OPEN SOURCE: A Shift In Mindset

The unique features about open source is that no one owns the IP, it is all a
community-driven effort. It is shifting from normal standard of proprietary and
a shift from the dependency on a particular technology.

This is a tremendous value-addition that a solution provider can extend to
his customers. No company would like to lock themselves with a proprietary
technology where they are forced to keep increasing the infrastructure in that
technology.

It is very difficult for CIOs to keep track of the place and get the best out
of their IT investment. Open source helps corporates integrate various hardware
or applications that they have invested in over the years and shift it to a
common platform. That is the biggest advantage of going for open source
technology.

Vendors now understand that it not just one open source application that
customers want; they want a common platform for the entire IT infrastructure
like security, database, manageability platforms or application servers. That is
the pressure that is coming in from customers, which is spurring the growth of
open source applications.

WHY LINUX COMES TO MIND

Open Source is not limited to Linux, but Linux is associated to open source.
This is because it is the most successful, prominent and high-impact
deliverable.

The intimate application developers have been using it for very long now.
There are large open source applications like Apache and Sendmail. Over 80% of
the mails going across the globe today use Sendmail as the application. These
are more popular than any proprietary software.

To track open source deployments is not possible, and therefore, one can't
give any figures about the increase in its adoption. It has been around for over
a decade now. What we are noticing now is people who are using it more for their
mission-critical applications.

So, when you find more hardware vendors and solution providers providing open
source, you will find more deployments taking place. From IDC reports, it is
shown that 25% to 30% of all Intel servers are being shipped with Linux. And
Intel servers are growing at 35% y-on-y. This is an indication of the wide
acceptability of open source.

SLOW PROLIFERATION

There is too much expectation from open source at times. There is a growing
adoption for it, but it will take sometime for corporates to migrate entirely to
it. They have built their systems over the year on proprietary software. It
would be asking for too much to expect them to make a transition immediately to
open source.

But, there are many corporates who are already running their mission-critical
applications on open source, with the National Stock Exchange as the best
example. 80% of Wall Street companies have also migrated part of their
infrastructure to open source.

One advantage that corporates are enjoying about open source, is its low
susceptibility to virus and malware attacks. This is because this is a
community-backed environment and there is a whole bank of people working on it
who release patches for it by them.

WHAT VENDORS DO

Vendors who work on open source applications provide predictable platforms
to customers. They have an entire ecosystem of partners, developers and hardware
vendors who were deploying commercial applications on the vendor's framework.

But what was really happening was that everyone was building up their own
piece of technology and there was no standardization in terms of the various
components of the IT infrastructure. So companies like Red Hat have evolved open
source architecture, which we believe is critical is for the mature options of
the Linux enterprise.

There is a need for vendors to provide a framework in terms of plug-ins which
will be available for developers. Vendors need to invest on building this kind
of an architecture. This will mean that their partners can provide more secure
and secure applications.

SMALLER CITIES ARE BEST TARGETS

Everyone is talking about the low PC penetration in the nation. Open source
is the best way to tackle this. We have been witnessing the constant drop in
hardware prices. If a B- and C-class customer was offered a PC with an open
source application on it, then he would really be interested at getting it.

Also, in these cities the awareness about technology is low. Buyers are not
aware of the OS or the mail client on the machine. They just want a low-cost
system that will meet their basic computing needs. So, the question of
unlearning about proprietary and open source software, which is typical in most
metros, will not emerge here.

This is because these are first-time users and as long as they are
comfortable using an open source, there is no reason for them to demand
proprietary software.

What vendors should do here is, train partners about the open source, its
benefits and how to use it, so that they can pass this information on to the
users. And then the buyer has the choice of what he wants.

Amit Boraskar is
Head-Alliances, Red Hat India.