Open Source Adoption by Corporations? 28
shakuni asks: "I work for a large network equipment vendor in the operations software business unit. One of the questions that I have been asking all my customers (large telecom service providers) is their position on adoption of open source software in their operations environment. The customers that I have interviewed don't comprise a a large enough sample to make sweeping statements. However, most large service providers (who have probably more than 80% of $1 trillion telecom market worldwide) seem very wary of open source, even though the high cost commercial software is hitting on them hard. How is open source adoption being encouraged amongst the financial and telecom behemoths, who are averse to taking risks with their IT systems? Are there specific organizations out there that actively address the IT manager and CTOs concerns about open source software? In other words, is there an enterprise Open Source initiative that pro-actively helps companies move in this direction?"
Bill Gates, OSS Salesman (Score:2, Funny)
Windows is to worms/trojans like a bug-zapper is to bugs (if the bug zapper has a broken zapper and can't kill them: just attract them).
Hi. I'm Troy McClure (Score:4, Funny)
Lower risks (Score:4, Insightful)
The risks are much higher when buying closed source software because you never know if the company you are buying from will add the features you want, fix your bugs or even stay in business. Open source software allows you to be in full control.
Can't answer your question without asking one (Score:1)
Why are they leary of OSS?
Without knowing this, the discussion seems somewhat pointless.
Re:Can't answer your question without asking one (Score:1, Insightful)
OSS seems to go against that to them. (although OSS doesn't necessarily mean something is gratis, most examples of successfull OSS are.)
Most of them will be very cautious around anything that claims to be free, no matter which type of free is meant...
Re:Can't answer your question without asking one (Score:4, Insightful)
Mind you, they never sue anybody when things don't work out. At best they switch vendors. What's worse, they figure they've already sunk $X into this stupid product so they have to make it work (because they don't have any money left to buy something else). And worst of all, they often pay the vendor even more money to fix whatever's wrong with the product they bought!
Bottom line, they just don't grok OSS. OSS won't take hold in corporate America until the people using OSS anyway eventually rise through the ranks to become the CTOs. Unfortunately, breaking corporate policy by running OSS anyway isn't a good way to rise through the ranks.
Re:Can't answer your question without asking one (Score:2)
I believe that with most big OOS projects you can have a contract with the supplier (e.g. "professional" versions of Linux distros), for a price usually competitive with closed source alternatives.
It's the vendor & contracts that matter (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not talking desktop OS here as obviously most niche vendors with desktop products for $FinanceBusinessFunction require the desktop to run Windows.
But with regard to encouraging Open Source in server, backoffice, data center, mid range, etc etc etc, the decision makers don't really care if the code can be looked at by anyone, as long as it's as secure as possible and the contract is drawn up in such a way that the vendor shoulders as much liability as the collective lawyers can agree on.
So from where I sit the question of encouraging Open Source is sort of like asking what's being done to encourage more yellow and red colors on the company intranet... Who cares as long as the job is getting done and the price and $Lawyer-Stuff is right.
That's not my answer but that is the Corporate Answer.
Maybe they have a good reason (Score:5, Insightful)
So I would change your question a little. What groups are out there discovering companies' needs, then communicating those needs to OSS developers? We shouldn't fall into the trap so many companies do: writing software for the developer and not the customer. This is especially dangerous for OSS developers, because their own needs are usually the reason the software gets written in the first place.
Not Strategic, Yet (Score:4, Interesting)
I can't speak for telecoms.
But what I've seen is open source deployment at the grass-roots level. Acceptance is a gradual, building thing with exposure working its way slowly upon the organizational hierarchy.
Smaller company CIO's and smaller organizational subunits in large corporations are willing to take gradually increasing potential risks by utilizing open source.
The irony is stealth deployment cuts both ways.
One of the reasons it's easier to take that risk with open source is that deployment doesn't require visible commitment of dollars. That Samba or Apache server just cranks away, no invoices come in, no need to count licenses to be compliant, etc. And it sure doesn't hurt that many open source applications are as reliable as death and taxes; they don't drop service causing the CIO to fume about not being able to get service.
But by the same token, those open source deployments are largely invisible to people higher up; those people are less familiar with the successes and failures and are therefore not yet ready to jump in the water headfirst.
Not at the corporate level, but developers do (Score:4, Interesting)
However, nearly every developer here uses open source tools daily. JUnit and Ant are everywhere, as well as NUnit, NDoc, and NAnt for the .NET folks. Eclipse is gaining ground, and Emacs use is pretty common.
