By Steve Ranger, 28 October 2009 15:05
NEWS
It's a question many CIOs are wrestling with: can open source help make your IT budget stretch a little further in these tough economic times?
While some CIOs are enthusiastic about the potential savings that can be made, others still warn of the hidden costs that can lie in wait for the unwary.
silicon.com's latest CIO Jury came down strongly against the uptake of open source software as a way of saving money in the middle of the recession, with only two out of the 12-strong jury of CIOs saying they were using open source to cut costs.
While open source is often touted as a cost-saving option for CIOs (especially ones with CFOs unwilling to sign off on expensive proprietary software licences), several CIOs on the jury warned that the costs of migrating to open source - and the associated expenditure on retraining staff - serve as a disincentive to adoption.
But other members of the CIO Jury pool have said using open source has become a standard part of their software portfolio.
Nicholas Bellenberg, IT director at Hachette Filipacchi, said all of the publishing house's web development is based on open source technology: "I can't imagine why anyone would use anything different! There's no point in spending a fortune on proprietary systems or programming frameworks that don't move with the times. And yes, you can scale it big - Facebook does."
Alastair Behenna, CIO at Harvey Nash, was also positive about the contribution that open source can make: "There are some genuinely terrific products available that have extended our capabilities whilst easing the pain of having to follow certain vendor's prescriptive upgrade paths by offering better alternatives."
"We'd be very foolish to ignore the cost benefits of open source in the current climate," he added.
Steve Clarke, systems and operations director at The TalkTalk Group, was similarly positive about the savings open source can bring: "Whilst we already have an extensive use of open source software within the business, we have implemented more and contemplating further changes to drive down opex costs, particularly in software maintenance and support," he said.
However, while open source software has its place regardless of economic conditions...
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Comments
There are 4 comments. Join the discussion
1. karen challinor
make your minds up guys
you published this article "Open source? No good for cost cutting, say CIOs" on the 23rd and now five days later you publish an article which essentially says the exact opposite
which one do you want us to believe ?
2. Austin
There is a high probability that end-users are using open-source and not even aware of it. Many corporate and consumer web-based systems are using open source technology such as: apache, JBOSS, PostgresQL, MySQL to name a few. Not forgetting that these web technologies are also commonly found running on a Linux server platform too.
I'm still convinced that a product needs to be evaluated regardless of its licence. OpenOffice may not be viable as an alternative to MS Office because of formatting complications with pre-existing documentation but its certainly stable and can produce output in open standards. Support is available through Sun.
The level of support for open source products again depends on the product. Open source is becoming increasingly commercial with businesses providing enterprise level support and integration services to corporate customers.
3. Paul G
the article never explicitly says what "Open Source" means, there is a huge difference (for example) between downloading and making Linux work vs getting a copy of RH or SUSE Linux and getting a supported distribution (which probably comes with a bunch of proprietary "extras"). So be precise, I believe the integration and support costs of just plain downloading Open Source and trying to make and keep it working/running in production are prohibitive. Most major vendors today are building products with various quantities of Open Source
4. PlayStationPack.com
Well, open source software/technologies have helped keep economies alive and made the small company survive. What about open source video games, would that kill the gaming industry or make it even bigger?