Banishing the fear

An understanding of open source solutions makes them  more popular.By Gavin Stone, OSS, Operations Manager.Please briefly explain what your business offers in terms of open source.At OSS we deliver enterprise-class infrastructure solutions at an affordable price by combining best-of-breed proprietary solutions with open source solutions, integrating and enhancing as required, tomeet our clients’ needs.We have built solutions based on open source that support some of the largest public-facing transactional web services, enable mission-critical billing systems, foster innovation and education in schools, and power compute clusters for research. What are the biggest stumbling blocks to selling open source to enterprise CIOs and IT decision makers? Overcoming the perceived risk relating to support of the solution is probably the most regular discussion we have with decision makers. It’s fair to say that the mainstream adoption of open source has come a long way in the last couple of years, certainly in the infrastructure space, with many organisations now feeling comfortable enough to run critical and revenue-generating systems on open source solutions. The biggest element of change in this adoption rate is an increased understanding of risk, specifically relating to supportability, and hence the biggest challenge in the adoption of open source is that of education. Helping our clients to understand the practical aspects of risk has gone a long way to increasing the adoption rate for open source and, as such, education is a primary focus.Do you find that there is a lack of understanding amongst CIOs about open source, how it works and what it can do for a business?In general, no. Open source is no longer a taboo topic of conversation with the CIO community. In fact, we find that most are actually quite pragmatic about the use of open source and are willing to discuss and debate the benefits. The role of the CIO has strengthened somewhat in the last couple of years in New Zealand, and as a group they are far more business-orientated and less concerned about the technology. When decisions on solutions are measured against a well-defined set of attributes, the question of open source or closed source doesn’t often factor.In your opinion, do CIOs perceive open source as a riskier solution?Any reservations about open source usually stem from a lack of understanding about the supportability of solutions, and so questions surrounding support are often uppermost in the minds of decision makers.Why? And how can this be changed?The support/subscription model for open source is not readily understood and this does cause more questions than anything else. Many organisations first encountering open source are not aware of the extent of support they can build directly, or with a partner, to mitigate any risk associated with the day-to-day operations. With all things it’s hard to make an informed decision without all the facts, and this is where we’ve seen the benefits of educating those concerned about the ‘risk’ (real or perceived). A decision maker who takes the opportunity to understand the open source model, the reduced risk, and the benefits it can provide, will almost always support open source as part of a potential solution. As an example, we have clients with comprehensive service level agreements for 24/7, year-round, rapid-response support on revenue generating systems where a number of open source and closed source products are combined.Is it more popular to have an entirely open source solution or a mix of proprietary and open source? Why?It’s really about the most appropriate solution for the organisation, and we have delivered a wide and varied set of solutions to meet specific outcomes for clients. Our approach is not ‘one is better than the other’ and while we have an opinion on what we know works well, with closed and open source solutions, we consistently weigh all the options.Have you seen a greater interest in open source solutions over the last year? Absolutely. ICT spending has faced significant pressure in the last year and accountability of the CIO has driven a need to research alternative solution options. Many of our clients have actively pursued an interest in open source to enable them to present compelling solutions and business cases, and there are now some established champions across the sectors, specifically in education, government, research and large commercial organisations.Mobility solutions are becoming ever-more important – what role can open source play in this area (in particular given that Google Chrome OS is aimed at netbooks and giving Linux a run for its money)?The uptake of mobility solutions continues to rise dramatically and we expect to see a continued convergence driven by the consumer and their devices. This convergence relies on the rapid, open, community-based development that is the core of open source, and traditional vendors are embracing this paradigm and harnessing the community to secure their success.