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Opening Up for Open Source
jondaw writes "Businesses want to save money and boost IT efficiency. Can open-source software do the trick? Cnet attempts to answer this open ended question and provides a number of good case studies and examples."
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I am an IT consultant and I get a lot of clients who ask about the real cost of free software. Most business here are very cautious to choose switching for open source mostly because support for this solution is still somewhat more expensive than for the old paid solutions.
In the few companies I consult that are currently switching or have switched in the past, the Total Cost of Ownership of their computer infrastructured has lowered significantly, even though the cost of the support staff is truly higher.
But, anyway, support here is somewhat cheap, as I am in a developing country that pays a lot more for software than for the people running then in a number of times.
Absolutely. Two cases in point:
Case One: We were looking for a bug tracking solution and we had short-listed the contenders to a choice between Bugzilla, BugTracker and FogBugz. Although FogBugz was a superior product BugTracker won because we could modify it to suit our needs. We didn't like Bugzilla because of it's clumsy interface and the fact we'd need an extra machine to run it.
We saved money on the licenses and we got something we could modify and maintain ourselves. Free software at it's best.
Case Two: We were paying through the nose for anti-virus subscription and software. We all know that anti-virus software takes a lot of real estate. Most have *HORRIBLE* splash screens that no-one is interested in seeing and they tend to slow the machine considerably.
Our solution to the problem to the anti-virus problem was the Windows version of ClamAV. It has a nice outlook plugin that protects from e-mail based virus and we set a schedule to scan the disk every night. There is no "resident shield" in ClamAV but to be honest they rarely do any good anyway.
My former boss works at a much larger company (we're still good friends) and he's deployed the strategy across a company with around thirty machines and saved a fortune.
So yes, companies can save money using Open source. The hard part is convincing them that a not-for-profit organisation can deliver quality products. I find ten minutes with Firefox usually does the trick.
Simon
The main limiting factor is, like usual, time and resources. A product like Oracle, for instance, has had years upon years of time and millions upon millions of dollars poured into it. While the open source community can produce the mighty fine PostgreSQL, they just don't have the time nor resources to produce a product equivalent to Oracle.
Like it or not, open source projects are constrained by the same factors of production that any other good is constrained by. They can't be avoided, be it an open source project or a commercial, closed-source project.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
Oh yes... because Novell and Red Hat are such great examples of making money hand over fist.
Let us also not forget VA Software, one of the original poster children for making money through Linux
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
Remember Project David, the WINE ripoff featured last year? They're back.
Made in Japan - The Teriyaki Experience - in Oakville, Ontario, is running approximately 100 restaurants, from Newfoundland to British Columbia on a Point of Sale solution which is about 99% free software. They have an IT department which consists of one person. Using rsync, HQ has its central file systems updated from each location every 10 minutes. Nagios alerts HQ of the health of dozens of system critical threshhold variables in real time. The IT staffer can open a remote display on any location from his touchscreen notebook while sailing outside Toronto Harbor, monitor and control just about any aspect of system behavior via open VPN. There's nothing in the Windows world that can come close to this kind of retail automation or information automation cost savings. Free Software is, if you know where to look, providing cost savings that simply aren't possible with the Windows way of doing things, and providing superior solutions at the same time.
India?
No, Brazil.
Sadlt yes
Most in IT today agree that Linux is great on a server in some circumstances but the Microsoft Salesmen come into the picture to our bosses with glossy brochures about TCO studies of costs being lower in Windows.
They also count in retraining costs and the fact that an MCSE is cheaper than a unix admin.
Many in IT are convinced that Windows is cheaper as well since its an integrated platform with VS and all the windows desktops.
Its a tough sell these days and now the MS salesmen are trained to scare CIO's about liability and lawsuits and lvoe to cite SCO.
http://saveie6.com/
From the article: "Such a shift toward open-source software for CRM and other business software applications, such as enterprise resource planning, is now beginning at corporations across the globe."
I've got three questions about this, from my experience in a manufacturing environment.
1) Where is this open source software that so easily replaces the commercial software?
2) How can I convince a corporation that has been dealing with a vendor for a particular product for many years that it is worth the pain of switching, even if the end result is good?
3) At what point is a piece of software "safe" and when is better to be more open? Take for example OpenMFG. They could be considered more "safe" than other solutions because they seem to have everything together in a well-supported way. However, their license is unacceptable for anyone who respects the open source ideology. The product isn't free as in beer and only partially free as in speech.
There doesn't seem to be a whole lot of choice in ERP/MRP, from what I see. Unless the manufacturers start programming a lot of code themselves and don't mind giving up their work to competitors, there will always be restrictions on what open source solutions are available. I would love to see a completely free MRP that does everything needed without a lot of hassle, and still lets my company customize it to save ourselves time and money.
of coucse although india has some support for OSS the vast majority of it's bangalorebandits of the new wild east of software do not wna topen source. as they would have to show u[ their either a/ poor coding b/amazing code which owuld put everyone out of business and themselves out of a job.
..once upon a time.]
.. if they ahd not published that code you would not have learned so quickly... and if you had figutred it out on your own like thise fellows did .. no doubt you would not have released it publically so readers of Dr Dobbs could get at it..]
i was just kidding there.
the real reason why OSS and ant-NDA culture is bad as that they can't *enslave* indian developers into monkey-we're so grateful for the pittance wages. if they came to you with already existing open sourced code or they jsut open sourced it themselves.. there's no reason why you cannot sell the finished product yoursleves locally cutting out the middle man...
fairs fair.
the indians seem very short sghted for all their talents they fear not being able to be favourable to the waves of offshore insourcing
well as wages go up and your expectations rise.. they will jsut go to chine or russia or south america anyway.
and you know ? if you indian programmers are so hot.. why arent you starting your own amazing game houses and what not? with free software and so much out ther i DO think you can compete.
after all you seem to have the talent in coding maths [and the imagination
you seem pretty talented...
i am a computer science student in the west at a fairly advanced institution . my colleagues are nowhere near as gifted as my average old colleagues in maths or computer science. but you know what? they understand the value of acadmeically shared knowledge form whihc you benefitted. my country did not invent any computer langauges or any transistors yet here i am...
i see you dont release any of your code.. tahts pretty sad.
[except the one pice of code thats based around an academic proof of concept open to you published in Dr. Dobbs.
dont you see the irony?
btw im not some awful racist....
this is the same speech i trot out to my own anti-oss compatriots in the middle east, who without OSS they would never have gotten net access due to american embargoes against enemy states and exporting tech.
but our academics were able to use open standards the net was built on and examine bsd source code and the tcp/ip networking stack to create their own routers and so forth.
thus we were the first countries in asia outside of iraq to have the net.