 | Level: Introductory Daren Hanson, Director, Linux Marketing, IBM
15 Jul 2005 from The Rational Edge: The IT equivalent of academic peer review and debate, the free exchange of ideas and code within the open source community is gaining momentum and beginning to compete with proprietary platforms in government and business settings. This article discusses the reasons behind this growth, and describes how IT shops are increasingly adding open source and open computing capability to their infrastructure.
In just a few short years, the open source movement has grown from a relatively small niche player to a major force, disrupting the IT status quo and competing with the proprietary platform giants. Open source is driving a revolution in the business world by offering customers better value, flexibility, interoperability, and security.
The Linux operating system has attracted millions of users around the world, and is increasingly being used by businesses and governments who are eager to reap the benefits of an open computing environment. This awareness marks a growing acceptance that open and interoperable systems, rather than closed systems based on proprietary standards, are essential for improving the value of IT investments.
Of course, for open source software to develop and thrive, there needs to be a sufficiently large collaborative community. Open source thrives on the process of inventing, publishing, reviewing, and improving code. It's the equivalent of academic peer review and debate, and part of building a common body of knowledge. Put differently, this means more eyeballs spotting and fixing bugs and security holes.
Several recent events are paving the road to facilitate even more open source growth -- from the availability of major applications, such as SAP and Siebel, to government adoption.
In September 2004, major Linux backers, including IBM, Red Hat, Novell, HP, Dell, and Intel, agreed to support a single application interface standard for the freely exchanged computer-operating software, called Linux Standard Base 2.0, to ensure that Linux applications will run on any version of Linux.
Although open source offers many benefits, there are numerous instances where open source and commercial software environments co-exist. For example, Java applications run on WebSphere on the Linux platform, the IBM Rational Software Development Platform is built on top of the open source Eclipse framework, and Apache Web servers use DB2 on Linux for data storage. There's a market for this hybrid approach where it suits the needs and wallets of the end user.
While a proprietary, or "closed," system won't spell failure, it makes success more difficult to achieve. The integration requirements of the Internet -- including a business's connection to its partners, suppliers, and customers -- must be met regardless of the IT vendor. The problem of course is that non-public, proprietary interfaces are not made freely available for adoption or control by the industry; instead, a single IT vendor determines how and when the interface changes, who can adopt it, and how it can be adopted.
By contrast, the collaborative community that revolves around open source sees innovation and change as a natural part of the process. The development of open computing and open standards are driven by a combination of core developers, IT vendors, user feedback, and customers.
For an open source project to be able to attract a critical mass in terms of viability, it needs to build an ecosystem, such as Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) and the business partner community. This applies especially to infrastructure projects, such as Linux, where the availability of business applications is vital.
The bottom line for the adoption of open source software rests squarely with the customer. Most customers don't care as much about the theory of open source as they do about the benefits. Among the most compelling reasons for customer adoption are low cost of entry, reliability, flexibility, and security. When it meets their business objectives, most customers are happy to mix open source and commercial software to build solutions that deliver benefit, value, and return on investment.
There are many reasons for this positive ROI. Linux provides an opportunity for lower cost of ownership, which is attractive to both governments and businesses who want to provide their constituents with the best possible service at the lowest possible cost.
Worldwide, more than 175 IBM government customers have embraced Linux to save costs, consolidate workloads, increase efficiency, and reach their citizens with e-government. Use of Linux is spreading across the business world and governments at an unprecedented rate. In all industries, including telecommunications, petroleum, financial services, government, and CAD / CAM, the benefits and economics of Linux and open source can be simply overwhelming. The adoption of Linux and open source continues to increase, and is now moving into other industry segments.
It's clear that the IT industry is continuing to go through major changes. As it does, I believe open computing and open source will find a receptive and growing development community eager to embrace open standards. Just as open source and open standards were critical to the emergence of the Internet and the first generation of e-businesses, open source and open standards will continue playing an increasingly important role as the next generation of e-business evolves.
About the author | | | Daren Hanson is Director for IBM Software Group's worldwide Linux marketing initiatives and emerging market development. In his current role, he is responsible for IBM's Linux business strategy across the company's five software product groups. Hanson also leads IBM's efforts to drive growth in emerging markets, including Brazil, Russia, India, and China. Hanson joined IBM in 1989 and has held a number of senior management positions in sales, marketing, channels, and development. He has a degree in computer engineering from the University of Alberta.
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