The use of open source software has been on the rise for a while, and it’s not showing any signs of slowing down. In fact, in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic, enterprises across the board are speeding up the digitisation of their infrastructure, operations, processes, and customer experiences, and are turning to open source to achieve this.
So says Dion Harvey, regional GM, Red Hat Sub-Saharan Africa, adding that many forward-thinking IT leaders view open source as an effective approach to realise faster innovation and take products to market more quickly. As such, its use is only set to increase, with Gartner predicting that during this year, more than 70% of new in-house applications will be developed on an open source database.
Historically, open source has been a major enabler when it comes to the automation of infrastructure, implementing cloud, real-time analytics, cybersecurity, and much more, making adopting open source a priority for many global enterprises.
Organisations invariably face the decision of whether to buy commercial off-the-shelf software (COTS) or build a custom solution in-house, says Sett Wai, head of curriculum at WeThinkCode. “The widely adopted strategy is to buy COTS in areas that are supporting functions and save the bespoke development for the areas that are likely to be key differentiators or unique problem areas for the business.
“Open source software is ubiquitous in the tech industry as it forms the foundations of most tools and infrastructure from which software solutions are produced; in fact, most technical components such as databases, operating systems, web servers, and cloud services are developed and maintained as open source projects.”
Quintin Brussow, Red Hat Development lead at Datacentrix, believes that open source growth can be attributed to high demand from organisations for innovation, and the requirement for an alternative to traditional proprietary software. “Many businesses have moved onto an open hybrid cloud model as requirements escalated during the pandemic, but outside these specific challenges, we’re still seeing huge open source adoption. Some 95% of respondents of Red Hat’s ‘The State of Enterprise Open Source’ report said that enterprise open source is important to their organisation’s overall enterprise infrastructure because of the innovation and agility that the model makes possible. Open source not only caters for a growing requirement for swift deployment of applications by businesses, its community-driven nature ensures that it is in a process of constant innovation, thus making it more agile and providing multiple ways to solve challenges.”
Time to market
The ability to build and deploy software quickly is key to open source’s success, says Angel Borroy, developer evangelist at Hyland. On a technologic landscape where service lifecycle is becoming shorter with time, combining small but meaningful building blocks easily is the key to success. This is the core feature of many open source projects – provide a reduced set of features exposed using standard integration layers.
Speaking of the benefits of using open source, he says in 2022, it’s still true that open source adoption provides quick access to innovation and the latest technologies, which was the traditional reason to start using open source. But with the evolution of the market, simplifying the movement to the cloud and improving security strategy have been identified as the main benefits from open source adoption. Security is not based in trade secrets anymore; from cryptography standards to vulnerabilities databases, the modern way of improving security is a shared effort that happens in the public arena.
“Open source drives innovation,” agrees Harvey. “The pace at which open source technologies are being developed is much faster than in the siloed, proprietary world. By adopting open source technologies, they are effectively innovating at the pace of a global community.”
There’s a fundamental shift happening in the world of software: through collaboration on a global scale, open source is leading software-driven transformations across almost every industry.
Dion Harvey, Red Hat
With regards to security, the notion that open source software was not as secure as proprietary software has been turned on its head, he says. “This year’s State of Enterprise Open Source Report showed that 89% of IT leaders believe enterprise open source is as secure or more secure than proprietary software.”
He adds that the growth of open source can also be partially attributed to significant cost reductions. As the world shifts toward a subscription-based approach to software, buying software as an asset has become outdated, and businesses are able to drive cost savings by adopting open source.
Opening up the cloud
There are also several major initiatives being driven by open source. Brussow says there is currently a big drive for companies to adopt an open hybrid cloud model. Linux can and does run everywhere, and many cloud computing and always-on services have been built using an open source model. “Furthermore, we’re seeing the increasing adoption of a DevOps culture within South African business, and more local enterprises are investigating the use of containers and Kubernetes to deliver apps to market faster. This is in line with Red Hat’s report, which states that `containers, Kubernetes for the associated container orchestration, and the vast number of complementary cloud-native open source projects may be the best examples of new categories of software’. Some 70%of IT leaders we surveyed work for organisations that use Kubernetes and almost a third plan to significantly increase their use of containers over the next 12 months.”
Borroy adds that the number of companies adopting the cloud is growing and almost every cloud deployment is relying on open source products. “The Linux Foundation has been hosting and feeding cloud-native open source projects to ensure a mature and professional technologic stack to support large business deployments. But the foundation doesn’t only care about cloud; the new security requirements coming from this new environment are also under the umbrella of the organisation, including automatic scanning tools for the releasing process and improving new pattern security technologies like blockchain.”
Harvey says application deployment is no longer exclusively an IT operations concern. Organisations that need to be first to market with modernised capabilities are turning towards more agile methodologies, such as DevOps. But the open source approach has always been agile by nature. Fostering collaboration between teams is inherent to it: the tools and resources developers need are integrated and designed to enable seamless collaboration. Culturally, this is forcing a new way of thinking – by breaking down barriers between teams and encouraging open collaboration, organisations can develop better software faster. And in rapidly evolving, software-driven markets, this is proving to be a crucial advantage.
Remember that open source doesn't mean necessarily free software.
Angel Borroy, Hyland
Open source is also becoming increasingly important in the adoption of emerging technologies. “Our surveys showed that 80% of IT leaders expect to increase their use of enterprise open source software in areas such as edge computing, IoT, and artificial intelligence or machine learning. Once again, this is primarily because of the speed of innovation happening in the open source community,” says Harvey.
However, despite all the benefits, open source isn’t without its risks and concerns. For Borroy, the lack of internal skills to adopt open source, mainly related to the cloud paradigm, is probably the main concern expressed by organisations.
“Remember that open source doesn't mean necessarily free software. There are many companies delivering an open source experience to customers that includes real-time support, scaling up services and security patches. The difference between the services provided by commercial software and open source companies is approaching a limit where only the availability of the source code will be identified as a difference.”
A main concern for businesses is how a mission-critical application built using open source tools and toolkits going into production can be supported and certified. This is where enterprise open source companies play an important role, as these organisations also help to allay security worries around open source, and this has been recognised with a shift in perception within the marketplace, says Brussow.
Harvey says it's an exciting time to be involved in open source. And it's also exciting to see traditional organisations that were perhaps unconvinced five to 10 years ago getting on board with open source ways of thinking. “There’s a fundamental shift happening in the world of software: through collaboration on a global scale, open source is leading software-driven transformations across almost every industry.”
* This feature was first published in the August edition of ITWeb's Brainstorm magazine.
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