The open source experience

Our series concludes with a look at where enterprises are using non-proprietary software. Looks like those traditional IT infrastructure projects were just the beginning
Part II: The open source decision
Part I: The open source attitude
4/30/2007 4:50:00 PM By: Vawn Himmelsbach

Open source is generally recognized as a platform for infrastructure, the foundation upon which things are built. But the business-specific applications built on top of that are a harder sell.The jury is still out on whether open source is extending into areas beyond its traditional strengths, said Evan Leibovitch, executive director of CLUE (Canadian Linux Users Exchange). “When you have something in your business that you don't want your competitors to necessarily share, the rationale for open source isn't quite as strong,” he said.

Open source has traditionally been a good fit with horizontal, rather than vertical, applications - where it stretches across industries, or where there's a generic function like word processing. But the “high-hanging fruit” is still proprietary, said Leibovitch, and one of the best examples of that right now is Oracle.

While Oracle supports Red Hat Linux, for example, and is comfortable with leaving the creation of the underlying infrastructure to a third party, industry-specific applications are still Oracle's territory.

“The further you get away from the infrastructure, the harder it is to work with open source,” he said. “You may start to see more of these co-operative ventures, (but) that model is just in its infancy. There's still a lot of maturing to be done.”

Right now, open source is most commonly used for application development, according to Info-Tech Research Group. “It's not as if it's an investment in the infrastructure per se,” said Curtis Gittens, senior research analyst with Info-Tech. “It's a tool, so the risk there is low.” People will build a non-critical Web application or front-end using Perl or Python.

The second highest level of adoption is within networking and connectivity on the back-end. Following that is security software for access control and management. “It's not like using an open source version of a McAfee,” said Gittens. “It's more for access control.”

More Canadians than Americans are adopting open source operating systems, such as Linux. But there is less interest in using open source for financial and administrative applications, particularly in Canada. Areas where it's emerging include customer relationship management (CRM) and contact management, as well as enterprise resource planning applications. But it hasn't quite moved into the area of business intelligence yet.

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