How CIOs deal with the trials and triumphs of open source projects – ETCIO.com

Enterprises are in the middle of digital transformation, with demand for agile business models and customer-centric services. This in turn raises the demand and necessity for innovative, responsive and low cost software products. Open source therefore is making its way from high tech firms and startups to the enterprises.

Open source gives CIOs architectural control by avoiding vendor lock-in, this helps create a digital backbone to deploy hybrid cloud environments and new operating models while leveraging their existing IT infrastructure and applications seamlessly.

Cost center to innovation essential

According to Forrester data, a third of global enterprise infrastructure decision makers see expanding the use of open source as a critical or high priority.

Open source technology is strategically crucial as part of the enterprise software strategy especially because it helps drive a collaborative approach to innovation as well as having a significant impact in domains like artificial intelligence, machine learning, cloud computing, etc, says Harnath Babu, CIO, KPMG.

More than 50 percent of the Fortune 100 use OpenStack, and over 50 percent of the Fortune 500 use Cloud Foundry, states Danny Mu, Principal Analyst, Forrester. From the operating system to the latest responsive design framework, many open source technologies are stable and ready for prime time. Open source solutions offer rapidly evolving ecosystems, credibility for digital startups through strong communities, easier customization and disposability, said Mu.

Vetting open source projects

Open source is a development model, not a business model. Enterprise customers need products, not projects and its incumbent on vendors to know the difference.

Too often, we see open source companies who dont understand the difference between projects and products. In a rush to deliver the latest and greatest innovations, as packaged software or public cloud services, these companies end up delivering solutions that lack the stability, reliability, scalability, compatibility and all the other non-functional requirements that enterprise customers rely on to run their mission-critical applications, said Marshal Correia, Vice President and General Manager, India, South Asia at Red Hat.

While the motivation of companies to sponsor an open source project might be for marketing and branding or development recruitment purposes, maintaining a consistent revenue stream is a struggle.

Atul Mangla, VP-Technology, Digit Insurance agrees with the market sentiment of the non-evolution of OS sans active sponsor and developer community. Young organizations should choose projects which are well established in the market and being used by multiple other companies whereas big organizations can sponsor new open source projects and reap the benefits of crowdsourcing of ideas and skills, he said.

And as sponsorship is required from business as it's one of the biggest bets for them, CIOs also need to create comfort with the businesses by developing skill sets, continuously evolving the platform as well as looking for support options through subscription models, opined Babu.

Community participation

One of the best ways to mitigate the risks associated with open source projects is to ensure community participation. Organizations primary focus should remain on building great offerings with great customer experience. However, once the initial stage is passed, it is a good time for an organization to start contributing to open source communities of its choice.

This helps in not only giving back to projects/communities where you gained in the past, but also it fuels the next level of innovation within the organization, says Mangla.

What customers pay for is the support to help manage lifecycle management and interoperability, opines Correia. "If you have made any changes or additions to the code, you need to share that knowledge and intelligence back with the community," he says.

The source code for open source software is free. However that does not necessarily mean that executable software is given away for free. For instance, the source code for Red Hat Enterprise Linux is freely available to anyone, but converting that source code into runnable code requires expertise, time, and servers, Correia says.

Harnath Babu believes that as enterprises leverage on the innovation driven by open source communities, it is only fair to give back with code improvements and enhancements. CIOs can have a clear-cut strategy to Code Commit back to the communities to ensure that the software gets enriched as well as other enterprises can leverage on it to solve business problems, he concludes.

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