Open Source for Enterprises in Tough Times

We surveyed 126 CIOs of India's leading enterprises to understand how they

were planning to use Open Source software during tough times. Nearly 57% of them

were already using Open Source software before the slowdown and another 40% were

not. Now that's a whopping number of people not using Open Source, but things

get more interesting. Of the 40% who were not using Open Source, nearly 40% said

that either they had already deployed the same post the slowdown, or were

actively considering to do it now. Further, amongst the CIOs who were not using

Open Source, 24% preferred to stay that way, ie they still have no plans of

using the same.

However, the overall picture of moving to Open Source during tough times

appears very positive, with more than 60% of the total respondents having a keen

interest in the same, and another 20% ready to consider the move provided they

see significant benefits. The impact is so much that around 8% of the

respondents have already increased their IT spending on Open Source software,

while another 37% say that they're likely to increase.

Why shift to Open Source?



Cost savings, no single vendor lock-in, ability to modify the source code,

ease of procurement, or something else? We gave several options to our survey

participants to find out what they found as the most appealing thing about Open

Source. Here's the answer.

Provides considerable cost savings



When we asked this question to our respondents, 70% of them replied with an

answer that's quite predictable--it provides considerable cost savings. But

whether or not Open Source software really provides cost savings needs a careful

analysis. The first thing to understand is that Open Source software is not

free. There are cost implications. You can download Open Source software from

the Internet without paying anybody a penny for it (apart from paying for the

bandwidth usage to your service provider of course!). However, you do need

in-house expertise to deploy it as per your requirements. If you don't have

that, then you need to either pay an external implementation partner to deploy

it, or you need to recruit somebody; Or you need to develop somebody from your

existing IT team for the job. All of these have financial implications, which

vary depending upon what you're planning to deploy. The story doesn't end there.

Once you've deployed it, you need somebody to maintain it, keep it patched and

updated so that there are no security risks, and manage it throughout its life

cycle.

So while cost implications are indeed there for deploying Open Source

software, whether it provides savings viz-a-vis commercial offerings needs a

careful analysis. For this, you need to work out the detailed costing of both.

How much does the commercial software cost? Is there a re-curring license fee

involved? Is there a separate cost for implementing it and for maintaining it?

What kind of hardware is required to deploy it? What kind of skills are required

in house for managing it? Match the sum of these costs for both types of

software, and you'll have the answer.

No single vendor lock-in



Almost 62% of CIOs voted for 'no single vendor lock-in' as the key reason

for deploying or considering to deploy Open Source software. Single vendor

lock-in implies that you're completely dependent on a single vendor for a

particular application. You would incur a significant amount of cost to shift to

a different vendor's application. Here again, one needs to keep a few things in

mind. If you're deploying a completely new application, then not having

single-vendor lock-in would be a big benefit, because you'll be able to modify

the application to your requirement whenever you want after deployment. However,

if there are many applications in your organization that are already locked into

a particular vendor, then you need to assess how much would it cost to 'break'

that lock. If it means a complete shift to a new platform, and considerable

re-coding, re-skilling, etc, then it may not be worth it. However, if the same

application is available for multiple platforms (like Java), then the shift

might be worth it.

Other reasons



The other benefits that CIOs quoted for shifting to Open Source were the

ability to modify source code, easy procurement of software, better performance

and higher uptime, easy availability of skilled manpower, and easier

maintenance. For each of these, you need to first assess whether sufficient

skills are available in your organization to enjoy their benefits. If they're

not, then you need to assess how much would it cost to gain those skills and

compare the cost against a similar commercial offering.

What are the challenges in shifting?

Challenges in Shifting to OSS



Just as the biggest benefit of using Open Source software is quite

predictable (cost savings), the biggest hindrance of moving to Open Source

software is also predictable-finding the right level of support. 42% of CIOs

said that this was their biggest challenge, while another 20% felt that finding

the right manpower to manage it was the key challenge. Not only that, the level

of difficulty in finding support is also quite high, as felt by our respondents.

On a scale of 1 to 5, where 1 is easy and 5 is extremely difficult, 37% of CIOs

pegged the difficulty level at 4 and 5. Another 34% of them rated it at 3, while

a mere 16% rated it below 3. So overall, most CIOs feel that finding support for

Open Source software is no bed of roses.

