Business Enterprise & Open Source

Open source technologies have gain a great recognition over a period of time and many enterprises have adopted these Open Source Technologies in running their businesses. However, there are still many enterprises who hesitate to adopt open source. This is probably they don’t want to switch to some other technology when existing technology is working without any glitch or may be they are too addicted to use their existing tools which resist them to accept any change. Yet another reason could be the fact that open source software are indeed open which are neither bought nor sold. Hence, there is a general perception that the “free” doesn’t necessarily mean “good”.

Unexpectedly, open source software does and in fact have proved in providing lot of benefits to enterprises that use them properly. I am mentioning few points that, I hope, will change your mind that why open source is best and how enterprise can gain benefits by using open source technology.

1. Cost: Talking a decade back when proprietary software spend lot of money by convincing enterprise that proprietary software are the best in terms of usage, regular maintenance and deployment. Open Source Technologies at other end, however, couldn’t compete in this regard the then being relatively new in the market. To compare just think about the hosting cost of Linux and Windows and then give a thought eCommerce or social network applications developed in open source. I hope this answers all your concerns about cost effectiveness by adopting open source over proprietary.

2. Versatility: Not all proprietary software are versatile. Generally there is a trial of 30 days but in reality 30 days are not enough to evaluate a software. Moreover, proprietary software are compiled and cannot be re engineered if required to have some new feature. Contrast to this open source software are completely free and enterprise can take more time to evaluate it disregard of time constraint. Unlike proprietary software the source code of open source software is available to re engineer to meet the specific need. Enterprise can hire any open source developer for a short term contract and get the required features done for their specific needs.

3. Scalability and Security: Open source products can be scaled up to any level of customization whenever the demand arise. Security of open source software, however, is a subject for debate. This is because source code of open source software is available to modify for user specific needs which make it vulnerable as malware can modify the code. Couple of weeks ago I posted one article about security of open source which says security lies in the hands of a developer developing the software. A developer should know all inbound and outbound ports of his/her software and should know about what all file permissions are allowed for user, group and others and of course database privileges.