Slashdot Mirror
How Would You Argue for Open Source?
Nate asks: "I am currently working for an international corporation, and the site I am working at was (until very recently) entirely run on Windows. We recently purchased a Solaris server, and I am in charge of setting it up and resetting the global UNIX standard. The problem is that management doesn't want to install software that does not have 24 hour, worldwide support available along with it, yet they want the capabilities that only open source software can provide on a UNIX platform (VNC, OpenSSH, etc..) without spending insane amounts of money. I was wondering how the Slashdot community deals with convincing management that Open Source software is safe to use when creating a global standard, and what your solutions have been to supporting users working with open source software." Two years ago, Slashdot tackled the Enterprise Support question. Now, say you had that particular problem solved and the only thing left is that all-important pitch to Upper Management. What arguments would you use in your attempts to get their approval? What statistics and references would you point to, in order to back everything up?
"We'll have access to the source code, and be able to update the app as needed due to new requirements or OS upgrade."
Worked for me.
"If, therefore, any be unhappy, let him remember that he is unhappy by reason of himself alone."
~Epictetus
if they want to take responsibility for aligning their IT strategy to their business objectives, or their systems provider's.
"It's not your information. It's information about you" - John Ford, Vice President, Equifax
It seems odd to me to decide on a solution and then develop arguments to use that solution. IT is generally a service provider for business needs. You present the business users with the available options, outline the pros and cons, and allow them to decide. The other danger of engaging in proseletyzing is that if something goes wrong, everyone will be quick to point out the guy who did all the yelling about open source.
So give her estimated labor costs of installing and supporting MySQL vs cost of purchasing, installing and supporting Oracle. Don't forget hardware costs.
Talk about two things:
Cost: Cost of rollout of a commercial product is comparable or more than the cost of 3rd party support contracts for open software.
Risk Management: Buying proprietary software gives you support, but the support is with a monopoly supplier who can then choose to charge whatever it wishes down the road for both software upgrades and support. Tying yourself to a monopoly supplier is a poor risk, since every move a monopolist will make will not be for the benifit of your company, but for the benifit of thiers. Similarly, with Open Source, since our company has the right to modify the software, every change you make will be for the benifit of your company.
Upper Management does not grok Geek. Upper Management groks Dollars and groks Risk.
Just keep that in mind.
-- Funksaw.
What you need are testimonials from others running mission-critical applications using FOSS.
One Fortune 500 executive won't achieve comfort with this kind of a spending and deployment decision (face it, they don't know the tech) until, unless, and, only if, they have seen more than one other Fortune 500 executive put their own necks on the chopping block, made a courageous decision, and have it succeed wildly with no glitches whatsoever.
Getting those testimonials might be hard for an individual on their own ("Mr. Big's office, how may I help you? Right...."), but the web is full of articles showing different businesses using FOSS successfully.
If you were tied into a vendor with a lot of FOSS contacts (eg, RH, IBM), then they could probably help you find those important reference testimonials. Sun is late getting on board the FOSS bandwagon, despite having produced a lot the standards and technology that has made it possible. Their Solaris servers will run FOSS just fine and interoperate with Linux machines, etc.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
MS has stopped releasing security updates for NT4, so companies using it are forced to decide between having security holes or paying MS for a newer version that locks them into a more draconian license agreement. How long until your company faces the same problem with whatever version of windows they use?
With open source, you can patch whatever version you're running, or just upgrade whatever is necessary without the draconian eulas.
Jason
ProfQuotes
Before you go to upper management find out how much the non-open source applications are going to cost. Factor in any consulting fees for setup. Then factor in the cost for global support on an ongoing basis over say the course of the next five years. I'd also suggest adding in any special hardware requirements.
Next find your open source "products". Then find developers who are very comfortable with the "products" that you are recommending. Factor in the cost of hiring them and their salary on an on going basis. They will be your "support" team. Also factor in hardware if needed.
The first hurdle is to prove that it will cost less or at the very least no more than the "off the shelf" products. Then you'll need to put your sales hat on and do a side by side "feature comparison" of the OSS alternatives to the products that you evaluated.
Most of all, be objective and very matter of fact about your presentation. Prove to them that OSS is the way to go becuase it costs less to aquire and maintian and has an equal or superior feature set. Apache is a great case study...
Good luck!
Why do you think that they're going to be anything other than in-house apps?
Heck, I expect to write a Linux app in the next year. Frankly, I expect to be doing it in under 6 months. And nobody will ever see it since it's the core infrastructure for a service my company is offering. Pure backend stuff.
The vast majority of software written is not written for the commercial marketplace. It's written for inhouse use.
I work at a university, and over two years ago, they asked me to help evaluate authoring systems for online courses. One of their requirements was that the company we chose needed to be willing to partner with the institution to extend the capabilities of their software to meet our needs. We gave several suggestions, but I told them they should get on board with MIT's OKI and OpenCourseWare.
They had two concerns about open source solutions: 1. There is no company behind most open source solution. No company means no tech support. 2. OKI was just getting off the ground and would not be ready for prime time for a while.
Over a year later, the university finally chose a company to go with for their authoring system. We paid for a 30-day trial and got 5 days into it before we realized their marketing people had straight-up lied about its feature set.
So, we went with the company our university had ranked number two on the list. We worked with them for 6 months, hired one of their people to work for them on a university paycheck, and gave them a substantial fee every month for licensing. Then the company decided to get out of the authoring systems market, pulled our license and left us with nothing.
In the meantime, OKI has picked up steam, and the 11 universities that got on early with them have been developing solutions that will soon be GPLed.
The long-short is that having a company behind the product is a double-edged sword. Sure, they could give you tech support, but what happens if/when they're gone?
I'd rather have someone respond than be modded up.