While it shouldn't be assumed that adopting or migrating to an open source solution is a silver bullet, the possible benefits and advantages of adopting open source software are many. These can include savings realized by no license fees, lower management costs and reduced hardware costs from commodity hardware. There is the perception that open source software is free, but while it is free to acquire, that doesn't mean the software is completely free of all costs. Businesses must consider the total cost of ownership (TCO) when selecting any software, and open source is no exception. Methods for determining TCO vary widely, and so each business much determine this for themselves as what may work for one company many not for another. Bearing this in mind, factors of a low TCO for open source software include:

• No purchase costs
• No need to manage licenses, reducing or eliminating management costs
• Reduced need for upgrades
• Longer uptime and lesser need for system administrators
• Lesser vulnerability to viruses and therefore fewer chances of data loss and downtime
• Extension of hardware life and usability of older hardware with same or similar performance
• Reduction of vendor lock-in and monopoly pricing

Many companies have realized significant savings and low TCO by going with an open source solution. However, this may or may not be the case for every business, and the TCO as it applies to their business should be evaluated up-front.

Flexibility: Avoid vendor lock-in
The needs of a business can change quite rapidly and frequently due to competition, a change in the market, or discovered opportunity. Being tied to a particular platform or software package can impede on a business's ability to meet these challenges. The more flexible a company's technology is, the greater their ability to address their evolving business needs. Software flexibility means that a company is able to choose solutions suitable for the needs of their business without significant restriction.

Many commercial software products claim flexibility as an included feature, and in many cases this is true. But while the software may be flexible within its core features, it may not be flexible as it relates to other installed components nor able to meet changing business needs. By using a proprietary data format or internetworking standard, a vendor can make it cost prohibitive and virtually impossible for a company to switch to an alternative if said software isn't meeting the company's business or technical needs.

Open source projects have very little motivation to achieve this kind of lock-in strategy. There is no benefit to making open source software proprietary, and in fact it can be viewed as a hindrance to further development. Open source projects tend to follow already established standards for data formats and internetworking to ensure compatibility. If a standard isn't available or established, access to source code in effect eliminates the lock-in strategy.

Security
The idea of having the source code available for any and all to look at may make many organizations feel uneasy. If malicious individuals are able to view and access the code, it makes their job of finding weaknesses or installing back doors that much easier. So it would seem, then, that open source software would be less secure than its proprietary brethren would. But in fact, it is this very openness that allows for rigorous review and testing that makes for greater levels of security.

Making the source code available allows for the large community of developers to review the software for security flaws. While in some cases there are monetary rewards for finding security flaws, as was the case with the Mozilla Foundation, which offered $500 for every serious bug found in its software, including the Firefox browser, many developers are motivated by the fame of finding a security weakness. Such weaknesses are quite hard to find, and in many cases these same developers have the potential for being impacted by the weakness and it is in their own interest to vigorously review, test and expose the weaknesses.

Just as important as finding the weaknesses are creating the fixes for bugs. Having a large development community around the world in many cases leads to fixes much quicker as compared to a similar security flaw in proprietary software. It's not uncommon for a fix to be made available only hours after it's found, free of charge to users worldwide.

The following section discusses some of the considerations for companies interested in using open source software. Read on >>

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