Currently, it is rare that an organization faces a choice between "just commercial" or "just open source" geospatial software. Increasingly, the answer isn't about "or", it is now about solutions that may involve both. Indeed, Commercial systems - both installed software and cloud-based platforms - may have both functional and cost effectiveness gaps. Free and open source software for geospatial (FOSS4G) can be a critical component that helps to bridge these gaps. And, given that organizations may have large existing investments and sunk costs in commercial software it can make sense to leverage those investments by building hybrid systems that incorporate open source components. This presentation will describe several specific examples of hybrid systems that incorporate geospatial open source (e.g., OpenGeo Suite) alongside both Esri and Google components. The presentation will focus on both the business reasoning for choosing hybrid as well as the technical approaches taken. Ultimately, hybrid projects or systems can be very important as they provide a key entry-point for geospatial open source into organizations that might not otherwise consider it.