So where should you look for support? Around 40% of CIOs resort to the web.

Today, there are lots of online forums available for support, and sometimes, you

can even contact the author of the Open Source application directly to get a

solution to your problem. Only 20% of CIOs said that they had an Open Source

partner, while 28% of them had in-house staff to provide support.

Interestingly, amongst the large 5000+ Crore enterprises who responded to our

survey, a whopping 55% felt that finding the right level of support was the

biggest challenge. Another 20% felt that it doesn't provide the features they

need, while interestingly, another 20% felt that there were security concerns in

using Open Source software.

So obviously there is a gap that exists between vendors and CIOs on support

issues, and it needs to be bridged. In fact, even in our personal interactions

with various CIOs, we got some very interesting insights into the matter. One

for instance, is the impression that support in the Open Source world is mostly

limited to the OS only. Today, when life in the Open Source world has moved far

beyond the OS, and into lots of interesting business applications, this

impression needs to change. Our interactions with leading Open Source OS

vendors, as expected, gave us a completely contrary view. Today, most Open

Source OS vendors have tie-ups with key application vendors who provide

applications on their platform.

Open Source on Linux or Windows?



It's a common myth that most Open Source software runs on Linux. Today, most

Open Source applications are available on multiple platforms, and especially on

Windows. 20% of our respondents are running Open Source software on Windows,

another 25% are running on Linux, and interestingly, 30% of them are running it

on both Windows and Linux. The remaining were running it on other platforms. So

today, you truly have a choice of platform in running Open Source software. If

you're not comfortable with Linux, then that doesn't deter you from using Open

Source software.

Who should run what?



Now comes the big question of what Open Source software can you run. We'll

try to answer this question from three different aspects-one, an overall

analysis of what Open Source software are organizations currently using and what

they plan to deploy. Two, specifically, what are the larger Indian enterprises

using, and three, what Open Source software are some of India's leading IT/ITES

and manufacturing companies using.

Let's start with an overall analysis. Here, we came across a very interesting

finding. The highest number of votes for currently owned Open Source software

went to desktop applications like OpenOffice.org. 15% of the CIOs said this.

This is rather surprising and and breaks the myth that Open Source software is

mostly popular on the server side. Close on its heels, the next most used Open

Source application was databases like MySQL, PostGreSQL, etc. OS, i. e. Linux

was at number three, followed by application server, messaging/ email, web

servers, development tools, etc.

Coming to specifics, Jboss, Tomcat, and Apache are the favorite Open Source

application servers amongst our respondents. Favorite database needs no

guessing-MySQL rocks, followed by PostgreSQL. Likewise, on the desktop

application front, besides OpenOffice, our respondents are also using Neo-Office

and even Lotus Symphony. Other desktop applications popular amongst CIOs include

PDF Creator, Sound Pocket Recorder, and Recuva.

Some commonly used development tools include Eclipse IDE, J2EE, CVS, PHP, and

NetBeans. On the enterprise applications front, SugarCRM, Al Fresco, Bonita, and

Compiere are some that are being used. In messaging and email, SendMail, Qmail,

and Postfix are popular on the server side, while Mozilla Thunderbird and

Evolution are there at the client side.

For systems management, tools that came up were Nagios, Snort, Cacti, and

MRTG; while for security, iptables, snort, and squid were some options that came

up. On the web server front, there are no surprises-Apache.

Future deployment plans of CIOs are even more interesting. Once again, the

maximum votes went to desktop applications. 13% of the CIOs said that they had

plans of deploying Open Source desktop applications like OpenOffice.org. There

was a bit of reshuffling in the remaining Open Source software, with OS,

database, and app servers gaining the second highest votes at 12% each.

The specific names of Open Source software that organizations are planning to

deploy in the future is similar to currently owned list.

Open Source software usage in large enterprises



Around 25% of the CIOs, who responded to our survey were from large

enterprises, with an annual turnover of more than 2000 Cr. 35% of these

organizations had either already deployed or were actively considering to deploy

even more Open Source software post the slowdown, while another 13% of them had

no plans of deploying earlier, but were actively considering the same post the

slowdown. Spending on Open Source software was likely to increase for 38% of

them.

