Chief among these open-source programmes is Linux, now a real alternative to Microsoft Windows for server computers (and one that even runs on a few aficionados' desktop computers).

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Incidents, like attempts to hack into a database server, show up in real-time rather than weeks later.

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Technologies like Splunk were built to help IT staff search and summarize machine data, but with just a small amount of enhancement web server log data can track in real time the flow of customers through pages, the products that are going into shopping carts, and the rate of transactions.

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Online toolkits like Google Apps and Six Apart still seem more like gimmicks than real competitors to Microsoft Office today, but as server farms grow and become more efficient, the browser will evolve into the world's workspace.

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Most real world business applications are developed on and for windows, both on the server and client side.

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Web server logs can tell which URLs are resulting in 404s but it can also show in real time which items are going into online shopping carts, which items are being purchased, and which are being abandoned.

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The fourth tier is an Edge Server that brings in contextual data, tracks and analyzes interactions through APIs, provides caching, and supports real time analytics to operationalize all available signals.

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