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Atos Origin Predicts Open Source Landscape
Rob writes "IT services provider Atos Origin has predicted a forthcoming change in the software
landscape based on the results of a survey it has carried out in conjunction with the UK's
National Computing Centre. The survey, which was compiled through over 140 web-based
questionnaires completed by senior UK IT professionals in May and June, indicated that
over 60% believe open source will either increase its presence in certain business areas
or be a fundamental component in core IT systems, while
73% expect open source to develop within their organizations' IT strategy over the next
five years."
Yes users, the time has come. The IT landscape is shifting directions. Fortunately, its shifting in the direction that we provide services for. Come on over to our website, see what we're offering.
I'm always a little skeptical of companies that fund surveys whose results jive with their business offerings.
That seems odd... I wouldn't expect PostgreSQL to fall into that category, especially with all the EnterpriseDB stuff going on.
Apropos of nothing, if you need to get Jabber to log to a PostgreSQL database, look yonder.
The Army reading list
I think the research misses some points:
How do these companies think they will add the OSS community?
How do they think they will be supported? (Yes, lame question, I know how OSS support model works, but still, a company manager thinks in terms of support contracts)
My wife's sketchblog Blob[p]: Gastrono-me
seems like a pretty shoddy way to survey to me.
That should change when version 5 is stable. It'll finally be up to par with MS. I wonder why OHUKON was left out of the survey?
Frankly I'm surprised it didn't happen earlier and bigger.
Too bad most custom solutions aren't Open Source. At least open source to the company that uses it. How many companies have at least some custom solution to one problem or another, implemented even in dos, that could be greatly expanded in capability if it simply could be built upon or ported to a more capable platform or what not.
How often can closed-source one-size-fits-all solutions be the be-all and end-all of your needs?
Not to mention that closed-source solutions, by there very nature tend to be more inflexible and what's more - organizations grow to depend on them (and their proprietory file formats) more than they should like.
I currently work for a company that's being employed by Atos to supply the NHS with a J2EE solution. So what I want to know is why if the UK is so keen on open source, are we having to use nothing but AIX backend servers and Win32 web and app servers?
Because the NHS, like several other areas in UK government IT, are standardizing on Microsoft technologies (yeah, the AIX is IBM, but it's still closed as hell). That means thousands of hospitals and clinics (and other government entities) are locking themselves into Windows for another 10+ years right now!
random underscore blankspace at ya know hoo dot comedy.
They need to ask the people that will make the actual decision whether or not to implement these things. A lot of times it comes down to a financial or otherwise decision made by someone outside the IT Department. Those are the people that will decide whether or not such a migration takes place. The IT dept will be the ones that have to figure out how to implement it, but chances are they're not the ones making the decision.
What?
So 23% interviewed/surveyed worked in Redmond?
Seriously, you'd have to be still using only a typewriter, to not see the increase of open source in day to day business. (Although, most home users would be suprised at how many aplliances in their homes already run open source software, so why not biz users too.)
OSGGFG - Open Source Gamers Guide to Free Games
"Atos Origin" sounds less like an IT consultancy and more like an Everquest character.
Read my blog.
It'll finally be up to par with MS.
WHOAH. I take it you don't use MS SQL Server (or possibly even the MSDE)?
I'm qualifying this by saying that I've been primarily a LAMP developer for going on 9 years. MySQL is great for many things, and no, I'm not even going to be condescending and say just "small" projects. I've seen it used on very large projects, and it does fine.
However, it will not be 'on par' with MS SQL. I dare say MySQL5 won't even be 'on par' with MS SQL Server 2000, which is, what, 5 or 6 years old now?. The difference is, imo, mostly in the support tools around the product.
Something as simply as the index tuning wizard in MSSQL - there are no equivalent tools in the MySQL world (yet?). 'EXPLAIN' doesn't come close, and i f you haven't used MS SQL, you won't know what I mean. If you *have* used it, and still claim that MySQL5 will be 'on par' with MS SQL, you're not living in the real world.