Coming to current ownership of Open Source software, Linux topped the charts

with 44% of large enterprise CIOs saying they had it running in their

organization. The next most popular Open Source software category was desktop

applications like OpenOffice at a close 41%, followed by databases. The

penetration of Open Source enterprise apps however is very low, with only 3% of

large enterprise CIOs using the same in their setup. Surprisingly, large

enterprises are not very fond of Open Source security tools, with only 16%

currently using them. Another surprising revelation was the low penetration of

Open Source web servers. Only 19% of large enterprise CIOs had deployed the

same.

Large enterprises are currently using Open Source software for two key

business processes-customer service and enterprise application integration.

Next we had even more interesting results-future plans of large enterprises

for deploying Open Source software. Once again, desktop applications received

the highest number of votes, with 16% of large enterprise CIOs actively

considering the move. An equal 16% had plans to deploy Open Source application

servers in the near future. OS, messaging/email, and database were next in line,

gaining 13% of the total votes each. Surprisingly, none of the large enterprises

have plans to deploy Open Source security tools or Systems Management

applications. Possibly, commercial applications in these two domains have a

stronghold amongst large enterprises.

Which industry is using what in Open Source?

33% of the organizations who responded to our survey were from the IT/ITES

industry, while manufacturing was the next big chunk at 18%. So we'll focus

primarily on how these two industries are planning to use Open Source during the

economic slowdown.

IT/ITES Companies



IT/ITES organizations are the most IT savvy companies amongst all

industries. It was therefore no surprise when we saw nearly 48% of their CIOs

having already deployed Open Source software or actively considering to deploy

even more. Another 18% of them needed much more convincing to use Open Source.

What's more, 45% of the IT/ITES CIOs were likely to increase their spending on

Open Source software. But the interesting thing is that despite being the most

IT savvy of the lot, a majority of them felt that finding manpower to manage

Open Source software was the biggest challenge, and the next biggest challenge

was finding the right level of support for it.

The current usage trend of Open Source software amongst IT/ITES companies we

surveyed was even more interesting. Open Source databases are the most popular

amongst IT/ITES companies, with 50% of them using the same. Application Servers

are also quite popular amongst IT/ITES companies, with 47% of them using those

in their setup. Desktop Apps and OS are the next most popular amongst these

companies.

A majority of the IT/ITES companies we surveyed are using Open Source

software for their customer service process.

For future deployment as well, the highest number of votes went to Open

Source databases, with 18% of the IT/ITES CIOs opting for the same. The next

most popular category was development tools and application servers. Desktop

applications were the fourth most popular amongst IT/ITES companies. These

results are not surprising because in all three categories, there are quite a

few very popular Open Source software. MySQL is one of the most popular Open

Source databases, while there are quite a few development tools in the Open

Source world like Eclipse, NetBeans, etc. At the desktop, OpenOffice.org needs

no introduction.

Surprisingly, very few of the IT/ITES companies seem to have an interest in

moving to an Open Source OS. Only 5% of the votes went to this category. Systems

management and security tools were even less popular amongst these companies.

Possibly these are areas where commercial applications have a stronghold.

Manufacturing organizations



The trend to consider deploying Open Source software during the slowdown is

even stronger amongst manufacturing organizations. Amongst the ones we surveyed,

48% have either already deployed or are considering to deploy even more Open

Source software now that the economic slowdown is in full swing. Another 26% of

them were at the tipping edge, and could start using it if they saw some real

benefits. A third of the organizations we surveyed said their spending on Open

Source software has either been increased already or is likely to be done.



Unlike IT/ITES companies, a majority of the manufacturing organizations we
surveyed are using desktop Open Source applications as well as Linux. 43% of the

total votes went to these two categories. The next most popular category of Open

Source software was messaging and email at 39%, and databases were a distant 4th

at 26%. Security tools and development tools were the least preferred amongst

manufacturing companies, with only 17% of the votes going in their favor.

For the future as well, the focus of most manufacturing organizations seems

to be on desktop apps and Linux. The third one here is interesting-enterprise

applications.