Open Source Stacks
In almost every project, a huge amount of time is spent on getting the components and products selected to be used to work together. Phil Windley points to possible solutions: SpikeSource and blueglue are both pre-integrated and tested Open Source software bundles. I have my doubts that one will not end up tweaking them and hitting severe problems once you step outside what their makers have selected, e.g. if you want to replace one of the components with one they do not support, but this definitely seems worth a closer look.