Statements like these are what cause non MySQL users to dismiss MySQL supporters claims.
Clarifying it by saying "for some (or many) uses MySQL5 may be a good alternative to MS SQL" might be acceptable. Claiming equal status is just wrong.
creation science book
that 100% of companies will use open source to leverage better deals out of commercial software companies. It happens over and over again, and the OSS community never learns.
As to development? Never happen. Open source API's are too poorly designed, making them difficult to use. Take, for example, openssl and the Microsoft CryptoAPI. Now, anyone who has ever used both of these APIs can tell you that they implement pretty much the same functionality - and that same person will tell you that CryptoAPI is intuitive to use while OpenSSL is arcane and difficult.
And thats just one example, there are hundreds more - DirectX v. OpenGL, WinHTTP v. cURL, the list goes on...
No, until some decent design people join open source, I'll stick to companies like Sun and Microsoft tyvm.
There is no ammunition here at all for MS-bashers, and the scenario it paints is a bit gloomy. If in 5 years time everybody is still supporting Office - which, regardless of whether it is the MS version or the OO version is, to my mind, still a truly terrible way to meet the day to day needs of most ordinary office workers - we will surely have learnt nothing and done nothing to meet the real needs of business.
It would be nice to think that this particular survey will go the way of all preductions of the future and be wrong, but actually it seems to point to a growing IT trend - inertia. It makes little difference whether it's computers or SUVs, the answer to all problems is to do more of the same. Perhaps slightly lower fuel consumption immediately offset by dragging around some new feature. 17 inch wheels/monitors? Next year we'll have 19 inch wheels/monitors! And in a nod to the environment, perhaps in 5 years time 5% will be recyclable/OSS. Meanwhile, can anyone explain to me, clearly and convincingly, exactly how the average joe office worker's life benefits from the capabilities of Excel in 2005 versus Lotus 123 in, say, 1990, excluding Y2000 fixes, speed and memory?
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
I think they expect to be supported by the OSS community itself, without any intervention on their part. Corporate IT managers are smart enough to know that in-house apps are supported in-house, but it's the out-house (sorry, couldn't resist) apps like operating systems, browsers, mail servers and clients that cause them 98 percent of their headaches, mostly in the realm of security. The OSS community has a far better track record of producing fewer exploitable holes, and plugging them faster and better than a certain monopoly. The largest hurdle for most corporations at present is the incompatabilities between the Office suites. If Open Office could really handle every single
As to the question of how these companies will add to OSS, the answer is: they won't. There are damn few business application programmers who understand operating systems ot HTML rendering, and they're working on the companies internal problems.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
How do these companies think they will add the OSS community?
Maybe they don't think they will add to it. Maybe they will write an e-mail when they find a bug (if you think that is not valuable, ask a developer). Maybe they will pay an OSS vendor for a software support contract.
How do they think they will be supported? (Yes, lame question, I know how OSS support model works, but still, a company manager thinks in terms of support contracts)
In addition to software contracts, which I already mentioned I add these points. First, if you are not a technology company the "company manager" should be thinking things like "I hope my MIS director is doing the right things to support my key business" if he finds himself delving into the decisions of IT, he either has a bad staff or he has lost his focus. That being said, the MIS directors, senior admins etc... of today once were (in many cases) the lowly Sys admin (1 out of 20) in the company and though they liked Linux, might never have expected it to get corporate support. Now they find themselves in senior positions and are comfortable with support for OSS and leary of virus prone systems. I think Linux and other OSS is maturing in the market due to corporate maturation of many early adopters (who may have been young and low on the pole). This is only an opinion.
What's "expect open source to develop within their organizations' IT strategy" supposed to mean?
Does it mean modification of software? A Linux or BSD server? Use of a commercial product such as Mac OS or TiVo that is a combination of free and proprietary elements?
Open source being present in your IT strategy could just mean encouraging people to use Firefox.
