CIOs Looking At OSS

bigmouth_strikes writes "There is an interesting article entitled "Your open source plan" in the latest issue of CIO. The article is about opens source software and its place in the enterprise systems market and the article shows the change in attitude over the last few years. OSS is being considered in most large corporations and CIOs are seriously looking into alternatives to expensive proprietary software and Microsoft's licensing schemes. The magazine and the article itself are intended for executives, so the technical aspect is at a beginners level."

Comments

How many CIOs own Microsoft stock?

[Greg151]

I have always wanted CIO's to disclose their ownership in MS or other tech companies prior to making purchases of technology. This would keep them honest brokers to the board of directors and the stockholders in the company. They need to know if their decisions are based in a conflict of interest. ( However, if enough of the stockholders or board members are also owners of MS, they might try swaying the CIO that direction.)

Audience

[king_ramen]

"The magazine and the article itself are intended for executives, so the technical aspect is at a beginners level."

Is this to say CIO's are not techincal? Any CIO who is worth his / her salt should be able to understand technological issues at a profound level.

Is yours?

Here it comes...

[Bonker]

Sayeth the Article:

Free is good. CIOs who don't come to terms with this revolution in 2003 will be paying too much for IT in 2004.

Just like the music industry is in the middle of crumbling, the pay-for software industry is also about to start the long downward slide into irrelevance. IBM and a few other big corps know it's coming and are preparing. They're already well into the conversion to selling their services in association with the software rather than the software itself.

This means that the last hurdle, the hurdle that both Microsoft and OSS developers need to look at most closely, is desktop productivity apps.

Does OpenOffice compare to OfficeXP or Office2003? How about Outlook? Can OSS build a mail client/PIM that plays well with Exchange servers? Can OSS build a layer to confuse Outlook into beleiving that an LDAP server is really an Exchange server?

It's going to be an interesting few years as the software markets begin to shift.

Actual News...

[MosesJones]

My god an actual proper article on OSS and how it is winning. THIS is also to everyone out there who pushes MySQL and its ilk. These are the people who need to be convinced and this lays down HOW they need to be convinced.

These people don't care about this cool feature or that cool feature, its TCO that concerns them, so cheap today != cheap tommorow.

Unlike most OSS is winning articles I've read recently this actually approaches it from the right side... the money men. If the CIO commisions a system on OSS that is great, if next time he specifies OSS then it really has made it. Until its the default with these people however its not the major player.

A danger

[forgoil]

OSS (or more exactly in this case, the linux distributions) are not just a great bargin at a low price, there are also the cost of upgrades and maintenance. There is nothing that says that a company can upgrade to the newest versions of everything all the time, and who supplies fixes to a large set of dated versions?

This is one, of many questions, that needs to be answered before "Free software"/OSS can be used problem free in any commercial environment. I am sure I will be shot down quickly, but I rather see these issuses taken care of than starting yet another flamewar.

On a slightly related note. I would hope that all companies that saves a bundle on free software could set aside a part of their profit and donate it to the projects behind their software. OSS/Linux/etc needs more people who work with it for a living after all.

Gartner Group is at it again

[plover]

Of course, the magazine has to get the opinion of the Gartner Group. Here's what V.P. In-Charge-Of-Shilling-For-Microsoft George Weiss has to say: "[Companies want to know], 'Where will Linux be a year from now, or two or three years from now? And who can guarantee that for us?'" Weiss says.

I think that's exactly what's wrong with the Microsoft world. Why does it have to "go somewhere"? Do we need Linux.NET? Linux COM+? Linux ActiveX? Linux MTS? How about a stable platform, that doesn't shift like sand beneath our applications? How about the promise of a platform that remains constant as expected?

Re:Gartner Group is at it again

[Zathrus]

It has to go somewhere because going nowhere is called dying. If you don't move forward you will be left behind by your competition as they continue to innovate, refine, and improve.

And while I disagre with what Mr. Weiss said (there are several companies or groups that can tell you where Linux is going -- but probably only one or two (Redhat and IBM) can express it in a way that a C?O would grok), it is a valid question to ask.

Constant as expected? So you're saying there are absolutely zero bugs or security holes in Linux right now? And that it has everything you could possibly want, so there's no reason to continue development on it, right? Guess we better tell the Kernel devs, GCC devs, KDE/Gnome peeps, and XFree86 group that they need to find something else to do now because it's "perfect".

Get real. Companies want a stable, well supported platform but they also want to know where it's going -- because it's freaking expensive to change platforms. Companies want to know that the platform they chose right now will be supported for a decade, and that it'll be the platform they chose again in a decade. And don't say "well, you have the source! You can make it do whatever you want!". Yeah. Right. It's a smart business plan to move away from your core competencies and spend resources on something like that.

You shall be assimilated

[Montgomery Burns III]

Interesting article. I had a chuckle at the comment about a lack of strength on the lack of "big Enterprise strength applications" with OSS. How silly. I have used some of these Big applications like ERP, and they stink. How could OSS be worse? I can see only opportunities for improvements.

The OSS business plan.

[Dthoma]

1. Produce high quality software and sell it for a reasonable price.

2. Treat your customers with respect.

3. Profit!

The recession is open source's best friend

[mrneutron]

With ever-tightening budgets, open source is getting a firmhold in many companies that would have bought closed source retail software during the fat budget years.

I've had a number of open source-based projects greenlighted (intrusion detection, vulnerability scanners, virus/spam blocking SMTP gateways, etc.) that would not have been approved if we had to pay large operating system or software licensing fees.

