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Open Source Software and the CIO

CIOs believe that open source software is a breakthrough platform, but they have some suggestions to make it better still. By Neeraj Gandhi

True to its title, the first word of it that is, Open Source Software has opened a plethora of opportunities for enterprises today. No longer is it necessary for them to leverage proprietary software and reel under the license agreements to get their business going. Instead, they can now leverage the myriad possibilities of open source software, according to their requirements, and achieve their business goals.

The ease and flexibility of leveraging open source applications, among other benefits like cost advantage, reliability, scalability and community support, has had a two-pronged effect. Firstly, this has managed to create certain open source loyalists, who swear by this platform and never ever think of proprietary software. Secondly, it has also managed to generate another category of supporters who have migrated to the open platform after weighing the pros and cons and like it now.

In both the cases, it is the open source platform that has gained momentum and has managed to up the level of acceptance as a business enabler.

Choosing open source

Open source software has managed to make inroads amongst Indian enterprises in a big way. In some cases it has even become the backbone of the business. Even in the end-user segment, one can find desktops, if not servers, running open source applications. The choice of open source has largely been dictated by factors like cost-effectiveness, secure platform, flexibility and the whole ecosystem that it provides to users.

“We were looking for something which would help us counter the problems of security threats, compulsive upgradations and high maintenance cost and it had to be something that would serve as dual-edged sword i.e., it had to offer higher security and lower the TCO. Our objective was to reduce system downtime and maximize the utilization of the same. That way we felt open source would be the right choice to opt for,” said S Jala, VP (IT), Usha Martin Group.

The decision to migrate to SUSE Linux from Windows at Usha Martin was dictated from the need to reduce the time that the IT staff was spending at its ten locations to provide technical support and troubleshooting. The company felt the need to find a way to reduce costs and increase efficiency to support is growth plans.

It was much the same at ELCOT (Electronics Corporation of Tamil Nadu), the organization that provides IT procurement services to the Government of Tamil Nadu. Faced with the challenge to set right the large number of aging servers (1,800) and desktops (30,000) in operation at Tamil Nadu’s schools, ELCOT decided to implement SUSE Linux at its own end first. In line with this decision, the organization moved its own systems from Windows to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop.

“We leveraged open source taking into consideration various factors including freedom, security of information, and cost-effectiveness; open source has helped us save 45-50% on the desktops and 90% on the server side. Besides, open source is a fully loaded platform, and offers a complete ecosystem,” said C Umashankar, Managing Director, ELCOT.

After the successful deployment, ELCOT has been successful in deploying Linux-based systems not only in schools across the state, but also at different government offices.

In contrast, the case was completely different at Yatra and Cleartrip, two popular online travel Web sites in the India. Both these organizations have leveraged open source applications right from their inception, and have managed to build a stable infrastructure.

“We were looking for flexible and proven technology to build our travel portal www.yatra.com and we found that the open source development technology LAMP was an evolved and mature platform to build a highly efficient and reliable online application. We decided to use LAMP along with open source development frameworks such as MASON to rapidly build and deploy our applications,” said Manish Amin, Co founder, Yatra.com.

“We wanted a platform that was cost-effective, stable and at the same time scalable enough to mange the ever increasing traffic. Additionally, proprietary software is like a black box inside which nobody can see. Open source on the other hand gives one the flexibility to tune the systems according to one’s own requirements,” said Sanjeev Sreedharan, Vice-president, Software Engineering, Cleartrip.

Leveraging open source

Deploying open source applications involved a lot of effort in research, selection of the right applications and in weighing the pros and cons of migration. Unlike Yatra and Cleartrip, which had open source right from the beginning, different parameters were considered before migrating to open source at Usha Martin and ELCOT.

“There were many factors that had to be considered prior to migration. Most important was compatibility with the existing application and flawless performance of the same. Others includes, compatibility with existing hardware and the cost of upgrading or procurement of new hardware if required, migration cost which included the license fees, user acceptance of the new system and training,” said Jala.

ELCOT’s primary objective was to ensure that the best possible IT solutions should be leveraged in order to maximize the ROI on public money. So it was not only the short-term migration cost, but also other factors like long-term, hardware, software and infrastructure costs that were taken into consideration.

Yatra evaluated the open source platform on parameters like flexibility, vendor support, past success, capacity, scalability and cost advantage. Today it deploys a gamut of open source applications like MediaWiki for documentation, Bugzilla for issue tracking and project management, OpenAds as the Ad server, OpenOffice, Joomla and Subversion which is the source code repository and version control.

“Our organizational goal was to choose a stable, low cost technology that could be scaled up in future to meet business growth. We did a side by side comparison of our options and decided in favor of using LAMP with Open Source development frameworks,” said Amin.

Cleartrip, which had expansion plans in the pipeline, was looking for a platform, which was stable, scalable and capable of handling additional workloads. After evaluating different versions of Linux, it decided to deploy Red Hat Enterprise Linux. “The decision to deploy open source was in line with our business goals. It has given us the freedom and has stood the test of time,” said Sreedharan.

CIOs’ take

A lot has been talked about open source and its benefits. Gradually, it is becoming the engine that is driving business today. However, the question remains whether this platform has managed to live up to the expectations that all the hype has managed to create. How do the CIOs and IT Heads view open source? Is it a breakthrough technology?

For enterprises, which have been working on open source since inception, this platform has certainly given them the edge. “It is definitely a breakthrough platform. It has opened a new market for developers and has created new jobs. It has even created new specialization streams, reduced the cost of development, which has helped many start-ups to come up. It has brought proprietary products to the negotiation table and [compelled vendors of proprietary products] to talk in realistic terms. Finally, it has reduced monopoly,” opined Amin.

Sreedharan added, “Open source has given us the freedom to tune our systems be it the operating system, network layer or application layer according to our requirements. It is definitely a breakthrough platform because it is quite democratic in nature as it gives the freedom to the user. Besides, it also drives a lot of innovation.”

Even within enterprises, which have migrated to open source after having worked on proprietary software, the emotions are quite similar. “Open source is definitely a breakthrough platform. Ever since we have shifted to open source we find it difficult to adjust to proprietary software,” said Umashankar.

“We consider open source as a breakthrough platform. It has given everyone the opportunity to think out of the box, and an option to consider it rather than writhing under [the burden of] mandatory software upgrades,” added Jala.

CIOs Recommend

C Umashankar, ELCOT: My only suggestion to the vendors is that whenever they sell the hardware, they should also provide the drivers along with it. At present we have to do this ourselves.

Sanjeev Sreedharan, Cleartrip: There should be greater interoperability between different distributions. This would help drastically increase adoption.

S Jala, Usha Martin: Further enhance the capability of OpenOffice.org so that it can become a proper alternative. Also enhance the device driver database or if possible get proper Linux drivers written for hardware devices or develop some sort of agreement with the hardware vendors in this regard.

Manish Amain, Yatra: Participate in the Open Source community and share design patterns, meet often to strategize and share ideas, build a Certification Guild, and contribute to existing projects rather than start your own.

neeraj.gandhi@expressindia.com