Open Source technologies have been in use for some time now. However, there is still a cloud of hesitation in a CIOs mind, when it comes to implementing these technologies or even while planning out an open source implementation.

Gartner’s Brian Prentice enlightened Indian CIOs on the current Open Source scenario, at the recently held Gartner CIO summit. Gartner mentioned that as it didn’t expect to see too many vendors cutting down the price of their proprietary offering, for countries like India, Open Source technologies offer locked-in businesses an opportunity to step out of the trap.

Unlike proprietary software vendors, Open Source vendors have conventionally been making money either through embedded management, or subscriptions, extensions, packaging and integration, and support. With increased adoption of Open Source technologies, there is a good chance that the future will see even more enterprises running on open source technologies with varying business models. However, there are also a number of key adoption concerns among enterprises, which could be responsible for the somewhat slow adoption rate of Open Source software. These concerns have been briefly mentioned below:

Legal Risks With Open Source Licenses
Managements are getting concerned about the kind of licensing issues they will get into, if they are to embrace open source. There isn’t a single open source license, but many. This gives rise to conflicts in the long run which is definitely avoidable.

Open Source Pedigree Control For Quality And Security
Software quality is a concern, considering there’s no real way of knowing how secure the solution is, or how tightly it’s been coded. This is definitely a concern for any CIO who is considering implementation.

There is also doubt regarding the TCO advantage offered by open source technologies as compared with proprietary technology. The factor here is new technologies will require additional hours of staff training, and integration.

Integration And Interoperability
Integrating Open Source technologies with other proprietary systems, can prove to be quite a task. This is a chief concern, considering the requirement of software in an enterprise to be highly interoperable.

Acquisition of software is not that much of an issue, however it’s the cost of moving data around, and creating an interoperable environment that adds to the original cost.

Establish Open Source Policies
In order to make it easier to make a decision with regards to Open Source, Prentice mentioned that establishing open source policies will greatly help enterprises set some sort of guidelines while implementing Open Source technologies. "CIOs must clearly identify and become familiar with the details of each Open Source Software license they consider," mentioned Prentice. CIOs have also been recommended to measure the maturity of each OS project they consider to establish viability for their own use.

Prentice also recommended that establishing well defined channels of acquisition for each open source product that is leveraged will help make the decision making process easier. Enterprise must also establish a policy of indemnity and warranty requirements based on real world risk.

Measure Open Source Maturity
Gartner believes that this exercise serves the purpose of an assessment of sorts, which will give CIOs a way to simplify their decision making process. Some factors that Gartner recommended CIOs should consider encompassed software functionality, usability, quality, security, performance, scalability, documentation, adoption, community, and process and governance.

Recommendations
CIOs need to understand the extent of the use of open source software in their organization. Prentice feels that this can be achieved by maintaining a comprehensive inventory.

CIOs have also been recommended to apply a maturity model and pre-approve specific products or classes of products for specific uses. Adapting software procurement and selection policies with explicit provisions for availability of documentation, support and internal resources that are more relevant to open source software will also prove to be useful.

Lastly, Gartner believes that CIOs must develop business case templates which could be used by those seeking approval for the use of Open Source.

On A Positive Note
Although Open Source has been around for some time, it is now being used seriously in enterprises. Prentice predicts that by 2012, 75% of software products will have embedded open source software.

Ankush Sohoni