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OSS: a push in recession

With the recession tide rising high, open source software (OSS) is all set to see increasing adoption levels in the coming year. Renuka Vembu looks at why companies are adopting it and the benefits they leverage out of it

With the number of open source supporters increasing, the initial apprehension and continued skepticism has definitely died down, and with enough that has been written and reviewed, we can safely say that OSS has made it through. With proprietary vendors themselves trying to step on to the OSS podium and players joining the bandwagon on the rise, its benefits are being realized and organizations are rushing to leverage the advantages. Companies which face budgetary constraints can adopt the open source software which would be light on their pockets.

The objective

Shoppers Stop has deployed LINUX operating environment for many of their mainstream applications. They have also used an open source solution for enterprise e-learning. This they view as a good alternative to commercial software and they continue to rake in benefits even while exploring other new solutions.

Arun O Gupta, Customer Care Associate and Group Chief Technology Officer, Shoppers Stop, said, “When we started exploring open source, the idea was to find low-cost solutions for some non-critical processes. As we continued to explore, we moved some of our core applications to LINUX and this has helped us reduce the TCO.”

Raju Sheth, Head Technology and Research Group, Quinnox Consultancy Services, added, “At Quinnox, everything is aligned with the clients through our relationship management model, QCare, to address the end-to-end requirements of our clients and in turn build strategic long-term client relationships. Thus, as per the needs of our mid-size customers and the criticality of the application, we use open source platform to reduce the TCO and help them achieve their business objective. Along with this, open source platform also confers several other benefits like ease to deploy and no vendor dependency to name a few. At Quinnox, our strong testing methodology coupled with our in-house domain and technology specialists help us deploy customized business-aligned IT solutions for our clients.”

Vinay Hinge, GM, IT, Raymond, said that his reasons for implementing OSS were—going with the herd mentality which was since it worked for others, it was likely to be fruitful for him too, the cost optimization factor and just an opportunity to test the waters since there was no commitment involved. However, he cautions that the vital points that need to be factored in while selecting open source software were:

• Not being too adventurous and just following the market. Use it to suit your line of business with minimal risk where performance is guaranteed
• Find good implementation partners
• Find out the road-map of the product, get a person on the team who is a part of the community, etc.

Opinion of experts

Hinge threw some light on the lessons that have been learnt over the last few years:

• Open source software is not necessarily ‘free’
• You have credible support sources available in the market
• Open source software and security are mutually exclusive entities
• Desktop OS and Office Suite—the adoption of open source packages has been much slower than anticipated

He also observed that a normal end-user is most comfortable using Windows and MS Office platform. For a CIO, who is serious about using open source tools, it is better to focus on the applications. Hinge listed his favorite areas for deployment:

• Application Development Environment: Packages like Eclipse give you a quick ROI on your investment.
• Content Management Systems: For your corporate websites or Intranet, Drupal/Joomla kind of CMS platforms give you quick-start.
• CRM: SugarCRM and other similar products which fall under enterprise application category provide you with an opportunity to conduct pilots at lower investment and scalability when required.
• Infrastructure: Email servers, Web servers and Server OS are the most common deployments in corporate environment.

Selection of OSS

Gupta asserted that the factors that would influence the selection of open source are:

• Nature of process/function being impacted internally
• Gap between open source and commercial software
• Skills available internally or externally to support the solution
• Past precedents on deployment of similar solutions
• Time required to implement

Added advantages

The absence of any license fee brings down the cost of OSS, and most, if not all of OSS, is actually free. Other visible areas that organizations would go in for and leverage the OSS platform are inter-operability, reliability, scalability, security, quality, innovation, absence of a vendor lock-in period giving the user the ability to break free, and extended community support.

These are some of the glaring factors that have prompted companies to look at the open source wave. Also, the user of OSS has the flexibility to make changes to the product and does not have to depend on the vendor for the same. Likewise, there lies no restriction on the number of users who can adopt and use the open source software.

Gupta said, “License fee for software and technologies is significantly lower than other solutions. Support costs are also likely to be lower in some cases. The deployment across standard commercially available hardware brings about the best benefit.”

OSS has seen widespread adoption in the educational sector, government, the SMEs, etc. For getting the maximum ROI on implementations using open source tools, one should keep in mind following factors, as per Hinge:

• Getting an experienced partner
• Having at least one passionate open source fan on the team
• No compromise on the implementation methodology and documentation

Drawbacks

Since there is no specialized or exclusive treatment that one gets from vendors, choosing the correct implementation partners will be one of the factors of utmost significance. Sheth said, “Most, if not all open source, have no or limited customer support. The support which is available from the group/project who has delivered the open source software may have limitations of available time and resources. An enterprise would be better off deploying a mission critical application on a non-open source platform/product where technical support is available as per the SLA between the enterprise and the vendor. Due to its transparent nature and lack of a formal support organization, the bugs and loop-holes in an open source software product take longer to fix, which in effect exposes the application built using the open source software product to malfunctioning and hacking.”

Gupta feels that most organizations in India have adopted open source for non-critical applications and processes, and that the mainstream deployment has been slow but is gaining momentum. Hinge, on the other hand, opined that the open source software movement is now quite old and mature, and said that CIOs are no more skeptical and they are including them in their IT strategy with due importance. OSS will also have to face the heat from SAAS and cloud computing. The commercial vendors are also bound to come up with innovative ways and a slash in rates to fight this.

Most companies use open source for non-critical applications and the advantages they gather will depend on the industry they operate in and to the extent to which they use the software. In the wake of economic recession, this will come as a reprieve for companies running on tight finances. CIOs will now have to review their budgets for the coming year and this may mean more adoption levels of the open source software, given its edge over the proprietary software.

renuka.vembu@expressindia.com