For one project, the dev team created a post-project list of all the software used during development. Out of about 30 programs (including DB, OS, etc), 2/3rds were open source.
For my telecom.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Microsoft: 15 million
Sun: 10 million
Redhat ES 3.0 on DL380's: 2 million
We had briefly toyed with the idea (seriously though) of using Debian instead of Red Hat, but some of our proprietary hardware was only supported by Red Hat. I can safely say that the level of technical acumen and common sense here made SCO's hilarious blatherings have exactly zero impact in any of our decision making.
Red Hat. (Score:2)
They may not be the owners of the software, but last I remember they'll enter consultancy contracts with anyone and they'll make it better if something's wrong.
Re:Red Hat. (Score:1)
A much more comforting name for corporate mangement. They know what IBM are, and they know they can take on liabilities if things go wrong.
As a network administrator (Score:2, Interesting)
Remember your history (Score:3, Interesting)
Windows "trickled" up from the home into the small business, and from there to the medium and large corporations. Don't worry about the big buys.
Open vs. closed source isn't relevant (Score:5, Insightful)
Again, speaking in general terms, the geeks focus on the nuts and bolts of the software while the senior IT people (and the average non-technical computing user) see software as a *means to an end* not an end in and of itself.
In this context, what's important is Total Cost of Ownership and user productivity. There have been several studies that categorize the components of TCO and the majority of them agree on the following:
* The single largest component of TCO (>60%) is day-to-day administration, maintenance, etc.
* The second largest component (~25%) is the cost of downtime.
* Software and hardware purchase cost *combined* are 10% of TCO.
What are the implications of this data?
1. Unless you're a Dick Stallman on a personal jihad to destroy the Evil Empire in Redmond et al, free software *in and of itself* isn't going to have a significant impact on the market, the world, etc. (with one possible exception discussed below). Yes, the geeks will love it, and more power to 'em, but geeks are a tiny percentage of all software buyers and users.
2. The Big Bang in software will come from designing software systems that minimize administration overhead, minimize downtime, and maximize productivity (anyone who doesn't realize that there are significant advances yet to be made on these fronts is on serious crack). These terms in the value functions of software buyers and users far outweigh the terms for either purchase cost or making some religious/altruistic statement about "freedom".
Now for the exception to point 1: One of the larger driving factors behind the presence of OSS in corporate America (and the world) is that OSS is being used by some corporations to put pressure on the single most dominant player in software (billg and company). Commoditizing the OS and the two highest revenue-generating apps (word processing and spreadsheets), causes the most damage to the company with the largest market share. If you're a competitor to billg you like this. If you're a buyer of software you like it too because it increases competition. In other words, no small percentage of the people/corporations supporting OSS are doing it not because they believe in freedom but because it is to their economic advantage (in turn not because of zero-purchase-cost but because it impairs a monopolist).
Note that I'm not faulting them for doing this, it's a rational thing to do even if they're not doing it for the betterment of all mankind.
I like that open source exists because it provides a mechanism for anyone to learn and later improve the inner workings of important software systems that otherwise would not be accessible. If the OSS movement does nothing more than this I deem it a success.
Unlike some of the OSS jihadis, rather than talk about what I want to destroy, I'd much rather talk about what I want to create.
adoption is a slow process (Score:2)
to see how the adoption of OSS has progressed in the years
I've been employed.
Depending on the department, running Linux or BSD on your
personal computer was tolerated to various degrees (for a
while I had to dual boot in order to use MS Project for
staff meetings, but that requirement was quietly dropped
during a reorg). Recently, however, there has been growing
infrastructure support for running non-Windows operating
systems on desktops and a slow migr
Some major problems. (Score:2)
Generally system administrator don't like dealing with different types of platforms, Linux mixed with Unix mixed with Windows Mixed with novel. Having a the mixture creates a lot of problems and switching cold turkey to OSS is risky and irresponsible because it means a major problems in dealing with business until things are completed. 12 buisness hours of downtime could mean a million of dollars in loss sales. compared to play 3,000 a year for a licen
Existing investments (Score:2)
I believe the key factor is simply that it costs too much to retool in any short timeframe. My company, for example, owns something like 65,000 end-user desktop machines (actually, probably more; I doubt even the accountants have an exact count). Imagine the nightmare of trying to change operating systems while ensuring that everyone's work is reasonably uninterrupted and that everyone h
They are already doing it (Score:2)