IT for free
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The catalogue of open source products is growing in breadth and sophistication. But can it really form the basis for a comprehensive - and free - enterprise software stack?
Microsoft is locked in a philosophical - and semantic - struggle in which it argues that its own products have a lower cost of ownership than those of rivals that are, in fact, available free to download.
To support this assertion, the software powerhouse has commissioned several studies from independent market analysts and produced hefty, academic-like reports. But to little avail so far.
Indeed, the fact that it is deploying the full might of its marketing machine against its would-be nemesis, the open source movement, only underlines how seriously it - and the users it wants to retain as customers - are taking the alternative.
Open source software has evolved to become the single greatest threat to Microsoft and, increasingly, to other sections of the business software industry. The reason: the model has now reached a stage where organisations are proposing to use the free software to build most, if not all, of the core elements of the enterprise software stack - from the operating system, through database technology and application and web servers, to content management systems and (soon) business intelligence software (see box).
That is a prospect that has shaken any remaining traces of complacency from commercial software makers. It is also making some IT buyers question the value of their traditional software licences.
While many elements of proprietary software certainly deliver competitive advantage, there are other areas where the need is for commodity code. In that situation, it is becoming harder to argue against the use of open source - as long as it actually works.
Analysts are convinced that, up to a point, open source software is just as capable as many proprietary alternatives. "You'd be stupid not to use open source as part of your application management strategy," says Gartner analyst Mark Driver. "Most of us aren't going to Linux from Microsoft or Sun because of ideological reasons. We're doing it because it's cheap." Driver even depicts a world of getting "IT for free", achieved using single-application terminals for users with limited needs, or by providing access to applications only through a browser. The operating system required would be so small that it would require no maintenance: "If it breaks, you just throw it away."
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This "rising tide of commoditisation" is encouraging businesses to look at the cheaper alternatives, notes Quocirca analyst Jon Collins. At present that tide has risen to just below the applications layer. "Certain things are 'algorithmically commoditised'. You don't need to write a firewall or a scheduler again," he says. "The fact that people still make money off these algorithms is getting harder to justify."
Although some open source products lack the functionality of commercial software, Collins suggests that fact may be an advantage. "Organisations are sold too much software and don't have the wherewithal to do anything about it. The software buying model is flawed from that perspective: I should be able to buy software according to the job I need," he says, citing Microsoft Office as an example of a bundled package of which few use more than a small fraction of its functionality.
As that suggests, open source software is maturing to the extent that it can stand on its own merits. The UK's Ministry of Defence's Defence Academy says it chose Plone and Zope, an open source content management system and supporting application server, for the software's functionality, not its negligible cost. But other open source packages are less advanced. There may not be any credible open source ERP system but as a pointer to the movement up the stack, there are finance tools (albeit on a small-scale) and some in the open source community are working on business reporting tools.
Indeed, many companies 'selling' open source software - by charging for value-added integration, development and support - state that building a complete stack is their ultimate aim. Hewlett-Packard (HP) has recently launched a consulting business founded on that very basis, and Red Hat's Open Source Architecture strategy promises similar coalescence.
Open source application server maker JBoss is forging ahead with its plans to build an entire middleware stack - though it has no illusions about it rivalling offerings like IBM's WebSphere in the near future. At the same time, the open source development environment, Eclipse, is expanding fast. With the addition of a business intelligence reporting tool (BIRT) from BI vendor Actuate, Eclipse is one step closer to fulfilling its mission to provide "complete support for the entire development lifecycle" that will eventually encompass testing, user provisioning and systems management.
Sooner or later, the entire open source stack will not only be enterprise-ready but available as a simple, integrated package from organisations such as these. Today, they warn that attempts to assemble the pieces independently may still be a challenge - and lack the kind of cross-product support that commercial vendors provide. "You can download the bits and build it if you're a smart guy," says Paul Salazar, EMEA marketing director at Red Hat, "but you'll need [something like] the Red Hat support network to go forward in time."
Salazar argues that Red Hat's seven-year support and service package, with its regular patching and updates, make Linux a fuller, more stable and more realistic alternative to Windows. If the rest of the open source world is to compete with proprietary alternatives, customers need certified software they can trust to run on their hardware, and support for third-party applications, he adds.
Sacha Labourey, European general manager at JBoss, argues that because the software was free in the first place, even if organisations are paying for support, more of their fees are going towards support rather than being syphoned off into the vendor's R&D.
But although organisations may take up such offers when shifting to open source for the first time, Gary Hein, an analyst with the Burton Group, says many of his clients do not go on to pay support fees indefinitely. Newcomers need a service and support agreement that gives them the same level of assistance as from commercial vendors. "But the more experience and training and comfort they get, the more likely they are to drop that," he says.
Taking support and other costs into consideration to try to calculate a total cost of ownership comparison is one of the most contentious issues surrounding Linux. In the absence of any definitive studies, most analysts recommend organisations do their own calculations.
One area where Linux's value is clearer is in its ability to run on 'lower-spec' hardware. The UK Office of Government Commerce's investigation into public-sector open source use (see box) found that Linux required "less memory and a slower processor speed for the same functionality", making for a 6 to 8 year hardware refresh period, rather than 3 to 4 years with Windows.
IBM's worldwide VP of Linux, Carol Stafford, argues that acquisition cost is just one advantage. "The big things in the enterprise space now are security and the cost of maintaining fixes and patches on current operating systems," she says. "The whole open source concept of many people all over the world debating code fixes keeps [Linux] clean."
But there are potential pitfalls to deploying open source everywhere. Bill Weinberg, open source architecture specialist with Open Source Development Labs (the organisation that employs Linux creator Linus Torvalds and by which all modifications to Linux are approved) says the biggest challenge now lies in tying together the closed and open source worlds. "Interoperability is the Holy Grail for Linux on the desktop," he says.
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Although it is potentially advantageous and theoretically possible to build an open source stack, few large organisations are yet ready to take the step. For every City of Munich, the open source poster-child that is migrating 14,000 desktops to Linux, there are scores of others who toy with the idea only so they can leverage some sort of discount out of Microsoft.
Weinberg notes that Charles Schwab, the US financial giant, and Cisco, the switch maker, have strongly Linux-based infrastructures, the latter also participating in a desktop initiative. Google could not have shot to the top of the search market without a massively scalable but low-cost cluster of 4,000 Linux servers.
But while the temperature rises in arguments about whether software should be 'free', the debate seems to draw less heat among top-level management. "If you ask the management layer what they think of Linux, they don't have a massive push for it, they don't think of it in terms of a platform strategy, they don't think of it as strategic," says Quocirca analyst Jon Collins. "
But if you talk to the IT professional audience, they are keen on Linux because they can tinker and dabble. They can try out different things without having to worry about licensing first. So prototypes can start on Linux, and if the prototype becomes the project, as it often does, it sneaks in."
Whatever way open source software enters the enterprise, its potential has become much clearer. Five years ago, the open source movement was regarded by many as the lunatic fringe of IT. The same people can now see that the model is creeping up the enterprise stack and cutting costs in the process.
Five years from now it may have completed one of its primary goals and turned paid-for software into a niche market.
