Source"
"Commercial Open Source" is the second generation of Open Source software, which combines the advantages of Open Source software (rapid development, active user participation, transparency, openness, honesty, flexibility) with the advantages of traditional "proprietary" software (support, limitation of risk, business focus, commitment to further development). OpenRate is supported by a professional, highly experienced organisation, which has been directly involved in the consultancy and support business in the telecommunications billing sector for more than 10 years, working day to day providing the highest level advice and services to our customers.
In simple terms, "Commercial Open Source" is the expression that the "geek" open source software movement has now come of age, and that real businesses are starting to place significant investment into the Open Source movement, giving you the guarantees that Open Source software is able to tackle the tough business problems that you face, probably better than proprietary software could.
- The people behind Commercial Open Source are business people, interested in building and maintaining mutually advantageous relationships
- The organisation behind OpenRate has been in business for many years, providing services to tier 1 clients
- The software adheres to some fundamental standards concerning quality, release cycles, committment to resolving inherent problems
- The software is guided according to architectural standards, and not likely to be "hijacked" on a coder or arganisation's whim
It is high quality software
We are completely open and honest about what OpenRate can do and what it cannot do. It would be foolish of us to push "vapourware", as every single line of code in the product is open for you to see and evaluate. We hope that you do take a look at the code - we are extremely proud of the structure and cleanliness of the code and the architecture. These are the things that separate the quality products from the poor ones, and we would like you to convince yourself that OpenRate is high quality from the code up.
It is Free
You can download and use OpenRate for free, so you can focus your budget on real-value services, such as customisation and support. OpenRate is free from license encumberence as well - it is not GPL and never will be. If you have the need to do something that is not supported by GPL (such as provide a closed product), this is perfectly possible with OpenRate.
It is Flexible
OpenRate is based on a cunning plug in architecture. This enables you to both include Plug Ins from a vast palette of ready made input/output and processing module, and also to create new modules themselves with little effort, by using a clever system we call "stacks", which cover certain groups of processing tasks. Generally, to create a new module, you have to simply pick an existing stack that does something similar, and then replace the upper layers of the stack with your custom business logic. All of the framework level operations that you don't need to change (e.g. moving records, or transaction management) are inherited from the stack.
Creating a new plug in usually takes 2-3 hours. Creating a complete implementation of a rating pipeline usually takes less than 5 days.
It is fast
OpenRate is high performance, even on modest hardware. We generally aim to process 5000-20000 events per second when processing files, and 1000-2000 events per second when processing databases. Note that these speeds are limited by the device that we are reading from and writing to, not the processing itself.
OpenRate also takes only a few seconds to start, even though ti has been designed as an "always on" system.
It is manageable
OpenRate comes with a fully featured management interface, which allows you to monitor and control the processing, in real time, without stopping the system. The management interface can be used via Telnet, a simple socket based protocol, or using a management GUI.