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The rise of OSS

Open source applications are getting a stronger grip on almost every software vertical. In some places OSS has begun replacing prevailing proprietary applications. By Varun Aggarwal

“Some people have told me they don’t think [that] a fat penguin really embodies the grace of Linux, which just tells me they have never seen an angry penguin charging at them in excess of 100mph. They’d be a lot more careful about what they say if they had.”

—Linus Torvalds

The penguin is rising to new heights. It has now moved from the being the preserve of geeks into the corporate boardroom. Linux has surely arrived on account of its cost-effectiveness and ability to run as a server OS on relatively lightweight hardware.

Open source is now gaining a strong foothold in the enterprise segment. “This is true for areas other than operating systems as well. A few of the areas where OSS is mature and has adoption are: RDBMS - MySQL, Web Servers - Apache, Application Servers - JBoss, Development IDEs - Eclipse, Web Browser - Firefox, Mozilla etc.,” said Asheesh Raina, Principal Research Analyst, Gartner.

Verticals such as oil & gas and manufacturing are driving this market, but the biggest push has come from the government—the department of information technology has already introduced Linux and open source software in educational institutions.

Adoption in the enterprise

A lot of organizations are using open source software (OSS) solutions even though they may not be running an end-to-end OSS solution stack. The OSS landscape in India is changing rapidly because of the demands that customers are placing on vendors to offer a business advantage, value for money and reduce the risk associated with making long-term technology investments.

HTMT Global Solutions is currently using OpenOffice on agent desktops where it is typically being used for computing bills, for calculation and analysis. “We have also used the Apache Web server and the same has been deployed for over a year without any issues,” said Subramanya C, Global CTO, HTMT Global Solutions Ltd.

Although cost remained the prime reason for Subramanya to take the Open Source route, he’s also very particular about the performance of such applications. “We have used this office package for the past six months and users are comfortable with it. At the initial stages of deployment we had resistance from the floor on usage, look and feel, compatibility etc. Once we brought in the business benefit, it gained acceptance. However, while 85% of the users on the production floor use OpenOffice, 15% of the power users remain on MS Office. The cost of the equivalent Web server is a straight benefit in using Apache,” he added.

According to a recent survey by Netcraft, Apache continues to be the most widely used Web server, powering more than 66.9 million sites, compared to 35.3 million sites using Microsoft IIS. This clearly indicates the potential of OSS.

The Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) on the other hand has taken the Open Source route for all its applications. It is perhaps the only organization in India with such a wide scale adoption of Open Source. Being a political party, the usual image is of a completely paper-based organization. However, the party leaders wanted to change this image and wanted to adopt technology in every possible area. Pradyut Bora, National Convenor of the IT cell at BJP took up the responsibility of making BJP the most technologically advanced political party in the world, making it high-tech for a low cost. Open source was his best bet.

The party has currently deployed e-prints and Open VZ applications. Going forward, it has a long list of OSS solutions to be deployed over a two-year time frame. The softwares include Zope, Open Journal, Greenstone, Vyatta, Qmail, Jabber, Hylafax, Zenoss and many more for desktops as well as the servers.

Benefits of using OSS

Open Source has long been associated with the cost advantage that it brings to the table. However, it has now matured into a reliable platform, which has benefits that go beyond cost.

According to Raina, “The biggest visible advantages in using OSS applications/tools are the cost benefit, ability to create tailormade application as per a company’s domain and business processes, unlimited usage within an organization and no vendor lock-in.”

“As we are specifically using the same for the lowest end of the value chain and more so for simple computing purposes, we have not faced any support issues. We are aware of the organization and user community, which we can use for support in the event of any specific issues. The trend is to look at cost optimization and based on the criticality of the applications, we need to choose the partner for support and the service levels can be agreed,” said Subramanya.

Bora said, “Open source applications help you to customize seamlessly according to the organization. Moreover, you get support from a large open source community for applications in almost every software domain.”

The growth of OSS

While the market initially was driven by developers and geeks adopting OSS, adoption is increasingly driven by commercial and technology managers in the enterprise resulting in a rapid rise in overall growth.

With respect to where OSS is headed, the most popular areas or trends where open source is gaining momentum are databases, applications servers and ERP solutions running on Linux.

HTMT Global Solutions has started evaluating OSS for various purposes. “We are continuing to deploy OpenOffice for projects across centers and migrating applications. Customer related solutions are purely subjective and are based on the customers’ requirements. However, we are proposing the same to our existing and potential clients and based on their readiness and willingness we are open to deploy the solutions. We are also exploring the options of building an in-house e-mail server and are evaluating the same for better business benefits. A management platform for network, systems and servers are also under evaluation. The timeframe planned for deployment is by the next financial year,” added Subramanya.

He added, “Open source products have been catching up in the market. HTMT Global Solutions has also deployed the open source products for its in-house applications—the Intranet and HR portal for employee access—and we are exploring opportunities in other areas as well.”

Participation from the majors

The involvement of major industry players is necessary to maintain the health of and sustain OSS projects. Linux, Eclipse, Mozilla, Globus and Apache all have active participation and support from some of the largest and most influential software companies. The Linux community counts HP, IBM, Sun and Oracle among its active contributors. Members of the Eclipse community include Borland, IBM, Oracle, Sybase, Montavista, Red Hat and many others. Mozilla has participation from Netscape, AOL, IBM, Red Hat and Sun. Globus is sponsored by IBM, Microsoft and Cisco. Apache lists Apple, IBM, Sun, CollabNet and Red Hat among its active contributors. These lists are, of course, small samples of the large number of companies that are involved in these initiatives. Their members also include contributors from Brown University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University and other academic institutions.

“OSS usage is growing in India and during next 3 to 4 years Gartner predicts that open-source software products will directly compete with commercial products to displace license revenue from traditional markets, while expanding the overall market through inclusion of small and mid-sized business customers and emerging service organizations,” concluded Raina.

varun.aggarwal@expressindia.com