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Open Source Adoption by Corporations?
shakuni asks: "I work for a large network equipment vendor in the operations software business unit. One of the questions that I have been asking all my customers (large telecom service providers) is their position on adoption of open source software in their operations environment. The customers that I have interviewed don't comprise a a large enough sample to make sweeping statements. However, most large service providers (who have probably more than 80% of $1 trillion telecom market worldwide) seem very wary of open source, even though the high cost commercial software is hitting on them hard. How is open source adoption being encouraged amongst the financial and telecom behemoths, who are averse to taking risks with their IT systems? Are there specific organizations out there that actively address the IT manager and CTOs concerns about open source software? In other words, is there an enterprise Open Source initiative that pro-actively helps companies move in this direction?"
Those large companies are in many ways in the best position to take advantage of open source software. They can afford to spend the money on in-house programmers to do support, add features and fix bugs in open source software instead of paying Mircosoft and others large amounts of money for bad support, useless features and more bugs.
The risks are much higher when buying closed source software because you never know if the company you are buying from will add the features you want, fix your bugs or even stay in business. Open source software allows you to be in full control.
At least at the large financial corp. I work for what matters first (even before functionality sometimes!) is the contract, i.e. who has liability for what, followed by cost and vendor reputation.
I'm not talking desktop OS here as obviously most niche vendors with desktop products for $FinanceBusinessFunction require the desktop to run Windows.
But with regard to encouraging Open Source in server, backoffice, data center, mid range, etc etc etc, the decision makers don't really care if the code can be looked at by anyone, as long as it's as secure as possible and the contract is drawn up in such a way that the vendor shoulders as much liability as the collective lawyers can agree on.
So from where I sit the question of encouraging Open Source is sort of like asking what's being done to encourage more yellow and red colors on the company intranet... Who cares as long as the job is getting done and the price and $Lawyer-Stuff is right.
That's not my answer but that is the Corporate Answer.
Operator, give me the number for 911!
So I would change your question a little. What groups are out there discovering companies' needs, then communicating those needs to OSS developers? We shouldn't fall into the trap so many companies do: writing software for the developer and not the customer. This is especially dangerous for OSS developers, because their own needs are usually the reason the software gets written in the first place.
They go to economics and learn one thing first: TANSTAAFL, There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.
OSS seems to go against that to them. (although OSS doesn't necessarily mean something is gratis, most examples of successfull OSS are.)
Most of them will be very cautious around anything that claims to be free, no matter which type of free is meant...
Mind you, they never sue anybody when things don't work out. At best they switch vendors. What's worse, they figure they've already sunk $X into this stupid product so they have to make it work (because they don't have any money left to buy something else). And worst of all, they often pay the vendor even more money to fix whatever's wrong with the product they bought!
Bottom line, they just don't grok OSS. OSS won't take hold in corporate America until the people using OSS anyway eventually rise through the ranks to become the CTOs. Unfortunately, breaking corporate policy by running OSS anyway isn't a good way to rise through the ranks.
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
When discussing these kinds of questions, one needs to realize that the "average" slashdot reader differs significantly from the "average" senior corporate IT manager (yes, I realize there's a Gaussian distribution centered on both of these averages and therefore it will always be possible to find some number of exceptions to any statement based on averages).
Again, speaking in general terms, the geeks focus on the nuts and bolts of the software while the senior IT people (and the average non-technical computing user) see software as a *means to an end* not an end in and of itself.
In this context, what's important is Total Cost of Ownership and user productivity. There have been several studies that categorize the components of TCO and the majority of them agree on the following:
* The single largest component of TCO (>60%) is day-to-day administration, maintenance, etc.
* The second largest component (~25%) is the cost of downtime.
* Software and hardware purchase cost *combined* are 10% of TCO.
What are the implications of this data?
1. Unless you're a Dick Stallman on a personal jihad to destroy the Evil Empire in Redmond et al, free software *in and of itself* isn't going to have a significant impact on the market, the world, etc. (with one possible exception discussed below). Yes, the geeks will love it, and more power to 'em, but geeks are a tiny percentage of all software buyers and users.
2. The Big Bang in software will come from designing software systems that minimize administration overhead, minimize downtime, and maximize productivity (anyone who doesn't realize that there are significant advances yet to be made on these fronts is on serious crack). These terms in the value functions of software buyers and users far outweigh the terms for either purchase cost or making some religious/altruistic statement about "freedom".
Now for the exception to point 1: One of the larger driving factors behind the presence of OSS in corporate America (and the world) is that OSS is being used by some corporations to put pressure on the single most dominant player in software (billg and company). Commoditizing the OS and the two highest revenue-generating apps (word processing and spreadsheets), causes the most damage to the company with the largest market share. If you're a competitor to billg you like this. If you're a buyer of software you like it too because it increases competition. In other words, no small percentage of the people/corporations supporting OSS are doing it not because they believe in freedom but because it is to their economic advantage (in turn not because of zero-purchase-cost but because it impairs a monopolist).
Note that I'm not faulting them for doing this, it's a rational thing to do even if they're not doing it for the betterment of all mankind.
I like that open source exists because it provides a mechanism for anyone to learn and later improve the inner workings of important software systems that otherwise would not be accessible. If the OSS movement does nothing more than this I deem it a success.
Unlike some of the OSS jihadis, rather than talk about what I want to destroy, I'd much rather talk about what I want to create.