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The Benefits of 'Vendor-Free' Open Source IT
Posted by
Zonk
on Sun Feb 17, 2008 02:14 AM
from the keeping-the-consultants-out-the-cold dept.
from the keeping-the-consultants-out-the-cold dept.
mjasay writes "IDC has released a report looking into industry adoption of open software. In the study, analyst Matt Lawton stumbles across an intriguing trend: IT departments do most of the services around open source, rather than third-party consulting companies. While IDC believes this is a bad thing, the data in the report suggests otherwise. 70% of the enterprises surveyed did their own implementations, while roughly 90% supported their own open-source deployments. This might be a cause for alarm if the projects weren't so successful: 70% of the projects were deemed to be of "Critical" or "High Importance" compared to other IT projects and 90% plan to maintain or increase their investment in open source projects. Could it be that open source is liberating enterprises from an unhealthy dependence on vendors, and that early results suggest that this will be a Very Good Thing for the success of IT projects, many of which have failed historically."
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Good news for those going into IT (Score:5, Informative)
I've found the following:
- You get smarter, more resourceful people when they are not MSCE drones, but actually programmers that are able to solve a problem, not just relay it up the chain or find the checkbox in the configuration GUI.
- There is much less waste in a way, and more in another way. Specifically, implementing a solution often involves talking to a single person about a problem with the database, not finding the "Oracle consultant guy" who then can talk to the "Microsoft guy." With a department that has its own development, these things seem to go faster and there is less separation of functions.
- However, many hospitals / organizations duplicate functionality, which is the "more waste" that I talk about. I mean, many, many businesses are the same and need email / web server setups plus a few business-specific apps. This is all duplicated by each organization. Training a consultant is even more globally efficient in this regard, who can take his expertise and start multiple implementations without (expensive) retraining.
Overall, I think this is great news for smart people going into IT. You will be sought after to lead a company department, and all of those license fees can now contribute to your salary + additional savings for the company. Would you rather earn $x from being a MSCE admin, or $5x managing a vertical open-source system with much more intellectual stimulation? I'd take the latter.
Model at this point.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Model at this point.... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Model at this point.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Another time I ran into a minor SQLAlchemy bug having to do with Postgres domains column types. I reported it along with some sample code to reproduce the error, and it was fixed in the next release a couple weeks later.
It's that kind of responsiveness that's the reason I'm a FOSS fanatic. I get so frustrated with closed off-the-shelf software! Yes, FOSS is sometimes a little rough around the edges or incomplete, but it's always improving and the authors have always been responsive to my problems -- even if it was a PEBKAC error. Can't say the same for closed source.
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Now I got it why our software project was so successful even when our client in healthcare business didn't have any fricking idea what they wanted and our other business partners we're totally clueless too. I never passed the 70-316 exam! I'll make a mental note not to try it again, ever ... ;)
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You get smarter, more resourceful people when they are not MSCE drones, but actually programmers that are able to solve a problem
This would make more se
Open Source != Free (Score:3, Interesting)
Now, this may not necessarily be a bad thing, but I don't see how this is markedly different from, say, paying Microsoft.
You're still paying for support and stability -- just that you have a little more flexibility and control over your software, which usually does not matter all that much in enterprise production applications. I mean, just often do you recompile your kernel or add a new feature on your platform handling millions of transactions a day for a critical client? I didn't think so.
I mean, yay for Open Source and all that, but so what? At least from a customer perspective, you may not be paying for licenses anymore, but you are still paying for support -- and that is usually where the bulk of the expenses lie.
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Re:Open Source != Free (Score:4, Interesting)
That probably isn't as much of an issue for home users, but in a corporate environment the cost of lock in can be huge.
And that's the case whether the software is paid for or not, as long as you've got the code, you have the option to overcome the lock in most cases.
Which is why I generally use products like moneydance that can export as xml or products that use common standards like mp3 or even rtf. Looking forward to ODF though, that'll hopefully be much better than the rtfs have been.
Parent
Hmmm. (Score:2)
OTH, imagine if you buy Oracle linux, and then they are bought by MS. What do yo
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Some of those enterprise or government contracts are pretty tightly written.
I just finished taking a course at HP and the instructor said that due to
the large installed base of OpenVMS in the US Armed Forces, HP bowed
to the existing requirement that VMS will NEVER be "sunset".
