OSA Alert Expert Interview

Economy Pushes CIOs to Revisit Open Source

As CEO and President of an IT company focusing exclusively on open source implementations, Elizabeth Ziph has been adding fresh perspectives to familiar issues in open source, cloud computing, and more. Co-founder of The Linux Box Corporation, Ziph has over 30 years of experience in the Information Technology industry.

OSA Alert: As open source continues to mature, have you seen any change in the way CIOs and CEOs view open source business applications?

Elizabeth Ziph: Some CIOs have been open to it all along and deployed open source wherever it was possible and reasonable to do so. The change is the increase in the number of CIOs and CEOs that are considering open source software as yet another excellent option that they have along with all other options. The support infrastructure and the continuous improvement reduce the risk of using open source.

Has the current economic crisis had a significant impact on the adoption of open source?

CIOs evaluate their budgets yearly and determine how much value they can deliver with the budget they have. In this economy, IT budgets were cut, yet the expected deliverable value has not only not been reduced--it has been increased, so it became necessary to consider open source because it allows the IT budget to stretch a lot further.

The economy is pushing CIOs to at least look at value to be derived from open source. I think that the maturity and sophistication of the software and the availability of support for it, made the economic crisis an excuse to revisit the topic.

The OSA has a working list of the top 10 benefits of open source adoption in the enterprise on our website. Do you have any changes you would make to our list?

Yes: I would add the benefits of reduced vendor lock in, and the quality benefits of transparent code.

In your experience, how important is interoperability between open source and proprietary software?

A: It's important to have and hard to achieve. For example: It's hard for OpenOffice to continually support Microsoft file formats. We need to give them a tremendous amount of credit and kudos for doing this. The fact that it's a one way street is challenging: e.g., Sharepoint does not support open office formats while Drupal, Alfresco, and other open source software support not only OpenOffice file formats but also Microsoft formats.

True open source development requires a significant commitment to the community. Do you see enterprise CIOs taking on that role directly, or do many of them opt to work through commercial software vendors or system integrators?

I think it's an educational and collaborative process. The first thing that CIOs need to accept is that the custom work that they are funding pays for further software development. By permitting their customizations to be given back to the community they are not only funding the work but shaping the direction of the code. In the process, they are also eliminating the future cost of reapplying their customizations to the next release of the code. Allowing customizations to go back to the community means that they have to consider the architecture, design and standards followed by a project and follow them with the additional custom features and that is a strong, specific commitment to a project community; it's putting your money where your mouth is.

How do you view the mission of the new organization, Open Source for America? Should the Obama administration take an active role in encouraging government adoption of open source? What about public financing for development or education related to open source?

High schools and colleges and universities already offer some open source education and programs. The exposure to it is viral – students will try free things and share them with their friends and school mates. So education-wise I think it's already happening and can be taken care of as part of the regular public financing for education.

Since the technology underlying the Obama campaign was largely open source, exposure to the effectiveness of open source spoke for itself.

The area where a lot of influence is needed is the governmental purchasing programs. Both at the federal, the state and the municipal level. So many RFPs I look at have a commitment to commercial software that works on an MS Windows platform, cutting off other viable open source solutions. The OSFA organization, of which we are a member, can seek to influence purchasing bodies to consider open source, and save on tax payers money. I think that these organizations now have a lot more choice than they used to and they need to take advantage of it.

What do you foresee for the open source industry in 2010?

I foresee greater adoption rates. In ten years we have gone from confusion and FUD about open source to open source being a choice and yet-another-option for IT departments to adopt; and along side it, change the business model from work in silos and fierce protectionism to fair trade through collaboration and cooperation.