As the end of the year 2012 is less than two months away, enterprise decision makers are evaluating year-end moves that can help step up in 2013 with a strong start. It’s no secret that year-end strategies have a significant impact on what enterprises want to achieve in the next year. A new IT investment is central to scale-up your sustainable solutions; focusing on Open Source solutions can be a competitive differentiator for IT departments. Given the current trend, Open Source software’s customization ability, scalability and stability are a major attraction amongst enterprises.
However, one factor that enterprises strive for is Innovation, while improving operational efficiency and decreasing costs. In fact, enterprises consider innovation a major engine to boost productivity and gain a competitive edge. In terms of innovation, cost and quality, Open Source Software checks all these boxes, emphatically.
In almost every vertical, the adoption of Open Source software is on the rise and growing unprecedentedly. The top motivational factors for adopters have been Freedom from VENDOR lock-In, Lowering Costs and Increasing Quality.
Freedom from vendor lock-in: Vendor lock-in, also known as proprietary lock-in or customer lock-in, makes a customer dependent on supplier or vendor for their certain products and services. If you wish to change over to another vendor, major migration costs ensue, resulting in vendor monopoly. In case of Open Source Software (OSS,) you are not confined…always have ‘freedom’ from such lock-ins. In Future of Open Source 2012 survey, a full 60 percent of respondents identified freedom from vendor lock-in as the top motivating factor that makes OSS attractive.
Lower maintenance cost: In terms of security, Open Source Software is the clear winner. For example Linux is much more secure than Windows. In addition, Open Source Software empowers you to customize the software without depending on the supplier. Thus maintenance cost is quite low. Developers skilled in LAMP stack are more cost effective than proprietary developer rates. According to the survey of Future of Open Source 2012, 51 percent of respondents believed that lower acquisition and maintenance costs are other top factors for OSS adoption.
Better Quality: An Open Source Software is backed by many developers across the globe, thus evolves faster from a maturation standpoint and provides better quality and higher reliability. Such software are frequently developed, released and are extensively reviewed.
"By 2012, 80 per cent of all commercial software will include elements of open-source technology," Gartner wrote in a report. "Many open-source technologies are mature, stable and well supported. They provide significant opportunities for vendors and users to lower their total cost of ownership and increase returns on investment. Ignoring this will put companies at a serious competitive disadvantage. Embedded open-source strategies will become the minimal level of investment that most large software vendors will find necessary to maintain competitive advantages during the next five years."
And, what about Innovation?
Wondering? Is the Open Source innovation on the cutting edge? Yes, it is. There is so much innovation happening on many Open Source Projects. Openoffice.org is a good example. With its community-based approach, a lot of innovation is materializing around projects such as Linux (OS), Ubuntu, Mozilla (web browser), Apache, MySQL, Drupal (CMS), Open Source CRM (SugarCRM) and Android. If you go through the Java space today, all of the innovative projects are Open Source, in essence.
In addition, the role of Open Source in today’s biggest IT trends like Mobile, Social Networking, Big Data and Cloud computing has been phenomenal. Big data is on the rise and Hadoop, HBase and mongoDB are trending up so quickly for last couple of years.
Many enterprises are putting major focus in the adoption of Open Source technology;healthcare industries, finance world, plus agencies across federal, state, and local governments have adopted Open Source software for a broad range of solutions.
Moreover, the pool of major market leaders who are bringing innovative solutions to market using Open Source technology is quite strong. Google, IBM, Acquia, Enterprise DB, Ntando to name a few, how they are aggressively involved in OSS projects. Even, we can’t ignore Microsoft and Yahoo!’s love for Open Source. As an example, StudioNow proved that it is possible to build a successful technology business using Open Source software. In fact, StudioNow was so successful that AOL bought the company for US$36.5 million.
Above all, how we can forget the power of the community. The Open Source community is growing at exceptional speed; there is community involved in most Open Source projects, resulting in more innovation and security to the Open Source projects.
So, the bottom line is that Open Source is at a turning point and there are various reasons OSS is good for business.
However, there is often a combination of ‘pull’ and ‘push’ influence in terms of how your business is going to adopt, utilize and benefit from OSS. A wrong approach can impact your investments and mission-critical goals. Due to the evolution of Open Source sphere, it has made life much easier not only to global leaders but also for SMEs to tackle the question of customization ability, scalability and stability of IT solutions with controlled cost.
As a decision maker, you have a lot to consider as the year-end approaches. If you would like to discuss these matters further or need consultancy on Open Source software adoption, we the Open Source People are just a call away.
OSSCube has a proven track record of building mobile apps, designing architecture roadmap for mission critical & large applications for a number of Fortune 100 to startup organizations. We create big data architecture utilizing Hadoop that is extensible, high performing and integrated with other Information Systems. We also help our customers unlock the business value of Open Source through custom implementation of leading Open Source products including SugarCRM, Drupal (CMS), Magento, ProcessMaker (BPM/Workflow) to name a few.
Tags:
open source