The Three Advantages
- Article 6 of 16
- LinuxUser & Developer, October 2005
Understanding the open source business model. In the second of a series of articles on the changing market for open source software, Rob Buckley looks at the benefits that customers are looking for when they choose an open source solution
Page 1 | Page 2 | Page 3 | All 3 Pages
Last issue, we looked at companies that offer services and products based around open source software. But just as fire needs to air to survive, so these companies need people willing to pay them money for their products and services. While open source is famously free as in speech, not as in beer, there is a perception that open source software is and should be cheaper than closed source software or even free. So who’d paid for something that’s free?
Trying to characterise customers of open source software as a single homogeneous group is impossible. A home user will buy Linux for entirely different reasons from a Fortune 500 company, for example. Yet unlike developers and home users, private and public sector companies are principally looking at open source software for “The Three Advantages”: reduced costs, better support and technological superiority. Contrary to the expectations of many open source advocates, however, they are not generally looking to avoid vendor lock-in or for the ability to edit source code. Last of all, they definitely don’t want something that’s going to require extensive retraining of staff, which is why Linux hasn’t taken off yet on the desktop in most organisations.
One area it has is academia, where the costs of desktop OS licences put off poorer students and the technologically minded like to get their hands on raw technology. Joe Little, principle systems architect at Stanford University in the US, was so impressed by open source software, he joined TurboLinux for a year. Working in an academic environment, he’s more than used to dealing with a mixture of platforms and software, preferring Astaro security appliances for the network, Linux and other open source packages on the server, with Mac OS X or his own secure Stanford Linux distribution on the desktop.
“People tend to run whatever works for them. Licensing can be an issue. We tend to go from feast to famine when it comes to money: we can buy large infrastructure outright, but we can’t afford the costs of maintenance and subscriptions over time.”
It’s the ease of managing Astaro’s appliances, rather than their mainly open source, that made him select them for network security. “Astaro updates the entire stack, including the OS. The problem with CheckPoint, say, is that it leaves it up to you to maintain the OS.” It’s because Astaro can provide the OS as well as open, scrutinised application, Little believes, that it’s as secure and as easy to manage as it is.
Licensing issues aren’t just about cost though. Norisbank in Nuremberg, Germany, will use open source software wherever possible in its production systems, as long as there’s a company to support it. It uses SuSE, Apache and JBoss and is currently evaluating MySQL for databases.
Francis Pouatcha of the bank’s development team says the “technology leadership” and commitment to open standards in open source software makes it easier to understand. It therefore takes less time to evaluate and to start using it. But the lack of licensing costs is another advantage, albeit not the one most people expect.
“It’s much faster to use an open source application server. You won’t even have had the time to negotiate prices over the cost of WebLogic before you’re able to download, evaluate and start writing for JBoss.”
Daniel King, IT manager of engineering firm 1 Limited, is more than happy with his open source software. The firm has been using Red Hat Linux since he joined. While he’s looked at proprietary software for various infrastructure options, open source has always come out on top. “We’re very cost conscious. We’re getting products to the market for the first time, so it’s all down to cost, although reliability and flexibility were important.” With the company staffed mainly by engineers with other responsibilities, King needed software that was reliable and in need of little maintenance, so Linux was the way forward. If things get tricky, a local firm can help out and “there’s support on the web if things get really tricky”.
Indeed, most open source customers regard the open source community as one of the biggest sources of support and therefore advantages of open source. Many, in fact, regard the support provided by the community as better than that provided by most companies, although few have the skills necessary to provide support to others.
Page 1 | Page 2 | Page 3 | All 3 Pages