SOUQ.com, which was founded in 2005 as an auction site linked to internet portal Maktoob before changed its model to an online shopping site in 2011, usage of open source software is an inspirational success story.
SOUQ's Chief operating officer, Wisam Daoud, revealed lately in a press conference that its own company used open source software to reduce costs and to develop its own technology rapidly.
Daoud explains that all the software at SOUQ is the company’s own property. “All our software is built in-house with no licensed software, we have our own technology teams and technology centers”, he says.
He also added, “We use a lot of open source technology with extensive customization, which allows us to be a lot agile and able to address market demands a lot more rapidly and at scale”.
Some of Open Source tools that SOUQ uses on their website are the web servers Apache and Nginx, the caching server Varnish, and the programming language PHP. Also, it uses open source technologies like jQuery and RequireJS.
SOUQ, Which becomes a 1B$ Company lately, isn't the only Middle East's e-commerce used open source software, companies like Namshee and JadoPado also chose to use this kind of software.