That said, ASP.NET is growing too. I work for a government consulting company in Northern VA. Most people here only know .NET. The biggest propronents are, naturally, the client-server VB-SQLServer guys who were dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century. Now that they must create web apps, they think ASP.NET and all its ungodly web controls are the cow's milk (or the kitten's mittens, if you prefer).
Their rationale? Well, besides coming from MS, many of our projects are hosted on a government network. If you use their boxes, you must use what they installed. That is, Cold Fusion 5 (a monstrosity if I ever saw one) and now .NET.
If your project does not require one of their servers (that is, you install your own server or the project springs for new hardware), you can install whatever you like. I have a java app running on the same network.
One of the largest projects we host on that network is being re-rewritten from VB-SQLServer (it also has a web piece in CF5) in .NET by an old stored procedure (T-SQL) guy. This implementation has to be done entirely in web services. He's drank too much of the kool aid.
In java, there seems to be an entire community that's shunned the over-engineering of EJBs and went with POJOs (Plain Old Java Objects). Why? It just works. It's simple. In my observation, the .net crowd doesn't believe in POCO (Plain Old C# Objects). Everything has to be a webservice or somehow use xml.
They'll learn (or they won't). Doesn't matter much to me. I've already started using a functional programming language for my java apps. Much, much shorter programs, flexibility out the wazoo, and you don't have to write 10 lines just to get "Hello World" from Standard Out. The secret is the Rhino javascript from Mozilla. It will be included by default in Java 6. Apparently I'm not the only one tired of verbosity.
In a nutshell, do the simplest thing that could possibly work in the fewest lines of code and the least amount of mental constructs using the highest level language you can get away with. Tune for performance only after you've perfected how it works.
Atos/Origin manages $EMPLOYER's network and has to be one of the most software libre-hostile service organizations around.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
I asked the question "Do you usually give the answer the person taking a survey wants to hear?"
The overwhelming response was "yes" thus confirming my thesis.
If you are in the southern region, it's because NHS picked Cerner, and the only webserver they support is Websphere on Win32, and the only backend they support is AIX or VMS.
Same for all the regions, most likely. The companies that wrote these clinical solutions don't do open source.
One analyst foretells the impending doom of Linux and Open Source software.
Another analyst predicts that Linux and Open Source shall thrive.
Yet another produces figures that reveal the demise of things Open Source.
Another produces figures that back up the growing use of Open Source software.
One wails in horror at the 'fact' penguins shall be extinct by 2019.
Rob Enderle predicts that SCO shall topple Microsoft next Tuesday.
Another analyst predicts the culling of analysts within the next year or so.
Linux/Open Source/Anti Microsoft News
Way to go, slashdot mods!
Some businesses are burying their heads further up Microsofts ass than ever. The lords on high at the company I work for, a GM sub-subsidiary, just decreed that there will be no open source used for anything, anywhere. The only exceptions will be on a case by case basis providing you have spent the time to write up a business need proposal for why you want something. We can't even run Firefox/Moz anymore and the RHEL desktop I've run for the last three years just went by-by in favor of Win2k. But NO, I'M not fucking bitter...
"Gold still represents the ultimate form of payment in the world." - Alan Greenspan, 1999
javascript != functional programming
n g
Checkout http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_programmi
But I agree with you in that verbosity is out, but I would go for languages like Perl for quick writing and C++ (or C ) for performance
Javascript can be used functionally, even if it is not the quintessential functional programming language, like Scheme or Lisp.
But to show off Javascript's power, here's a Lisp interpreter written in javascript: Lisp in JS
And so, we seem to be advocating it wrong.
The lists of softwares that they would and would not deploy seem to be marketing driven. That is the only way I can understand that MySQL would be deployed and PosgreSQL not. Also, Exim and Thunderbird on that list seems suspect. People should desist of free software just after they try it (if it is free(beer), they there is no excuse about not trying), not because soembody told them something weird about them. The good news is that Open Office may still be desirable, since the research doesn't reflect the software quality.
Also, the peiceved advantages of free software don't include the lack of vendor lockin. It is important that people realize that vendor lockin is a bad thing and that it is the only cause to lack of long term supporting.