Re:from the article (side bar 3)

[WildThing]

The mysterious people designing open-source software are the same people who are working for you right now

It should have read - The mysterious people designing open-source software are the same people who used to work for you until you laied them off in your stupid cut-backs to artificially increase your bottom line.

Most companies aren't asking the right questions

[ajs]

Ok, first, deciding to use Open Source software is a non-descision. You should be using the software that best suits your needs in terms of cost/benefit. If that's Red Hat Linux, then fine. If it's MacOS/X, fine. If it's Windows XP, fine.

What you really need to be asking is, how can participating in Open Source help my business? As an example, it's been said many times, but bear repeating: most of the lines of code written in the world are written for internal projects within a company and never see the light of day. Many companies don't release such code because it's a one-way operation. You release it, your competition uses it and you get nothing in return.

Now that the OSS model is blossoming, it's possible to create micro-markets for software that would otherwise never have seen the light of day. Anyone who starts this process will soon discover that there's something amazing that happens almost immediately. Code gets cleaner (the old "well if someone's going SEE this" reflex), documentation gets more extensive, people start thinking about modularity and interoperation. New ideas start moving around and soon, you're partially funding a very efficient software micro-market rather than fully funding your own in-house effort that just evolved over time as a tumor on your business.

You can now start to do things you would never had dared. You can investigate large systemic changes that would have been too costly before. Bug fixes happen faster. Software starts to be *released* in a reasonable way (heck, you might even have a reasonable handle on what features are upcoming and when to expect them).

This is the true power of OSS. Replacing your desktop or server OS is just a side-benefit.

What a good article.

[sQuEeDeN]

What a well-written article. If only all the articles on slashdot could be like that: Clear, concise, full of details, and it had links to other sub-articles for public consumption if the reader was interested. Plus, they provided loads of evidence. (also they have lots of "it worked for me" stories, probably to ease the jitters of reluctant cios.)

I'd have to say, you know the article wasn't full of BS when they said, flat out, that MCSE's don't know anything useful. Yes!! That alone showed how they were cutting it straight. Then they went to rag on VB people too, and I was gleeful. Also made me glad to see the consulting companies are letting windows-only people go. Makes me feel like I'll be able to get a job soon enough, heh.

How many CIOs subscribe to PC World?

[t0ny]

I have always wanted CIO's to disclose their ownership in MS or other tech companies prior to making purchases of technology. This would keep them honest brokers to the board of directors and the stockholders in the company. They need to know if their decisions are based in a conflict of interest. ( However, if enough of the stockholders or board members are also owners of MS, they might try swaying the CIO that direction.)

I have always wanted CIO's to disclose their subscription status to PC World and other "technology-lite" publications, as well as whether or not they watch c|net on cable, prior to their making stupid statements. This would keep everyone aware that they are technologically illiterate and obsessive jargon monkeys. They need to know if their decisions are based on something they read in an advertisment. (however, if enough stockholders or board members are also idiots, they might try to use the latest buzz word too.)

Re:How many CIOs subscribe to PC World?

[Trolling4Dollars]

You hit the nail on the head with this one. If I hear one more CIO use the word "infrastructure" without actually defining what the hell they are taling about, I'm going to go postal. I hear some of these idiots talking completely out of their asses about things they don't have any idea of. Then after they spin their web of bullshit, they ask the people who do the REAL work to "make it happen". Ten times out of ten, it all winds up being a nightmare and the CIO blames the real workers for not making his "vision" come to pass. Even though his vision couldn't be executed by God himself. That's it though... most of these guys read PC World on the shitter and then go into work the next day saying something like:

"I think we need to optimize our infrastructure by calling in consultants that can build a new architechture for us with rising profits and total lower cost of ownership! To do this we need to stick with Microsoft since they KNOW infrastructures and architectures."

Blah blah blah... stupid monkeys.

Re:Mad Hatter project is more interesting

[_Sprocket_]

How does SuSE's offering compare to Exchange when it comes to calandering? From what I've read, it seems like that kind of functionality requires the use of a web interface.

While I like the idea of a web interface if one is going to use a seperate calandaring application, it hardly compares to the integration of Outlook and Exchange.

There are plenty of good Open Source solutions for email. And Evolution is an excellent client (its my favorite). But we're still missing a good, integrated, shared calandaring solution. It may be in work now and something that'll show up in the future. But as far as I can tell, its not here yet. And that means there is no replacement for Exchange.

Management as a discpline

[swb]

Lots of managers (including two CIOs I know) argue that management is a discpline unto itself and knowing how to manage is enough; technical knowledge enough to make decisions is learned or imparted through employees or consultants.

I buy this to a certain extent, but I've also seen CIOs make horrible technology decisions because they didn't trust their own people, were misled by consultants, or just plain made decisions because they *thought* they knew. I'm pretty sure the latter is a big culprit, as are CIOs that drag in consultants who disagree with their staff and create a huge we/they problem. And then there are bottom-liners who manage to the bottom line, "trimming costs" as a sign of "good management."

I also think that an organization has to be structured in such a way that good, consultive management can work. Frequently it's not structured that way, management doesn't trust employees, employees don't trust management, and the whole process of decisionmaking gets flushed down the toilet.

I personally think that effective management requires a lot of experience in the field you're managing AND a solid management training background. Past "Experts" now in management can certainly micromanage or get into situations where they override their technical people simply because "in their day" things were done differently.