Radar Media Group, Inc. Announces Détente in the Web War Between Open Source and Microsoft

Winchester, MA—Radar Media Group, Inc. (formerly Radar Marketing), a fast-growing Interactive agency based outside of Boston, announced today a set of guidelines intended to help web designers choose between two competing development platforms for building interactive web sites: Microsoft’s Windows-based ASP.Net and a set of open source tools known as LAMP, an acronym for Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP. The guidelines were published just days after Microsoft revealed details of its plan to use open XML schemas in the next release of Microsoft Office.

“Web designers and developers are at crossroads today when it comes to choosing the right web platform for their work,” said Paul Pinella, President and CEO of Radar Media Group, Inc. “On the one hand, Microsoft’s dominance on the desktop and familiarity in corporate data centers is a persuasive argument to stay with an all-Microsoft approach on the web. On the other hand, the LAMP software is arguably as powerful, is well supported by thousands of programmers worldwide and is free to download and use.”

Radar Media Group, which has successfully deployed sites using both Microsoft ASP.Net and open source code over the past three years, believes both approaches are viable and will remain so for years to come. However, making the right choice before work begins is only possible after the right factors are carefully weighed.

To help other web designers and developers through this difficult decision-making process, Radar Media Group announced today availability of a free set of guidelines. Called “How to Choose Between LAMP and ASP.Net: A Web Designer’s Guide to Détente,” the guidelines are designed to help designers, developers and business people alike evaluate their project requirements and to choose the best platform for them.

“One of the biggest mistakes companies can make is to make their choice based on a pure emotional response,” said Pinella. “Radar Media’s new guidelines replace emotion with sound business planning and can be reliably used to objectively reach the right decision.”

Some of the findings highlighted in the guide include the following:

• ASP.Net is a powerful and efficient programming environment when used in sites where significant integration work is needed to tie into corporate databases. Where legacy connectivity is less of an issue, ASP.Net may be overkill.
• Most shared hosting providers charge more per month to host Windows sites than they do for Linux. In some cases, particularly where the Microsoft SQL Server database is a requirement, the monthly charges can be significantly more than Linux.
• While ASP.Net is more “object oriented” than its open source competitor, PHP, PHP is generally considered easier to grasp for Web designers new to interactive programming. The PHP international community is also larger than for ASP.Net.

“Both ASP.Net and LAMP are superb technologies that are light years ahead of what was available just a few years ago,” said Pinella. “A well-designed site will work well using either approach, and most end users will never know the difference. But web designers need to understand the strengths and tradeoffs in both approaches before beginning a new project.”

To request a copy of the guidelines in pdf format, send an email to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it and put “Web Guidelines” in the subject line of the message.

About Radar Media Group, Inc.

Radar Media Group, Inc. (http://www.radarmedia.com) is an integrated marketing communications agency focused on serving customers by combining custom content and design. It was founded in 2001 by Paul Pinella, a content and marketing veteran with over 15 years of electronic publishing experience.

Based in the Boston area, Radar Media Group's team of experienced writers, designers and producers bring years of experience to every assignment. Customers in a wide range of industries, from high tech to financial services, rely on Radar for help building their brand and for a wide range of marketing and custom publishing materials. These include customized websites, Flash-based interactive presentations, company magazines, white papers, special advertising sections and print and electronic sales collateral.

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Contact: Paul Pinella, President Radar Media Group, Inc.
Phone: 781-721-1910
Email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it