Boom year ahead for OSS

Open source software adoption will boom in 2009, as consumers and businesses search for ways to cut back on licence fees. While exact numbers are not currently available, most companies are gearing themselves for a boost in open source software adoption next year, say industry players.

Ibrahim Njabulo Moyo, software solution architect at Sun Microsystems, says: “More and more customers are looking at open source as a new route because they'll be saving lots of money. With open source, even if there's a crisis, our customers will still be in operation.”

A recent study by research firm Gartner, on global OSS adoption trends, revealed “the most important reason for using OSS is lower total cost of ownership”.

Muggie van Staden, MD of Obsidian, says this is also the case in the South African context. “More and more people are moving to adopt open source to applications. There will be continued growth to using it and this is because the total cost of ownership is lower.”

Van Staden adds that while no growth projections for 2009 had been made, the company anticipates “strong possible growth” of OSS adoption.

While companies are looking at open source as a means of cost-cutting, issues such as supportability and governance continue to be neglected. Gary Robertson, director at Ubuntu Technologies, comments that “structures of governance are not properly in place” and that this is a problem most companies need to work to find a solution to.

“The biggest problem with open source right now is not the adoption of it, but the support and adaptation of the software. There aren't many vendors in the country who deal with issues such as customisation,” he explains.

This is a worldwide trend, as the findings from the Gartner survey reveal. “Governance, or the lack of it, was the number one challenge for OSS users in the survey, followed by conflicting terms and conditions and the availability of too many licence types and forms. Companies must have a policy for procuring OSS, deciding which applications will be supported by OSS, and identifying the intellectual property risk or supportability risk associated with using OSS. Once a policy is in place, then there must be a governance process to enforce it.”

One area where open source adoption will definitely boom is in the government arena, says Robertson. “Government is keen on adopting open source. There are agencies such as SITA [the State IT Agency] which have implemented open source widely. And for them, it is a reasonable option to pursue.”

Van Staden believes open source can now address organisations' business needs and this will drive its increased adoption - across the public and private sector.

Gartner's survey findings indicate that adopting open source systems has been proven to reduce cost. “Of the large number of application software projects, respondents indicated a higher rate of using OSS as a replacement for commercially available products, while using mostly OSS components for their infrastructure development. In areas where OSS projects are most mature, IT departments appear comfortable with using OSS components to enhance existing infrastructure environments,” the survey states.

“The move towards open source allows for better operating systems and more bang for your buck and it's interoperable,” Van Staden says.

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