Recession fears will boost open source business solution adoption
October 15th, 2008 by Bruno von RotzThe news is full of reports on the financial crisis, recession fears and economic downturn symptoms. CEOs and CIOs are preparing for a serious negative impact on their business. Initially the problems were with financial institutions only, but more and more the issues are hitting larger audiences. Will IT buying centers and business managers cut investments in IT in general or how will they deal with the crisis?
Let’s start with some facts and hypotheses:
a) Internet usage has increases continuously over the last years and the probability that consumers will cancel their broadband subscription and/or reduce their time spent online is very low. The contrary will happen, more bandwidth and more time in front of the browser, to more carefully select the right products to buy, to find jobs, to network with colleagues and friends, etc.
b) Companies recognize the importance of the online channel as an information, communication and transaction mean. To cut cost here and to not invest anymore seems to be a very dangerous strategy. Even more enterprises will want to shift activities from the offline into the online world to save costs. This will ask for more, not for fewer investments. And this is not really optional, it will be mandatory in many industries, as if you don’t do it somebody else will run faster.
c) IT budgets in general are expected to grow next year, according to recent research from Gartner. This makes sense, as IT isn’t any more a supplement to business, it’s often the business itself! But even if IT budgets grow more time more brain power will be spent on how and where to spend the money. And for some markets the budgets are expected to shrink even.
Now, where does Open Source come into the game here?
Firstly, Open Source technologies are defining the pace in the internet arena. Not just Google, Yahoo or YouTube are betting on Open Source, also more traditional enterprises in the telecommunication, pharma or media sector are voting for Open Source for internet solutions. Content management is almost dominated by Open Source technologies such as Alfresco, Drupal or Typo3. enterprise portals are often built with JBoss or Liferay these days, programming languages/frameworks such as PHP/Symfony, Ruby on Rails or Python/Jango are the base of many of the websites people use everyday.
But there’s more. Open Source components are offering an enormous potential. Business solutions can be assembled in short timeframes at low costs, the investment focus can be put on the functionalities that really differentiate the company in the market or make a solution really efficient to use. With implementation approaches such as the Optaros Assembly Methodology (OptAM) agility and “perpetual beta” can be brought to the enterprise and existing systems and platforms can be integrated just like other components, preserving previous investments and delivery business benefits quickly.
Don’t make the mistake to associate Open Source only with “free” and “low cost”. Yes, substantial cost savings are possible, but even more, new initiatives can be started without large upfront investments and pilots can be implemented rapidly to test markets or customer reactions.
If you haven’t thought about Open Source based business solutions yet, it may be a good time to reconsider. Specifically in these days, agility, cost efficiency and time-to-market pay off – for the company, but also your own career.
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