A risky bet on open source under a tight deadline pays off big for a new airline CIO Bill Maguire knows how open source technology can give flight to a startup. He joined fledgling airline Virgin America before it even had planes in the air in early 2006, with the mission to quickly and cheaply create an entire IT infrastructure and Web site to handle online ticket sales by the summer of 2007. Pulling off this feat would be something short of a miracle. That’s when Maguire turned to open source technology, impressed with its natural affordability and speed to market. “Open source is a huge time-saver,” he says. “People have worked on it to make it better. It’s optimized for performance. And it saves a considerable amount of money in software licensing and maintenance.”Pulling off this feat would be something short of a miracle. That’s when Maguire turned to open source technology , impressed with its natural affordability and speed to market. “Open source is a huge time-saver,” he says. “People have worked on it to make it better. It’s optimized for performance. And it saves a considerable amount of money in software licensing and maintenance.”[ Discover what insights you can take advantage of from the other 2008 InfoWorld CTO 25 winners. ] Maguire hired two “open source geniuses” to build the airline’s Web site using Tomcat, Apache, AJAX, Ultra Monkey and other open source tools. In areas where open source wasn’t mature, such as the critical reservations system, Maguire went with existing applications. Or in cases where he wasn’t familiar with the particular open source technology, such as the Knowledge Tree Web-based document management solution, Maguire rigorously tested it.Maguire was able to install open source software in only a couple of days instead of weeks or months for a traditional, bulky application needing lots of configuration, training, and infrastructure. Moreover, Maguire claims his open source approach has “easily saved the company over $5 million.”Today, 80 percent of ticket sales flow through the Web site. The airline has grown from two planes to 16. Knowledge Tree handles all of the finance department’s contracts, as well as HR documents. “Everything has been very stable and scaling appropriately,” Maguire says. Most IT execs would not have bet the company on open source; they’d have taken a more conservative route using proven and expensive technology. Even Maguire admits he’s willing to push the envelope. But Virgin America’s ambitious plans demanded aggressive action. In this case, it worked: Maguire says he hit his deadline thanks to open source.[ Find out which development library is best for your needs in InfoWorld’s product reviews: “Inside open source AJAX toolkits” ]Maguire’s bold decision to embrace open source is reflected in how he views technology as a business enabler — a view he learned early on. While working at a datacenter for the U.S. Postal Service, Maguire was given a career-changing educational opportunity: One summer, his boss sent him to study at MIT’s Center for Information Systems Research. “I had always felt technology was cool,” Maguire says. “But I came away from there with a sense of how to make it effective for business — and how to really push it.” Careers