Open source applications, has their time come?
Posted on April 23, 2008 by Chris
Lately I’ve been taking a closer look at the open source application space as part of a business plan I’m thinking about. Now, I’m no a stranger to this space as I’d spent a good six months looking at different ideas in 2004 and we built TravelGator almost 100% on open source technology, but back in 2004 I decided that there needed to be a lot more adoption by large corporations before open source software - especially business applications - had a shot of really making a solid business model.
Having done another deep dive recently I think that time has now come. The advantages of open source over proprietary software are just too significant to ignore and in my consulting activities I see the pain that closed systems are causing my clients. Excessive expense, lack of flexibility and huge adoption costs are almost guaranteed whenever you try and integrate a large proprietary system into the enterprise.
Given how fast software changes and how much modification is required to fit it to a specific company’s IT environment, the inherent openness and flexibility of open source products just make sense. The argument becomes even more convincing in the areas of the enterprise where competitive advantage is not necessarily derived through IT solutions and cost savings are a bigger driver. For example, CRM systems like SugarCRM, accounting systems, etc.
We’ve already seen the advantages that open source can bring to the OS via Linux, the database via MySQL and the application stack via JBOSS. Not to mention all the frameworks out there that facilitate rapid development like Ruby on Rails and Python. Furthermore, open source has certainly proven it can scale given that Google runs their entire operation on it along with many other high volume online companies.
The other big change is that conferences like the Open Source Business Conference are giving the space the credibility and visibility necessary to encourage enterprise adoption of these products.
So is the time now for open source to step out of the OS and application stack and into the application? I’m thinking it is.
Sphere: Related Content» Filed Under Open Source
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