By Andy McCue, 12 June 2007 16:44
NEWS
The hidden cost and complexity of open source is still a key barrier to adoption for many CIOs and large enterprises.
Ian Cohen, Associated Newspapers CIO - and recently voted one of the UK's top 50 CIOs - said at the Forrester IT Forum in Edinburgh this week that open source just isn't "particularly relevant".
Cohen said that while he doesn't mind it being embedded in hardware or exploited by suppliers open source isn't something he is interested in doing himself.
He said: "It is another layer of complexity."
Daryl West, Lloyds TSB CTO, speaking at the same event agreed: "If you look at the savings you end up having to create a support organisation internally to support it. If you do the analysis fully it's not as attractive as is first apparent."
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The much-hyped software as a service (SaaS) trend also came under fire and Cohen said he remains to be convinced about SaaS in the enterprise, despite some of the services players such as Google have released.
He said: "It's a concept I'd like to buy but I'm a cautious buyer. I'm struggling with the next step, the industrialising of the idea."
Lloyds TSB's West added: "For large enterprises where you have got a lot of stuff, and an industry like mine tightly regulated, having core pieces of your application stack as a service doesn't fit. Then you've got to plumb it in and that plumbing is not easy."
But Pascal Matzke, principal analyst at Forrester, said the IT "ecosystem" will move more and more towards delivering functionality as a service through SaaS, storage-on-demand and adaptive IT services, with the CIO becoming a "service broker".
Matzke said: "Essentially what we are looking at is the concept of a service broker organisation to broker internal and external service delivery in the context of business service level agreements and on an as-needed basis. Technology will be much more transparent in terms of the value it provides to the business."
The key roadblock to all of this, he admitted, is the existing "silo" structure within many organisations' infrastructure and applications.
He said: "If you look at the monolithic application landscape, especially on the ERP side, consolidation is essential. That's going to take some time."
Comments
There are 11 comments. Join the discussion
1. anonymous
They would say that...
... of course CIOs are going to be cautious (not to say protective of empires) on both open source and SaaS... but that does not mean there is not a good case IN DUE TIME.
A tightly regulated industry (such as banking) is rather a good case for SaaS precisely because everything is so tightly controlled. Companies delude themselves that they have significant process differences that actually matter to customers or are even visible to them. Truth is - they don't. Standardisation of parts has transformed physical manufacturing, as has handing over tasks/processes to specialists (outsourcing if you must call it that). That is the natural evolution of industry. The same will happen to the parts IT enables - it is when, not if.
In this case it seems to me most likely that it will start with small/medium companies who have most to gain and smallest empires opposing the idea. It will then spread, perforce, to large organisations as they realise they are being out classed and overtaken by the one-time "little guys" who just went and did what "couldn't be done".
Look at the airline industry for a parallel - the low cost carriers now process considerable passenger volumes on low cost, more or less off the shelf systems that many said could not handle this. SaaS (hosting, bureau, whatever) has been common for core passenger systems in airlines since for ever. Most of the planet's largest airlines don't own the core systems they depend upon. And no, that is not the cause of the cyclical boom/bust nature of airline business.
2. Frustrated, but competent, user
The only consistent thing that comes out of all the CIO Jury articles is that they are highly resistant to change and innovation and prefer to stick with the same old, same old. Not for any of them the risk of doing something different that might give their organisation the edge; 'lock it all down boys, that's the only way we can stay in control' appears to be their mantra.
No wonder an increasingly savvy workforce feels the IT department is a hindrance and, increasingly, an irrelevance. We want to get the job done as quickly and effectively as possible. More and more often that means circumventing some daft rule/process put in place by the IT dept.
3. anonymous
Yes - it's similar to asking a group of factory workers whether a new automated process has any merits.
To say Open Source is not relevant is plain ridiculous and narrow minded. OSS might not be the be all and end all but it certainly has a place - whether that is in proof of concept, development or production etc depends on the project and tools being used.
Similarly with SaaS - to claim it is the software delivery panacea would be foolish but again it has its place and some very large scale projects are seeing a great deal of success with it.
4. Sarah
As an oldie (in IT terms), this attitude reminds me of the mantra from the 60's and 70's "no one ever got fired for buying IBM."
Funny how that changed. And funny how the company those most of these CIOs are in to were the one who were mainly responsible for changing IBM in the 1980s!
5. paul broome
We use Open source in core parts of our systems. This has allowed us to match and beat the big boys on closed systems.
We've taken Open Source projects and extended code wise and systems wise.
6. Chris Anderson
Open source is too complicated for most users. proprietary software is bad enough, but as most "Users" will say "I'm not in IT" if you ask them to, for example, connect to a different printer, the chances of them being prepared to use software that is mostly designed for the computer literate is extremely slim.
7. George Dundon
Surely open source should not be an option.
Irrespective of what system is used for the actual rocessing, almost all systems today use only one OS from one vendor for the user interface. If that OS is sabotaged then we lose control. This would be a disaster in the modern world and the only protection is an alternative source of supply.
It is no use investing in systems with no single point of failure if the whole of the human control and display is potentially liable to criminal or terrorist attack from infiltrators in Microsoft.
This is especially relevant to large organisations such as banks and governments
8. DAR
CIOs 'not relevant', Say Open source Developers
9. Kevin Cole
How many nay-sayers have sat down with a modern Linux system for more than a day? (Sitting down with open source for 15 minute stretches doesn't count.) There's a learning curve to new closed-source software as well. Today's Linux is a far cry from what it was even three years ago. Ubuntu, in particular, is making great strides in user-friendliness. I've given Ubuntu CD's to newcomers with no technical skills, and with very little effort, they've become converts. Red Hat is also reaching out. And if CIO's think that the high schoolers and college students are learning Windows, they're in for a rude awakening in a few years.
10. Steve Bale
Enterprises generally consider the adoption of open source to reduce costs and free up IT budget for new projects and applications. But while cost is the key, ease must be the driver. In the database market as an example, there can certainly be hidden costs and risks associated with adopting open source solutions such as data and application migration efforts as well as lack of commercial service and support. Driving change to reduce costs, such as with the adoption of open source databases, should not be at the expense of compromising on system performance, functionality, manageability or scalability.
Organisations do have an opportunity to reap the benefits of open source while avoiding the hidden costs and risks. Using a hybrid model that delivers the cost savings of open source with the benefits of 24x7 support, services and training, and migration and administration toolsets delivered by a commercial organisation will go a long way towards mitigating the risks of pure open source adoption.
11. Bertrand Matthelié
We're actually seeing an increasing number of CIOs leveraging Open Source to provide more value to their customers and make their organizations more agile. For example, you can read about another UK based CIO's view on Open Souce, JP Rangaswami, CIO of BT Services, at:
http://www.mysql.com/why-mysql/cio-corner/interviews/jp-rangaswami.html
While a few years back Open Source solutions may have been slightly complex to implement, a lot had been done to make it much easier to deploy and benefit from open source solutions.