Re:Hmmm. (Score:4, Interesting)
But SCO is a different matter. They are about to go under. Once a company goes chap 9 or 11, they are under no legal obligations to uphold these, except ones like the feds. BG is only re-opening this case because Vista is an absolute disaster for them. Otherwise, SCO would now be gone.
Parent
Re:Open Source != Free (Score:4, Interesting)
You're still paying for support and stability -- just that you have a little more flexibility and control over your software, which usually does not matter all that much in enterprise production applications. I mean, just often do you recompile your kernel or add a new feature on your platform handling millions of transactions a day for a critical client? I didn't think so.
But that's all a bit of a red herring. It's not so important that we can make code changes but that other people can. People who aren't all beholden to the same decision makers. This gives us some leeway with our environment and vendor choices. We currently deploy a lot of RHEL. But if RedHat fails us as a vendor, we can move to Canonical or even Novell with relatively minimal fuss. We've put off major vendor and architecture changes like this before because the shift from one proprietary architecture to another was so dramatic that we were willing to put up with substandard vendor support for years. If that particular example was based on an OSS architecture, the shift would have been far, far simpler (albiet still somewhat involved I'm sure).
To a lesser extent, licensing is still a plus. We have RHEL entitlements for our lab, but never enough to cover all the projects popping up. Most of the time we can simply stand up a CentOS instance and work with that until the point where one "needs" a full RHEL install. We really don't need the full support of RedHat for those projects. And it's nice to not worry about where the licensing is coming from.
Do we still pay for Open Source Software? Sure do.... a fair amount. Of course, at our level, licensing is supposed to be a minor issue. I'd believe that more if we didn't keep running in to issues about where other OS installs are getting licenses or how many CALs a project needs.
Parent
Re:Open Source != Free (Score:4, Interesting)
The perspective that organic resources are inferior to external resources for solving problems can be resolved in HR by hiring capable people. You can start by hiring capable HR people or letting the prospective coworkers interview the applicants. If the attitude of the HR team is that any certified fool will do it should no surprise that certified fools are doing the work and the result will be as expected. If you can't solve this problem your competitors can and I'm not worried about how it works out for you.
You're not just paying for support and stability. If stability were a critical factor you wouldn't be looking at Microsoft solutions at all. Their history on this issue is bad. Integration is a factor too and here Microsoft has the edge because their integration from bottom to top is superb. It's easy to integrate when you have no standard to adhere to. Open source answers are great for servers where one server does one job and you can strip out every other part. Where standards are present there's no reason not to go with open solutions. TCP/IP won, didn't it? On the desktop open source doesn't gain the end-to-end integration advantage until you're dealing with high levels of customization or large numbers of apps that don't work well together. Virtualization and application servers can be very helpful here. If what you need is an end-to-end answer today with the resources you have, the Microsoft answer can be an appealing choice.
Two major problems with the Microsoft solutions are stability and flexibility. On flexibility, when you come to the point where the Microsoft solution just doesn't have the feature you want you'll find you're in a corner where the solution is beyond any answer. On stability they're improving but we're still a long way from "good". Another problem with flexibility is that if you move to a standards based approach you will find that the standards lag the practice and to compete you'll need people who can assess the merits of available technology despite lack of dominant standards. Such people are seldom cheap and often hard to find. It is my belief they are worth both the effort and the money.
If by some chance you find yourself in an organization where a movement to adopt open source or standards is successfully met with "We can't do that, we're a Microsoft shop" my best guidance is to flee to the competitor that is not so impaired, or if it's a government shop, to lay low and solve the problems you have with the best available technology and let the conflict settle itself out.
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Huge difference (Score:3, Insightful)
Now, this may not necessarily be a bad thing, but I don't see how this is markedly different from, say, paying Microsoft.
It's massively different. With Microsoft you're locked into their file formats and their upgrade cycle. You can either dance on the end of their patch string or leave your network vulnerable. I'm constantly surprised at how much MS dictates the daily activity of MS-centric shops.
The best value with open source is to implement it yourself. The next best thing would be paying some
Conclusion Not In Evidence... (Score:4, Insightful)
This post reminds me that most slashdotters are engineers, and not project managers. How in the world do you infer that the projects are "so successful"?
