A Sunny Forecast for Open-Source

Four years ago, Weather.com, the
online counterpart of The Weather Channel Interactive Inc.’s 24-hour
TV channel, relied entirely on proprietary commercial software to
serve up millions of Web pages of maps, forecasts and hour-by-hour
weather data every day.

Today, the Atlanta-based Web site serves more than 50 million pages on
stormy days, but it runs almost entirely on open-source software and
commodity hardware. And since the move to the new architecture, it has
slashed IT costs by one-third and increased Web site processing
capacity by 30%.