‘Don’t risk being left behind’

The shift to open source soft­ware (OSS) is one of the most impor­tant cur­rent trends in tech­nol­o­gy, yet it is sur­pris­ing­ly lit­tle dis­cussed when com­pared with the major e‑businesses built on its foun­da­tions, includ­ing Google, Ama­zon, YouTube, Face­book and Twit­ter.

Open source can offer huge ben­e­fits. While tran­si­tion­ing from closed to open sys­tems is no triv­ial task, organ­i­sa­tions that fail to embrace it risk being left behind as their com­peti­tors cap­i­talise on the new pos­si­bil­i­ties offered.

There are wider ben­e­fits to the econ­o­my as a whole, adopt­ing open source will help to ensure that busi­ness­es are fit for pur­pose, can com­pete glob­al­ly and are best able to evolve to meet the chang­ing require­ments of their cus­tomers and mar­ket­places.

OSS did not spring into life ful­ly formed; it has had a long ges­ta­tion peri­od. Its antecedents stretch back some 40 years to the con­cepts of open sys­tem inter­con­nec­tion (OSI) and the devel­op­ment by Bell Lab­o­ra­to­ries of the portable UNIX oper­at­ing sys­tem.

UNIX was the inspi­ra­tion for the first Lin­ux ker­nel released in 1991 and the fol­low­ing 22 years have seen inten­sive devel­op­ment of that oper­at­ing sys­tem. Along the way, a num­ber of well-known pro­pri­etary oper­at­ing sys­tems, such as those from Apple and Black­Ber­ry, built on OSS foun­da­tions, while oth­ers, such as Google’s Android, remain large­ly open.

The advan­tages of open source, both to the IT provider and the enter­prise cus­tomer, are man­i­fold. Per­haps one its most impor­tant attrib­ut­es is the access to greater inno­va­tion that OSS affords. The com­bi­na­tion of open source soft­ware, open sys­tems inter­op­er­abil­i­ty and open stan­dards has cre­at­ed a self-rein­forc­ing com­mu­ni­ty of shared research and devel­op­ment, and a pool­ing of cre­ative ideas. In the words of Jim White­hurst, chief exec­u­tive of Lin­ux provider Red Hat: “More inno­va­tion will hap­pen first in open source and that’s a rad­i­cal change from even five years ago.”

Adopt­ing open source will help to ensure that busi­ness­es are fit for pur­pose, can com­pete glob­al­ly and are best able to evolve

It is not just about inno­va­tion. When faced with an ever-faster pace of change, OSS pro­vides an impor­tant com­pet­i­tive weapon by encour­ag­ing a quick­er response to chang­ing require­ments. The speed of change in many mar­kets, espe­cial­ly those with a con­sumer focus, is now relent­less. The avail­abil­i­ty of a wide range of cost-effec­tive devel­op­ment tools, the abil­i­ty to scale rapid­ly and access to a glob­al com­mu­ni­ty of shared knowl­edge, all favour the use of the open approach. Hav­ing an IT infra­struc­ture that is able to sup­port the required com­mer­cial agili­ty is a key to suc­cess.

Under the con­tin­u­ing impe­tus of Moore’s Law of increas­ing tech­no­log­i­cal change, devel­op­ments con­tin­ue apace. In hard­ware, this has includ­ed the intro­duc­tion of ultra-high res­o­lu­tion dis­plays, enhanced wire­less net­work­ing and net­work-based stor­age, while in soft­ware and sys­tems the field of busi­ness ana­lyt­ics has grown. By embrac­ing OSS, com­pa­nies can ben­e­fit from the rapid exploita­tion of new tech­no­log­i­cal devel­op­ments in a way that is not pos­si­ble with closed pro­pri­etary sys­tems that require on-going main­te­nance and recon­fig­u­ra­tion.

One of the most impor­tant, yet often over­looked, advan­tages is bet­ter access to skilled, moti­vat­ed and inno­v­a­tive peo­ple. A gen­er­a­tion has now grown up with the inter­net and with open source. They want to work with these sys­tems and tools rather than the closed and pro­pri­etary approach­es that are fre­quent­ly seen as being more lim­it­ing. If com­pa­nies want to attract the best tal­ent, they must embrace open source soft­ware.

This “peo­ple advan­tage” also extends to the exis­tence of a glob­al OSS com­mu­ni­ty, allow­ing com­pa­nies to draw on mil­lions of soft­ware archi­tects, ana­lysts, design­ers and pro­gram­mers to share knowl­edge and resolve prob­lems. In turn, this opens up end­less pos­si­bil­i­ties for greater col­lab­o­ra­tion and inno­va­tion.

There is also the added ben­e­fit of low­er total cost of own­er­ship. While OSS is gen­er­al­ly free to acquire, rather than being sub­ject to the licens­ing fees nor­mal­ly charged for access to pro­pri­etary soft­ware, this is not the cor­rect basis on which to com­pare costs. It is more appro­pri­ate to con­sid­er the total cost of own­er­ship over the life­time of use of the soft­ware. Last year, the Lon­don School of Eco­nom­ics pub­lished a report on the total cost of own­er­ship for the UK Government’s Cab­i­net Office. This report found that: “The high­est score for strate­gic dri­vers was for reduced ven­dor lock-in. A close sec­ond was val­ue for mon­ey.”

Open source has demon­strat­ed its capa­bil­i­ties and is now con­sid­ered fit for pur­pose even in busi­ness-crit­i­cal appli­ca­tions. Amadeus IT Group, which process­es around a bil­lion trav­el-relat­ed trans­ac­tions per year and the fast-mov­ing trad­ing sys­tems of the Lon­don Stock Exchange exem­pli­fy its use in high­ly demand­ing trans­ac­tion pro­cess­ing envi­ron­ments.

Open source allows con­sumers access in real time to a depth and range of ser­vices that would sim­ply be unaf­ford­able using the old mod­els. The impor­tance of this for the broad­er UK econ­o­my, too, should not be ignored.

Based on the Open for Busi­ness white paper, spon­sored by Amadeus IT Group.

Pro­fes­sor Jim Nor­ton is a respect­ed advis­er to gov­ern­ments, an inde­pen­dent direc­tor, and has served on sev­er­al notable inquiries and com­mis­sions; he is a past pres­i­dent of the BCS – The Char­tered Insti­tute for IT, for­mer chief exec­u­tive of the UK Radio­com­mu­ni­ca­tions Agency and ex-chair­man of Deutsche Telekom Ltd. 

The shift to open source software (OSS) is one of the most important current trends in technology, yet it is surprisingly little discussed when compared with the major e-businesses built on its foundations, including Google, Amazon, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.