Embracing Open Source and Free Software

What would be your reaction to the growing popularity of Open Source and free software? Would you ignore it like another passing fad, or would you take it seriously enough to at least take a quick glance at it?
Open Source and free software needs no introduction in Indian organizations. The ratio of organizations using it versus those who are using it stood at nearly 70:30. Further, Open Source based email solutions tops the charts in current usage amongst the organizations we surveyed, as 43% of them were already using it. Next in line are databases and Internet gateways at 30 and 27%. Surprisingly, Linux on desktops seems to have gained momentum, with 25% of the respondents already using it.
Future adoption of Open Source also looks very promising, with 72% of the respondents saying they're actively considering deploying the same in the near future. Interestingly, 44% of them said that they're planning to deploy Open Source based network monitoring and management solutions in the near future. If you're also one of them, then you should definitely try our network management and security appliance
Even more interesting is the fact that another 39% were planning to deploy Linux on desktops. This is very interesting, considering that Linux at the desktop was not a very popular choice in the recent past. Email solutions stood at third place, followed by Internet gateway/proxy, firewall, database, and even unified communication. The interest in deploying business specific Open Source solutions like ERP/CRM, or collaboration, etc is still lower as compared to infrastructure related tools.
If you're also planning to delve into Open Source software, then it's important to understand the key benefits and challenges you're likely to face on this path. Today, another advantage is that you can look at Open Source solutions for more than basic infrastructure requirements. Many business applications also exist in the Open Source world, but in order to consider those, a number of things need to be kept in mind.
Betting your business critical apps to run on Open Source
Would you bet your business critical apps to run on Open Source as easily as you would on closed source? This is a pertinent question to ask today, because of the plethora of business critical applications available in the Open Source world. For instance, I did a small search on sourceforge.net and found that there were 600+ ERP and CRM projects each available for download. I say projects because not all of them would be fully working ERP solutions. Many would be at various stages of development. Likewise, there are projects for business intelligence, data warehousing, workflow, project management, and much more.
Given so much choice, and all of it freely downloadable, you'd think that organizations would be falling over each other to try them all out. However, the responses from the industry is mixed on the subject. Almost 60% of them said that they would not bet their business critical apps to run on Open Source as easily as they would on a closed source application. The primary reason that emerged for the same-support. Most organizations were quite wary of the kind of support that would be available for Open Source based apps. Security, reliability, and interoperability were some of the other reasons for not using Open Source for business critical apps.
Moving to the other side, there are quite a few organizations successfully running Open Source based business critical apps. To make it all happen, a number of things are required. One of course is to get committed support from a vendor, and that too over a long period of time. Today, some of the leading and well known vendors offer support for Open Source apps. The thing to check is whether the vendor would be able to offer the support across all your office locations. Second of course is to ensure that you get regular upgrades and updates for the software.
Lastly, irrespective of whether you choose an Open Source or a closed source business application, you will have to pay for the support.
Understand the benefits
Before taking the plunge into any technology, it's important to weigh its pros and cons. The biggest pro or benefit of Open Source software is the price advantage you get from using it. Indeed, lots of Open Source applications are freely downloadable, so you do save some cost there. However, that's not the only cost you incur over an application's lifecycle. You would need to pay somebody to deploy and maintain it, which could be an implementation and support partner or an in house team. You would need to study your existing setup and see how well does it integrate. If you're already using a commercial ERP solution for instance, and deploy an Open Source CRM package, then you would need to see how well do they integrate. Otherwise, there will be administrative overheads such as duplicate user names and databases. There would be other overheads like patches and regular updates of the application. You might also occasionally require some troubleshooting of the application, for which you would need to fix an SLA with your support partner.
Incidentally, all these cost heads also need to be considered when deploying a closed source, commercial application. So the bottom line is that you need to compare both types of applications on all these grounds before taking a final call.
Free access to the source code is another big benefit of Open Source software. This is indeed a true benefit of using an Open Source application, but many organizations wouldn't worry about it too much. At the end of the day, you're worried about having an application up and running quickly for your business, and not about tweaking its source code, compiling and then using it. Not every organization has the required resources to go down to that level. But there are many who have access to such resources, be it a full-fledged development team or a few internal champions. Some organizations have developed complete information systems using Open Source software, while others have tweaked existing products to interact with the modules of another program.
Know the key challenges
Surprisingly, though Open Source has been around for years, the biggest challenge still faced by most CIOs continues to be difficulty in finding support for it. Thirty five of the respondents to our survey confirmed this. In fact, on a scale of 1 to 5 (see graph) for difficulty in finding support for Open Source, the responses were skewed towards 3 and beyond. There are many sources of support available for Open Source software, in which the web serves as the biggest one, followed by having a support partner and an internal team. Speaking of issues on support, Open Source is perhaps the only platform on which you could reach out directly to the creator of the software for support. But then, it seems that nothing beats having a support engineer come directly from the company or a partner to resolve your queries.
The second biggest issue is interoperability with other platforms. This also seems to be changing gradually because today, there are solutions available to integrate different platforms together.The Fedora Directory Services for instance, allows you to provide centralized authentication between multiple applications. Likewise, in Windows, you'll find many tools to ease interoperability. There are tools that allow you to run one platform's software on another. We've covered many of them in our previous issues.
The other key challenges in Open Source world are confusion between what's free and what's not, reliability, and difficulty in installing and configuring Open Source software. Thankfully, most of this is being addressed by the Open Source community. Take virtual appliances for instance. They ease installation and configuration problems. Open Source licenses of course, are still very confusing.