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Open source meets bankers' agility demands

Michelle Avenant
By Michelle Avenant, portals journalist.
Johannesburg, 03 Sept 2015
An always-open enterprise gives businesses more control, says Matthew Lee of SUSE.
An always-open enterprise gives businesses more control, says Matthew Lee of SUSE.

Open source technology can be particularly useful in the financial and banking sectors, says Matthew Lee, regional manager for Africa at SUSE.

In the fields of banking and stock trading, agility is of critical importance, as is maintaining top performance and around-the-clock availability for the business systems that underpin trading and banking activity, Lee says.

Open source is configured for interoperability with a wide range of hardware and "provides the platform to adapt more quickly to changing demands by deploying virtual servers which allow the IT team to introduce changes or add new applications as needed, while maintaining high levels of availability," he says.

"An always-open enterprise gives businesses more control of their IT infrastructure," as it offers "the flexibility to customise according to company and industry-specific requirements," says Lee. This malleability is particularly useful in the shifting regulatory environment of the financial sector, he adds.

No free lunch

Yet while open source software may be free to deploy, its flexibility comes at a price, says Clinton Bruigom, director and principal consultant at OSCOSM.

To adapt or change an open source system to suit specific needs requires particular skills, which must either be maintained in-house or outsourced by the company at a price, says Bruigom.

While open source is easy to evolve, it is important to keep in mind that this process is not necessarily cheap, he notes.

SA reluctant

While the 2015 Future of Open Source survey saw 65% of respondents lauding the competitive advantages of open source due to factors such as easier deployment and strong scaling ability, many businesses in SA remain reluctant, says Lee.

One of the biggest stumbling blocks to open source adoption in SA is the entrenchment of the status quo, he continues. "Proprietary software is seen as the 'traditional model' and many companies think it is easier to follow the norm than it is to change their approach," Lee explains.

Yet more and more organisations in the banking and financial sectors are looking to open source for the competitive advantages it can offer, he notes.

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