The article (which I did read) does claim a large percentage of the projects are "Critical" or "High Importance", but this does not mean, "These are the successful projects." Rather it means, "These projects had damn well better be successful!" Are they successful? No word on that.
This is another example of posters' bias, reading conclusions into an article that does not support them.
Come back when there's some history of these internally supported projects. Let's see if they do better than the dismal 50% average success achieved by today's corporate technologists.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Because if you define success as somebody using open source (as slashdot editors and most posters do), then all open source projects are by definition successful. Failure would be if they used closed source, and if they used microsoft it would be a disaster.
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Evidence (Score:3, Interesting)
all open source projects are by definition successful. Failure would be if they used closed source, and if they used microsoft it would be a disaster.
Sure, why not? If the free software was not a success it would quickly be replaced by your other options who's costs are known. Most of these companies have been there and done that.
You are witnessing the rise of free software. It has already taken over embedded systems, HPC and other "server" applications. The whole point was to provide a community sh
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Modded "Informative"?
Look, I know it's de rigeur for posters not to read TFA, but if you're going to moderate, at least TRY to understand what's going on.
This point was addressed specifically in the article;
90 percent of respondents are planning to increase or keep the same (very healthy) level of investment in open source.
Clearly, if the projects weren't working out, we'd see this number come in much lower.
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I've worked in healthcare IT (admitidly in a differentcentuary). The idea that bad projects would lead to a change in behaviour is a really nice fantasy. The reality is more like continually banging your head on a brick wall, when it hurts bang some more to see if it lessens, repeat.
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You don't seem to come from IT. IT projects only become "critial" or "hight importance" when they make people work better, so people start relying on them. Also, IT projects are declared sucessfull when they make people work better, so people start relying on them.
I see how one could make that inference...
A Perfect Team (Score:3, Insightful)
Truth....hurts.
Re:A Perfect Team (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Yup (Score:5, Interesting)
I develop software for electronic toll collection systems. In 1997, that stuff all ran on things like UnixWare 2.1 with VenturCom real-time extensions. It worked fine when it worked, but if you ever uncovered a bug that was difficult to solve, forget it. We once encountered a problem with the UnixWare 2.03 C library that caused a memory leak every time a file handle was written to. The fix? Upgrade to UW 2.1. Except, the realtime extensions package we had would only run on 2.03. What we needed was a patch to that version of the OS. SCO's answer? Well, that isn't our problem now is it? VenturCom's answer? Buy a new version of our extensions.
After experiences like that, I decided to switch our projects to Linux. In 1997, support for the near-realtime features I needed (memory locking, adjustable priorities, POSIX signals) was pretty poor under Linux, but it was worth working around it to get away from the corporate OSes.
The sad part is, my bosses initially refused to allow me to do that. The reason? There was no official means of support, we would have to maintain the software ourselves! To them, the concept of "support" was just a check box you ticked off somewhere, not something they actually ever had to use. And they had no idea that it was simply easier to go out and find a fix, or fix problems yourself, than to rely on some multilevel telephone hell that usually doesn't know anything in depth about the products it is supposed to help with.
Ironically, today, practically every embedded system in the toll and intelligent transportation industry runs on Linux; it has become the industry standard.
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Open Source (Score:3, Interesting)
Most information about how to tweak these are found quickly by using Google, while many commercial packages are cumbersome and also sometimes requires configuration in many places/modules using a variety of user interfaces to be both safe and stable.
What often happens is that when a support issue actually occurs it can cost a lot of time to straighten out while trying to contact a vendor but it is likely already fixed in an open source package one way or another. What many analysts fails to see is that each support case can create a downtime that has an impact on both support personnel and a lot of people depending on the service.
"The time to fix" factor is seldom seen in an analysis like this.
There are of course also open source packages that doesn't work as well, but the author is often aware of that and has probably inserted a huge disclaimer stating the limitations. And how many times have you seen a limitation declaration in a commercial package? (Unless of course it's a liability limitation).
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It so happens that Windows Vista isn't fully compatible [freeallegiance.org] with the game -- .net SP3 borks the authentication system [photobucket.com]. Its dev promptly looked for the problem, and of course the problem was found in the third-party obfuscation tool. He submitted a ticket and the community is waiting for a
It's about relative risk. (Score:5, Insightful)
(a) Spend several ten of thousands upfront and the another few thousand every year on a commercial product. Never have it integrate like they promised it would. Wait weeks or forever for fixes. Repeat every three years. Or..