Rethinking email
javascript != functional programming? What does that mean? You can't do functional programming in javascript? Javascript functions are first class objects. Javascript supports closures. Now, javascript isn't a pure functional language, but neither is Lisp or ML (or any of their dialects), but nobody claims Lisp or ML are not functional languages.
Oh, I get it. Javascript isn't a functional language because Wikipedia doesn't mention it as a functional language. Yeah, that must be it.
Disclaimer: I don't program in javascript and I don't know javascript very well, but I do know that javascript supports the functional paradigm rather nicely.
...interesting if true.
The real success of OSS only can be gauged on the Desktop, not in the Enterprise, and I am sorry but there is simply no standard, and too much bullshit involved in even getting one of the simple distro's installed correctly.
You can acquire as much of the Enterprise market as you want, until you get Grandma using OSS products on an open source OS, all of this is moot.
From the article:
Meanwhile, there was a clear leader in terms of the perceived inhibitors for open source adoption, with the lack of long-term support scoring 33%, ahead of legal issues related to intellectual property and copyright (21%), and a lack of understanding of the benefits, and a lack of clarity on potential return on investment (both 19%).Since -- as far as I know ? -- there is still not ONE case of an open-source project having lost a case of IP violations, we can conclude that SCO did its FUD job very well.
Cheers!
--Go Debian!
Well it ain't a surprize anyways. Guys who are leading advocates of these technologies have something *unique* to tell. A while athese sorry ass companies would want to get their heads out of their asses as they can only think of *sell*, they'd rather just *join the party*. But remember you corporate jerk offs, you'll never be able to make it proprietary. NEVER!
Java Oracle Linux Enthusiast
I wouldn't reach too much into anything coming out of ATOS, especially results of a "survey" among 80 ppl !
Atos indeed is a large consulting organization, with some weight in the telecoms space, and I remember their stance from the days "Linux isn't a supported product..". Now that the OSS initiative is growing rapidly, and becoming more prevalent, they suddenly jump on the bandwagon and "predict" it will become more prevalent!
Sounds like a nifty management task of going with the flow if they can't stop it...
http://efil.blogspot.com/
The moment that occurs, Microsoft will alter the document format to destroy cross-compatibility. Heck, Microsoft has done it before (compatibility issues between Office '97 and 2000) in order to force consumers to upgrade.
What really will create support for Linux/OSS would be a set of open standards, supported by all parties, dealing with text documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. The only way this will come about is if OSS advances enough independently to create significant market pressure for Microsoft to support the open document standard.
We all know what to do, but we don't know how to get re-elected once we have done it
And what does GNU have to do with open source? They are about Free Software only.
No. If you don't design performance in from the get-go either you didn't need it in the first place or you're in for an expensive fix later.
We have to tell ATOS when the systems they monitor for us are down - and how to fix them.
Otherwise, how to fix what they did when they tried to do it without any help.
And their service desk database is insecure.
But they couldn't ever give A TOS.
slashdot's sarch sucks, so i can't find original comment, it was worded very nicely :)
:)
they will add marketshare. that will improve hardware (mostly drivers/specifications) & software (especially the ones that come with your digital photocamera, scanner etcetc) support.
they will use decent browsers, so there will be more motivation to create webpages that are closer to standards than browser bug workarounds.
more people will be exposed to oss at work, so when they will find out that this software is free and they are encouraged to use and distribute it, they might just do it.
some companies will buy support & pay programmers for coding that little simple but needed feature.
that is a lot to add, you know
Rich
I know (-:.
I just hope that they will make donations, or really buy the support in such a way that it reaches the developers. They are what keeps the system going.
If a product is so good that it needs only minimal support, a direct donation to the organization or individual which develops this product would be the nice and probably the sane thing to do.
They are saving big bucks with the use of OSS (whatever TCO studies says, I see the saving big time around me), so lets hope they are wise enough to give some back (20% would be a nice figure (-:)
My wife's sketchblog Blob[p]: Gastrono-me
+1, Fabulous