New to Open Source?

Open Source Software is everywhere. It powers the internet and is being rapidly deployed throughout the world across industry, government, education and community sectors. Open Source has become an important part of planning a robust ICT strategy for organisations of all shapes and sizes. People need to be able to make educated and well-informed decisions about mature Open Source technologies and methodologies to improve productivity and provide a platform for innovation.

There are several strong business cases for using Open Source Software technologies, leveraging Open Source methodologies, and for developing Open Source software.Using Open Source technologies often provides the following benefits:

  • Robust and proven technologies - Open Source technologies such as Apache and Linux have been driving forces behind the internet for many years. Over 65% of websites are run on Apache (1) and over 74% of the top supercomputers in the world run Linux (2).
  • Scalability of your business - with OSS you can rapidly gear up your infrastructure to respond to market shifts without have to pay out huge sums of cash. This is particularly useful for small and growing businesses, and also for seasonal businesses
  • A flexible solution - OSS runs on many architechtures (from supercomputers to phones) and is completely configurable. This means you can wrap your technology solution around your business, rather than having to wrap your business around the technology. Modify OSS to do exactly what you want it to do, without compromise
  • Interoperability - Having diffrerent systems work together seamlessly sounds like a nice dream to many administrators and IT Managers, however one of the important aspects of OSS is that it is usually built on Open Standards. Open Standards means openly published and recognised standards such as protocol or data formats, and Open Standards ensure that various applications, operating systems, and entire systems can communicate and exchange information in a way that is useful. See the business case for Open Standards below for more information.
  • Greater strategic control - because there is no single vendor in OSS, and as the code is openly available, you have greater strategic control and bargaining leverage than if there is only one supplier. It means you can bargain for the quality of service you wish rather than dealing with a status quo. It also means you can not be locked into to artificial software upgrade cycles and that you can make more efficient use of your hardware for longer
  • Lower licencing and management costs - OSS doesn't have a licence fee, although some products have optional support and subscription fees. OSS also runs on multiple architectures meaning you can consolidate your operating systems and due to good virtual machine options, you can also consolidate your hardware. With Linux in particular, you can run multiple services on one stable system, rather than having to split them out
  • Simplified risk management - OSS has very few viruses. This is largely a result of technology that was built after the internet and thus designed from the ground up with better network protection. Also because the development is done in the open, potential security flaws are found and fixed quickly in the public eye, which means you always know what is going on
  • More efficient staff - it has been found that although Linux administrators are on average more expensive than Windows administrators, the average Linux admin could maintain 44 boxes while a Windows admin could do 10 (See ZDNet reference)

Leveraging Open Source methodologies often provides the following benefits:

  • More efficient software development - OSS has shown us a new and more efficient way to develop software. Using these methodologies within your own environment or leveraging the OSS development community can both offer serious cost and time benefits for anyone writing software, whether it is for inhouse bespoke application or for the market
  • Professional development for your engineers - by encouraging your engineers to participate in OSS and the OSS community, they learn a lot, become better at troubleshooting and finding information, and also rub shoulders with the best developers and administrators in the world, so they can get ahead of the flock and provide superior service for your organisation and clients
  • A competitive edge in the market - by leveraging OSS technologies, you can get ahead of the market by offering equal or superior products for a lower price. Basically, you are lowering the starting price of your product by leveraging existing and free products as part of your offering. It also means all the business case reasons for OSS work for your offering

Building on and Releasing Open Source Software often provides the following benefits:

  • Proliferation of your software - OSS products have the opportunity to get more use by other agencies and the public. Consequently, the amount of feedback, bug reports and suggested improvements is likely to boost the development cycle significantly
  • Agency reputation - participating in Open Source development by either working within an existing Open Source project or releasing your own code can help boost an agency profile, and may even enable it to set standards in the case where the software has been widely adopted
  • Transparent e-Government - releasing core components as OSS increases the transparency of the business processes underpinned by the software. This means the outcomes can be trusted, and the software predictable. Modelling results, for instance, can then be verified openly, ensuring good and trustworthy research and e-Government process
  • Stakeholder benefits - releasing software to stakeholders is likely to contribute to visible impacts in their business. The organisation that has developed the software is then better positioned strategically in terms of having achieved real outcomes as opposed to simple outputs
  • Commercial viability - by Open Sourcing your software, you give a broad range of groups the opportunity to participate in feature contributions. This often means that you will have a cross industry approach, features that are useful beyond just your use-case, and thus a higher commercial relevance of the project
  • New ideas and collaborations - Open Source projects give individuals and companies a window to improving your project, and to bring new ideas to the table. The collaborative approach also gives you valuable contacts who share commons aims which is useful for future projects and collaborations

Business case for Open Source above provided by Pia Waugh.