(b) Buy a couple of servers. Spend time I would otherwise have spent trying not to fall asleep putting together what we need by gluing together a few open source systems. Fix it when it breaks. Maybe it takes a few weeks. But we always get there in the end.
I'd be much happier paying good money for commercial 'solutions' if they weren't pretty much always rubbish. And by rubbish I mean plaintext auth over http, I mean wasting a week whilst vendors argue over whose problem it is - without actually investigating, etc etc.
If want less-than-perfect products with substandard support, I can do that myself.
No other services required = 20 percent (Score:4, Insightful)
And the line on the chart that struck me was the most was the one labelled "No other services required", with responses in the 20 percent (or more) range.
That means one in five projects, relying on Open Source Software, requires no support whatsoever (other than what the developers do for themselves, I presume).
That suggests that the Open Source Software they are using requires very little, if any, support.
In other words, IT JUST WORKS.
Can you imagine a project that relies on Windows, or other Microsoft software, that can get along without someone assigned to support? Heck, even a simple home Windows user has to know or hire someone to provide support, otherwise their PC ends up being used as a doorstop.
This matches my own experience. My son provides my PC service. When I was using Windows, I had to ask him for help every couple of weeks or so. But then he installed Linux for me (Debian, Gnome, Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice), and he hasn't had to touch my PC for almost two years. Linux has never crashed on me (though Firefox has).
I know that my son also converted a small business to Linux (servers and desktops), and now they don't call him unless they want something new added -- they never call him to fix something that's broken, unless it's a hardware problem.
This means that, when it comes to Total Cost of Ownership, Open Source software is not only cheaper for the initial installation, it is also cheaper in the long run, due to reduced problems, and reduced support costs.
Irony? (Score:3, Interesting)
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in house experience (Score:3, Insightful)
good if your management are smart enough to realise the value of the people who work for them, but usually they don't see this.
CYA (Score:3, Insightful)
I was just blogging about this (Score:2)
Except I was coming at it from the angle that companies waste a fantastic amount of time and money on software vendors. The fewer you have in the mix, the more value in your IT systems.
Too many companies are locked into dysfunctional vendor-lead relationships. They're getting advice and resources from another company in business to sell them something. It's bizarre but I see it all the time.
The best value with open source is to implement it yourself. If you get into trouble you can always whistle up
It's just a survey, people. (Score:2)
And these services are needed -- only 21% of the projects did not require attendant services.
First of all, what does IDC mean by "attendant services"? When I hear that, I think of the old half-blind guy that sits in the john at the rippers, handing out towels and cheap cologne for a tip. And trust me, kids: there's no way you're getting that second lapdance with wet hands and B.O.!
Jokes aside, are you going to call up your local best-of-breed Certified Middleware Synergizer (TM) to setup Subversion for your in-house Web developers? Not so much.
Rolling out Asterisk + SugarCRM on OpenVZ for th
Vendor Solutions Just Take Too Long (Score:3, Informative)
So yeah, fuck Vendors, we do 99% of our stuff in house, we are a FreeBSD shop with a ton of custom code. I like it this way, it keeps me off the phone with sales guys and snobby support techs. When it breaks, I fix it, not pick up the phone and pray they aren't having a high call volume.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
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Here [sourceforge.net] and Here [openatc.com]
Re:ATCS (Score:4, Funny)
Not sourceforge but it's so bloated there has to be an Air Traffic Control System in there somewhere.
Parent
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OOo 2.3.1 : 107MB
MS Office 2007 : 388 MB
Judging by those numbers, it looks like MS has given Excel its flight sim back, given Word an air traffic control app, and judging by the frequency of its crashes, given Powerpoint a demolition derby...
Re:IT support costs go down but auditing goes way (Score:3, Informative)
HP: see http://licensing.hp.com/slm/swl/view.slm?page=source [hp.com] (VMS, Tru64)
Solaris: completely open-source, see http://opensolaris.org/os/ [opensolaris.org]
IBM: not sure about them -- older releases of IBMs mainframe OS came with source, so I expect that z/OS comes with source. I *haven't* personally seen the source for AIX.
In general, OSs have ALWAYS come with source; back in the