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New OSS Doomed In Enterprise?
Rob wrote to mention a Computer Business Review Online article which posits that immature open source software is doomed in an enterprise environment nowadays. From the article: "Open-source startups and relative newcomers must target a new breed of CIOs, which Graf dubs chief process innovation officers. Rather than old-school CIOs who focus on a company's data management, these guys design processes with the company's network. "If you want to become strategic to the company, you need to deal with business processors. 'The key question for open source is, Which open source technologies are mature enough to survive the consolidation that's coming?' Graf said. 'Linux? Definitely. Eclipse? Definitely. Mozilla? Most likely.'"
This article had nothing to do with how well (or poorly) open source will fare in the corporate world. It was sheer propaganda from SAP. It was essentially saying "buy our crap, because the other crap out there isn't as integrated as our crap is"
From my point of view ... OSS is not doomed ... but it needs to get some roots dug in ...
... so if we get 1 or 2 OSS users / programmers / advocates jumping into these situations and voicing their opinion ... ... and once other large businesses stuck in MS he!! see that this new up and coming business is saving HUGE on thier software licenses & fees ... the revolution will begin!
And where, you ask should these roots start at?
OSS users / programmers / advocates must start at the smallest level, meaning Small Businesses and those young entrepenuers.
It's the ideal target audience to hit because they can't afford the MS licenses, and
other software fees
then sooner or later we'll start seeing all the small business using OSS and from there it can only grow
Cause if 1 or 2 of these small businesses blossoms into the next IBM, MS, eBay, whatever then you instantly have a large business
using OSS
Except in the case with MS, you paid to get software that fails. If you use open source, and don't pay for support, at least you didn't spend money to have software that fails.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Huh? then why are we bing pushed to upgrade every SQL server here to SQL2005?
That is a VERY immature product from Microsoft that is guarenteed to break lots of things because it is forcing SQL99 so every old app we have that is SQL97 will break.
(Yes I have tested, yes they break)
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
This pissed off people like Steve Ballmer no end, because it meant that companies like his couldn't automatically push the "new new thing" at customers. However, it also plays to their agenda to some extent because they are the entrenched thing and the entrenched thing, according to this theory, is exactly what you want.
Customization of SAP is complex. Many firms who initially attempted to customize SAP to fit their business processes eventually gave up and changed their business process to suit SAP! Problem was that, with each SAP update, it was necessary to re-apply any customizations, which required a team of SAP developers. Long-term this was prohibitively expensive.
SAP is expensive: you must pay a high cost per seat for the database (usually Oracle) and an additional charge per seat for each SAP user. So in the long run, you pay, pay, pay.
There's little reason to get excited when a SAP representative speaks about FOSS since they are, for the most part, in a market largely unaffected by FOSS currently.
But as FOSS developers begin to infringe on SAP's territory more and more, chipping away especially at their more cost-sensitive customers, expect to hear SAP bellowing loudly about the "weaknesses of FOSS".
It appears TFA is only looking at the top-town approach to OSS getting into the enterprise. CIO is looking for some well-established solution to managing data across the enterprise, so he's not going to go with an immature OSS product.
I think where small OSS projects are most likely to find their way into the enterprise is in a bottom-up scenario. Rather than being the result of some enterprise-wide strategic business partnership, they get going when middle manager goes to developer and says "find a way to get data from X to Y". Often, some immature OSS tool will happen to be the best solution to this specific need. The OSS tool gets used for some particular task, then when another department has a similar need, they look into how the first department did it and the OSS tool gains ground from there.
If it's being deployed on a large enough scale to even be a blip on the CIO's radar, then no, an immature piece of software (OSS or commercial) is not the answer. But that doesn't mean it won't find use in the company somewhere.
I'm not sure what the "army of drones" is. I work for a major communications company. We have one TAM from Microsoft. OTOH, I've had to go directly to MS for help on only 2 critical problems in my entire career (excluding TechNet, where I have searched error messages and such). One was phone support and the other was our TAM. I think only once did I ever get asked, "Did you call Microsoft?" For the record, I've worked for 4 major corporations. I think for most MS companies, the need to have MS support for servers just isn't there. Maybe for small companies, but there are just too many techs out there who can support MS, but I digress. What you're saying is true and underscores my point in that it's all perception, not reality and that, again, cuts the thunder out of these "new, savvy CIO's."
Read their EULA. About 10 years ago they changed the US one to say that they warrant the product will perform substantially in accordance with the accompanying documentation for a period of 90 days. You can get a refund if it doesn't.
This may sound lame, but it is a lot further than most products go. Most just say they have no warranty at all, and so if they turn out to just calculate grains of sand instead of what the box says, then tough.
Filing bug reports or even offering simple feedback helps the development along. But at any rate, I see OSS develop at a faster time scale. Three years ago, how many of you heard of Firefox?
Because as soon as it is your decision to step outside the box, it becomes your fault when something goes wrong, no matter if the Microsoft way would not have worked in a million years. Its not big and its not clever, but thats the way some people see things.