Open Sources Commercial viability

No matter how much ever its discussed and debated the question on commercial viability of Open Source remains. Given the mandate 'Do more with less', IT managers are looking for ways to cut down the IT spending without compromising on the infrastructure.

Recently, Twitter has announced that it will execute the biggest IT IPO this year and it's almost entirely built with Linux and open source - and the commercial possibilities for Twitter are huge. Red Hat, an open source company, now has over $1B in annual revenue. The ecosystem around Linux is many times larger than the operating system itself.

Couple of the examples signifies the relevance of Open Source and its commercial feasibility.

Dhananjay Chandrasekhar Rokde, Global Head Information Security, Cox & Kings asserts that Open Source Software is on the rise in a slowdown scenario.

Looking back to mid 2008 when recession hit the world economy, he says, With a financial collapse extremely well-known, the IT industry dodged a huge cannonball as world markets started to regain normalcy. It was during this period where
OSS utilization shot through the roof. Global software giants were being crushed under their own weight, forcing software prices to go up. On the other hand, extremely conservative CFOs were opposed to any spending and never released additional funds for software renewals or fresh capital expenditures on buying newer licenses. CIOs were asked to sustain on merely their lights on budgets. CIOs & IT middle managements were forced to look into the direction of
OSS.

At times, it becomes a challenge for enterprises not comfortable with open source to accept it as a viable approach for developing quality software. But those perceptions are changing. Be it business, non-profit or government, organizations of all sizes have been adopting open source software packages for many different purposes.

For instance, the Linux operating system and Apache Web servers power much of the Internet. The Firefox Web browser is leading the sphere. Content management systems like Drupal, Joomla and Wordpress are becoming increasingly viable options. An open source model can result in powerful, secure, useful, industrial-strength software.

Srikanth.S, ISD Senior Manager Information Security, TVS Motor Company says, Open source also presents a deep and profound challenge to the model of financial viability on which the software industry has historically been based. Nobody in the industry, not even the most extreme open source advocates, want to see it go the way of the pure sciences, reduced to begging for grants from governments. Yet, it remains unclear exactly how open source software can possibly be financially viable in the long term, given that the code is, by definition, made openly available for free.

The major player in Open Source, Red Hat, quite obviously, has a slightly different viewpoint.

For commercially viable open source solutions, we need to look at enterprise-class, hardened, reliable solutions, coupled with support for the customers. Open source technology that is standardized, interoperable, and modular provides choice and the flexibility for organizations to choose the way they run their IT infrastructures and deployment, says Arun Kumar, General Manager, Red Hat
India.

Open source software is leveraging today because end users now expect most software and web services to be free. Open source software has been perceived as software where its original source code is made freely available and can be redistributed and modified.

Subhomoy Chakroborti, a believer in Open Source and General manager, IT, Magma Fincorp thinks there are couple of factors leading to adoption of Open Source software. The primary factor is cost and then comes the flexibility.

He says, With the tough market scenario, getting IT budget approval is getting tougher for any new IT initiatives. Any savings on the TCO by reducing license cost is an advantage.

Peter Lees, Principal Technologist & field product manager for Suse, Asia Pacific, says he is not surprised to see the increasing number of commercial operations use open source as the basis for their products.

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