OpenDJ vs OUD - Which do you need?

An old Sun DSEE Customer asked me whether they should go for OUD or OpenDJ. 

I showed them the following comparison.

Immediately, they jumped into the conclusion that they should go for OUD. Hang on!


I asked Customer the following questions and this is the response I got.

There you are … most customers only need Core Directory Service and at most, Proxy Directory Service. There's really not much demand for Virtual Directory Service (at least for this region).

Next, I shared with them the state of most Identity Products Today. See slides here - Open Identity Stack.

From my understanding, all 3 components in OpenDJ (Core, Proxy, Virtual) are/will be built from scratch and complement one another. They are built to work as a seamless stack. They are not acquired and then magically plug-and-play to sell as a bundle.

I pointed a very important fact to Customer.

I said it multiple times in my blog before. Here they are:
0. OpenDJ Roadmap
1. ForgeRock Customer Support Services
2. Commercial Open Source from ForgeRock

Now, it is also important to note that key team members from OpenDS projects are now in ForgeRock. They include Ludovic Poitou (OpenDJ Product Manager) and Matthew Swift (Chief Architect, OpenDJ).


The next thing I asked Customer to consider is cost.

Is there a way to pay less if one only needs the Core Directory Service?

Some products are sold as a bundle. You need to pay the price for the bundle, regardless of whether or not you need all the products within the bundle. Take it or leave it.


By the way, before I left,  I referred Customer to this success story which was implemented 2 years ago when OpenDJ was only at version 2.4.

3 data-centers (and different sites), and over 2.5 Million entries. Yes, it's a fact!


OpenDJ is now at 2.6.0 and so much better, with a long list of new features.


The choice is yours...


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