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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.'"

2 of 95 comments (clear)

  1. 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).

  2. 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.