The adoption of open source software by South African businesses has risen dramatically over the last six months, fuelled by the efforts of Mark Shuttleworth and the Go-Open Foundation, among others, to raise awareness for the open source movement.
This is the view of Inus Gouws, a senior information management (IM) consultant at Computer Associates Africa.
He says Shuttleworth and other open source protagonists are challenging software vendors to define open standards and open source as their default platform to minimise IT complexity, maximise efficiency and enable "open innovation".
Gouws says there are many challenges facing the IT industry in SA, central to which is the need to embrace the open source concept more fully in line with government suggestions.
"At the same time we need to encourage open source pioneers to become more commercial and less introspective in their approach to promoting their strategies for the future," he says.
"These and other goals will only be resolved if key industry players work together to improve the pace at which open source solutions are adopted here.
"If we can achieve this goal, users will be more likely to cut through complexity and leverage their IT infrastructures for maximum benefit at a vastly reduced cost. And it will spur innovation at a rate we have never seen before."
Gouws says encouraging and stimulating innovation in application design and implementation is a true open standards tenant - one that will allow individual users and companies to innovate separately and still have the capacity to "cement" these innovations together for the benefit of all open source users.
"The power driving open standards is that the standards are not owned by any company," stresses Gouws. "Instead, they are specifications for formats, interfaces, graphics and networking, established to assure hardware and software compatibility and support for interoperability, portability and scalability.
"We need to work together as a community to promote the values of true open standards and create an environment that will support and enable interfaces such as Web services, and operating systems and platforms such as Linux, Java and MS DOS," he says.
Gouws maintains that ultimately, the adoption of open source standards for the enterprise will depend on four elements being in place:
* The ability of the open source concept to deliver "real" business value.
* Reliable vendors who can mitigate risk and provide indemnification (along with support contracts) for open source technologies.
* The ability of vendors to provide 24x7 support.
* Vendors who can ensure the co-existence of open source with the existing IT environment.
From a CA perspective, Gouws adds that Linux, open source and the open innovation model are natural fits for CA, because the company has always prided itself on being platform-neutral.
"We have always ensured our management software works with whatever systems our customers have and whatever solutions and functions they may choose to add as their businesses evolve and grow," he says.
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