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?

Re:Audience

[digitalhermit]

I've worked at some large companies before. There's a prevailing attitude among many of the managers that "technical" knowledge should be separated completely from "business" decisions. It's not exactly that the nuts-and-bolts procedures are below them (though it can appear that way), but that they believe that efficient managers must not cloud their decisions with technical jargon. That is, business decisions are distinct from the process.

This leads to situations where a person who's relatively ignorant about technology and its merits can make decisions about the company's IT infrastructure, based only on vendors claims. So they add a layer of management below them, ostensibly to act as evaluators of technology and to report up to senior management. But shit flows downhill. Pretty soon you have middle-level, lower-level, and even *technicians* who want to abstract the nitty-gritty details.

At some point you need someone who can say, "This is shit." (Insert witty story about how this phrase becomes, "This product will aid growth and guarantee success in the market")

Re:Audience

[Spunk]

At some point you need someone who can say, "This is shit." (Insert witty story about how this phrase becomes, "This product will aid growth and guarantee success in the market")

Copy located at http://www.fortunecity.com/campus/books/845/shitha p.htm

How shit happens

In the Beginning was the plan.
And then came the assumptions.
And the assumptions were without form.
And the plan was completely without substance.
And the darkness was upon the face of the workers. And they spoke among themselves saying: "It is a crock of sh_t, and it stinketh."

And the workers went unto their supervisors, and sayeth: "It is a pail of dung, and none can abide the odor Thereof"

And the supervisors went unto their managers and sayeth unto them, "It is a container of excrement, and it is very strong, Such that none can abide it."

And the managers went unto the directors and sayeth, "It is a vessel of fertilizer, and none can abide its strength." And the directors spoke amongst themselves, saying one to another: "It contains that which aids plant growth, and is very strong."

And the directors went unto the vice presidents and sayeth to them, "It promotes growth, and is very powerful."

And the vice presidents went unto the president, and sayeth unto him, "This new plan will actively promote growth and efficiency of this company, and certain areas in particular."

And the president looked upon the plan, and saw that it was good.
And the plan became policy.
And this is how shit happens.

OSS in my workplace

[Giant Ape Skeleton]

Speaking from personal experience, every project I have been involved with for my employer over the past year has been either partially or (in most cases) completely built on Open Source applications.

And the inperative to go OSS has come, surprisingly, not from us admins and developers, but from tech-savvy Management types, who understand the value of OSS and can read the coding on the wall :-)

It reminds me the Hello World joke...

[borgdows]

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

*** High School/Jr.High

10 PRINT "HELLO WORLD"
20 END

*** New professional

#include

void main(void)
{
char *message[] = {"Hello ", "World"};
int i;
for(i = 0; i
#include
main()
{
char *tmp;
int i=0; /* on y va bourin */
tmp=(char *)malloc(1024*sizeof(char));
while (tmp[i]="Hello Wolrd"[i++]); /* Ooopps y'a une infusion ! */
i=(int)tmp[8];
tmp[8]=tmp[9];
tmp[9]=(char)i;
printf("%s\n",tmp);
}

*** New Manager (do you remember?)
10 PRINT "HELLO WORLD"
20 END

*** Middle Manager

mail -s "Hello, world." bob@b12
Bob, could you please write me a program that prints "Hello, world."?
I need it by tomorrow.
^D

*** Chief Executive

% letter
letter: Command not found.
% mail
To: ^X ^F ^C
% help mail
help: Command not found.
% damn!
!: Event unrecognized
% logout

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.

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.

in reality

[ciryon]

Still there's a huge different looking at OSS and actually migrating from microsoft systems.

We've had reports like this in sweden for a while but unfortunately it seems as it's just a cool thing to say for the incompetent CIO "yeah we're looking at linux. once it gets better we might switch.". In my experience there are many bad CIOs that are trying to cover their incompetence by claiming they know something about OSS.

