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

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?

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.