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April 5, 2003

Free and Clear?

Open source code can save you licensing fees in your strategic IT project, but the story doesn't end there

by Sanjay Murthi

In the last few years, business organizations have become more aware of open source software and its benefits. Many open source products — such as the Apache Web server, JBoss application server, and the PostgreSQL and MySQL DBMSs — are price competitive as well as feature competitive with their commercial brethren. That makes them highly attractive to many organizations building strategic applications, especially when the use of commercial solutions may imply large licensing costs.

Many companies were initially skeptical of the quality and support available with open source products. However, the rise of popular and well-built products such as Apache and the Linux operating system have made them think again. Indeed, open source products are starting to find a place not only on desktops, but in the data center. (Examples include Yahoo's use of FreeBSD to run Yahoo.com, Dell Computer Corp.'s and Reuters' use of Linux on many of their internal transaction servers, and Weather.com's use of Apache Web servers to serve content.)

Multiple such products are now targeted at nearly every common business and technology requirement (see Table 1), and it's feasible to build fairly complex applications based on them. Furthermore, many commercial software vendors are delivering popular solutions that either run on open source products or use them for product development (IBM's use of Linux to run WebSphere Commerce as well as its zSeries server line, for example).

That's all fine and good. But what about strategic business applications, such as CRM, business intelligence, and e-business transaction systems? Would it make sense for your organization to consider using open-source code in these solutions?

Making Sense Of Open Source

Deciding whether to use open source solutions — and which ones to use — depends on a variety of factors, such as your organization, resources, customers, the importance of the strategic application, the load you expect it to support, the open source products you're considering, and so on. The following checklist of items can be helpful in evaluating different open source and commercial solutions to make the right decision.

Organizational standards. Many organizations would like to standardize on a set of tools and technologies, making it easier to deploy, support, and provide training. Such costs frequently can dwarf the costs of software licenses. Hence, just because a product is open source and has no licensing costs doesn't mean that it has no support costs. For example, an open source product may not integrate with an existing management system or may have support issues such as the inability to handle certain standard data formats or driver dependency issues that increase costs significantly. In such cases, buying and using a commercial product that can be managed using existing tools may turn out to be cheaper. Furthermore, your organization may have access to site licenses that make it cheaper to deploy the same solutions in all locations vs. using a mix of solutions.

Product requirements. It's important to consider which product features may be needed to support the requirements of the solution you're building. For example, if you need sophisticated load balancing and server failover support on a large e-commerce Web site, keep in mind that most open source application servers offer limited support for those requirements. (Similarly, database replication support may not be available, which can be a problem if you want to provide automated replication into a central data warehouse or custom data mart.) In such situations, you'll be forced to use commercial products that have been built to address these specific needs. Many mainstream application areas such as data analytics or decision support still lack reliable and functional open source options. In many cases only partial or immature solutions are available — you wouldn't want to bet your strategic business solution on them yet!

It's crucial to identify these needs early on because it can be very expensive to rewrite code. One of the benefits of commercial solutions, of course, is the willingness of many vendors to add product features that customers demand — especially when it helps them win a large sale. It could take more time to get this kind of response in an open source product, unless you're willing to go ahead and make the code modifications yourself (which probably isn't realistic).

Availability of support. As attractive as using an open source solution may be, you have to consider your ability to get support for it. Until recently, users of open source had to be fairly technical and willing to jump into the code and fix problems themselves. Now, we're starting to see the emergence of many independent consulting organizations that can provide organizations expertise on open source solutions. However, because many of these organizations aren't mature businesses yet, their long-term success is uncertain. In addition, in many cases, the consulting principals lack experience in supporting strategic enterprise applications built on these products.