These preconfigured, integrated application-infrastructure stacks have proved extremely valuable for the enterprise. The time required to deploy a working LAMP stack is minuscule compared with what it takes for enterprise platform competitors BEA Systems, IBM and Oracle. Products from those players generally require hours of additional configuration to integrate the Web server and databases needed for a fully functional application infrastructure. With the stack, integration is painless because the work is already done.
But stacks improve more than just integration between infrastructure components. These JavaEE-based environments often use scripting languages (Perl, PHP, Python, Rails) to front-end applications, rather than JSP or Java. So though it's still a J2EE stack, it's not all Java. These options are great for the enterprise because they make it easier to deliver applications that separate the interface and the business logic--something Java doesn't do very well. This separation is necessary for enterprises to move into the SOA world and begin delivering truly agile applications that can be modified without requiring lengthy development cycles.
Preintegrated stacks provide value for the enterprise by reducing initial and ongoing costs for integration and maintenance. At the same time, they let independent software vendors build lower-cost, easily deployable packaged applications. Rather than requiring BEA's WebLogic or IBM's WebSphere, applications based on open-source stacks can be installed and deployed in hours.
Further, these stacks are competing more with Microsoft than against one another, as Microsoft's infrastructure has always offered ease of integration among products in the stack and simplified deployment of applications.
Not convinced? Even BEA is moving toward a stack mentality, in its own way. This year, VMware partnered with BEA and Red Hat and came up with a "virtualized" appliance for deploying a complete BEA stack on Red Hat Linux, quickly. It's a prebuilt, integrated stack in a virtualized environment. You don't get much trendier than that.
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