Ciryon

Re:in reality

[luzrek]

Corporations ussually switch from one platform to another when it comes time for a massive upgrade. In the case of the Massachusetts Dept. of Revenue (recently covered on slashdot) they descided to switch over when the window 95 computers they were using became so obsolete (and broken) that they were unusable. Then, cost ended up being the determing factor when desciding which new systems to get. I think that the figure was 600$ per computer for closed source and 200$ per computer for open source. From the article it looks like KB switched at the cash-register level because OSS was the only solution which met there requirements for cash registers.

One of the main issues for companies (and some consumers) is minimizing recuring costs. OSS solutions offer the best way of doing this since you are not vulnerable to extortion (err.. purchasing upgrades).

from the article (side bar 3)

[phrantic]

Who Are Those Guys?

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

Worried about trusting your infrastructure to a bunch of shaggy college kids who might bolt at any moment for a yearlong backpacking trip to Switzerland? Don't worry. Even if every one of them left for the Alps tomorrow, 90 percent of the open-source community would still be checking in to one of the community's Internet hangouts (SourceForge.net and Freshmeat.net are the most popular) to see what's new.

Yeah right, like I have time to ski, or that I have any hair left, shaggy or otherwise....well except for the palms of my hand but I don't count that...

I don't think it's just being considered

[deadsquid]

I think it's safer to say it's gaining in popularity, and because of the cost savings involved is now starting to come to the attention of the executive management.

I've worked (and continue to work) with or for a number of large corporations, and OSS has always had a place there. The big difference is you're starting to see a few more core applications and/or platforms replaced because the commercial apps are generally overkill and cost an arm and a leg to support and maintain.

People have always used Perl to automate batch processing. There are a whole lot of smaller custom applications that use MySQL instead of (ack!) Access or MS SQL Server because it does the job. There are a number of shops I've seen that use Nagios for monitoring because it meets their needs. OSS is out there, has been there for a while, and is now moving out of the closet and into the light.

Now that it can have such a positive impact on the bottom line in tight times, corporate execs are starting to realize there are significant gains to be had. It'll never replace commercial software, but it can certainly play a very complementary role.

Tradeoffs exist, but the communities which typically support OSS can usually (I've found) provide better support coupled with faster workarounds and patches than going through a vendor. It's not perfect, but most of the time it works.

It's nice to see that people are finally taking the attitude that you CAN get fired for buying Big Blue. About time we get back to right tool for the right job. Here's hoping those same CIO's will see the benefits of giving back as well, and releasing useful mods/patches back into the community.

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.

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.

The trick is to get them to try it!

[Alkarismi]

I agree with the article fully, it's been our experience here in the UK that companies are much more willing to consider Open Source. We are talking with some _significantly_ sized UK firms - the real trick is to get them to trial some projects. Once 'the penguin has landed' it inevitably spreads.
I'm glad that the point was made about TCO. We have noticed that _whatever_ the intellectual debate over TCO, when you _actually deploy_ in any decent sized business, TCO benefits are huge!
With the benefits of an actual deployment - the advantages of Open Source are clear - it's only those standing on the outside looking in that have doubts - the long term conclusions that Open Source will take the Enterprise is inevitable.

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.

I'm more or less a CIO...

[Mantrid]

Well I don't have the title, but I am 'the' computer person MIS/IT/DB Manager etc... for a fair sized process manufacturing business (pushing $100 Million). We are getting bent over left, right, and center by licensing, Microsoft, ERP software, you name it.

We feel trapped in the MS web and would love to break out. We spend $200K easy on licensing costs annually easily...so here's my thinking.

Is there not some way we could use this money to hire a Linux programmer and a Linux admin guru or some combination of consultants, etc and start getting our butts off of the MS shaft? I don't mind Windows on the client so much. I can handle leaving Finance with Excel, but Open Office could replace much of that. I'm sure something could replace Exchange etc... And as for the ERP side, well it's fairly complex but at least if we had an option for something that could run on Linux with say, Oracle or whatever (at least be flexible) database backend...

Where the heck would I start with all of this? I am a Windows/DOS guy, but I don't mind learning Linux...it's just a matter of getting started.

Ugh, maybe this should be an Ask Slashdot question...

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.