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Study Urges CIOs To Choose Open Source First

Posted by samzenpus on from the first-and-free dept.

littlekorea writes "A new study has urged CIOs to consider open source over proprietary software or public cloud services when replacing legacy gear. But the study's author, Professor Jim Norton, warns that open source won't be a cure-all for some companies. From the article: ' Open source software, Norton said, provides enterprise IT with easier access to innovation via a "great global self-re-enforcing community of shared resources, ideas and development." That same community provides a faster response to changes in customer preferences communicated on social networks or via business analytics, and faster resolution of common system problems.'"

9 of 95 comments (clear)

  1. Publication bias by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    All studies urging CIOs to prefer "professional solutions" -- not published on /.

  2. Commercial support by Gothmolly · · Score: 4, Insightful

    CIOs buy open source tools all the time - and they pay RedHat or Oracle to support them. However - no CIO is going to spend real dollars, dollars which will get him fired, on unsupported software, no matter how cool the user forums are.

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    1. Re:Commercial support by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Real CIOs spend dollars on officially-unsupported software all the time in commercial companies, successfully. They do it by hiring real talent that can manage open source software stacks internally (do their own bug-hunting and upstream contributions).

    2. Re:Commercial support by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

      You'd be surprised what a CIO in the grip of the development department might do. Or, more to the point, since they are generally free, the CIO might be surprised to find out what is running on his hardware since one only asks the CIO for permission for things if they need it in the budget.

      I've seen a few places that will install free software and then hand the execs a bill for "optional" support once it is part of the application. Although I like the initiative and the way they get around the execs, I often want to strangle them because they tend to throw this stuff at production without understanding that just because it is the newest and greatest thing, doesn't mean that anyone really knows how to support it.

    3. Re:Commercial support by sumdumass · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Actually, they do it all the time by keeping outdated and unsupported pieces of software around instead of updating to the latest and greatest for the sake of doing it. This can be open or closed source software. I do not know how many windows XP workstations I run across on a daily basis not because the software running on them will only run on XP or the systems will not support windows 7 (some will not though), but because getting some piece of software to run on windows 7 requires an upgrade that costs thousands and there is no legit reason to justify it until it is necessary (No features needed or wanted outside of working on windows 7 reliably).

      Hell, I have two application suits that can be upgraded right now under the existing support contracts (one of which I can get no live support outside of knowledge base articles if I do not upgrade) but it will not happen because the companies will not authorize the budget to do the upgrades. They are in a maintenance mode waiting on the economy to turn up more or something.

      It's not just about competent employees or open verses closed source software, it is about saving a buck, backwards compatibility and so on too.

  3. Logical Fallacy Bias by oakgrove · · Score: 3, Funny

    How about studies of AC first posters with nothing worthwhile to say resorting to the predictably boring ad hominem?

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  4. Is this 2012? by nagasrinivas · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Most of this article reads like its 1999 now.

    “The skilled, motivated staff that grew up with the internet don’t want to work with closed, old fashioned systems,” ...
    "Norton cited studies from the London School of Economics which found that investments to deploy open source in-house drives longer-term savings of 20 percent over the alternatives"...
    "It advises CIOs, for example, not to separate current support teams from new development teams"

    It then goes on to explain the fish that they are trying to fry:

    “We commissioned this study to highlight to our customers and shareholders our use of open systems and contribution to open systems,”

    Ok great so you have opensource software. Before you propose any solution (any open source or proprietary) you'd think of a large number of factors. ROI is one of them. The capabilities of your staff and the availability of skills in the market would be another. The example of Tomcat and jQuery are lame to say the least. Some of the companies I worked for have use proprietary solutions AND save money in the process. For "enterprise" applications the major costs of running the show arent whether the software is open source or not. Maintenance over the life of the product costs much more (salaries, infrastructure, etc).

  5. And how is that money well spent? by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I've never understood how some OSS people seem to think spending money on licenses or support contracts is money wasted, but spending money on people to fight with software to make it do what you want is money well spent. No, it is all money either way. The question is what gets you more of what you want and costs less doing it.

    There isn't a right answer for every situation. It depends on what your company does, what kind of people you have, how large it is, what your needs are and so on.

    For example if you need a custom solution and you already have a bunch of developers, maybe getting OSS code and going that way is the correct answer (though maybe you don't give back, you don't have to if you don't distribute it). However if an off the shelf product meets your needs for a good price then it can well be the way to go.

  6. Re:Open Source licenses .. by unixisc · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Actually, there is a whole bonanza/plethora (depending on how one looks @ it) of Open Source licenses out there, and so there is quite a variety. The above are just some of the more popular ones. As for GPL, there is a whole mess of issues about combining it w/ any licenses - not just proprietary licenses. The FSF really muddies the waters by having all the categories os copyleft/non-copyleft, Free/non-Free, GPL-compatible/GPL-incompatible and so on