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What are the key pitfalls to avoid and the top principles to successful open source adoption in the public sector?
 Written by Jeremy Oates, UK and Ireland managing director for Accenture’s Technology Practice
In accelerating its adoption of open source software (OSS) in public services, the UK has caught up to and perhaps passed other European governments in its use of OSS. Tom Watson, MP and former minister for digital engagement, said open source would be on a level playing field with proprietary software like Windows. Furthermore, he called OSS “one of the most significant cultural developments in IT and beyond over the last two decades.”
Cost reduction remains the most compelling factor for organisations considering open source, defined as software licensed under terms that make the source code available for others to use, modify and distribute. It took the reality of a global recession to convince many enterprises that open source computing was ready for prime time.
Cost benefits
Subscription and maintenance costs can be reduced by 70 to 90 per cent with OSS versus traditional options. This represents a significant opportunity for governmental organisations to deliver more effective and affordable service to taxpayers. And while cost reduction may constitute the sweet spot for most organisations – according to some in the open source industry, the shift from proprietary standards could save the government 600m a year – the benefits of open source can be far greater for those enterprises that look to it as part of a bigger picture, where they can reap such rewards as faster time to market, better quality, and greater flexibility.
According to independent market research, more than half of the world’s largest companies have implemented, are piloting, or are expanding their use of open source computing. Accenture’s High Performance IT Research study found that 77 per cent of high-performance IT organisations said they are were piloting or committing to open source (compared to just 37 percent of overall global businesses). By 2011, at least 80 per cent of all commercial software solutions will include substantive open source.
In announcing an open source standards action plan earlier this year, the British government said it would: - See that open source solutions are considered properly and, where they deliver best value, are selected for government business solutions.
- Embed an open source culture of sharing, re-use and collaborative development across the public sector and its suppliers.
- Make sure that systems integrators and proprietary software providers enable the same flexibility and ability to re-use their solutions and products – which are key features of open source.
The government’s plan could result in open source software being deployed in such areas as office applications (word processing and spreadsheets), document management, and database infrastructure, which constitute the backbone of many large-scale IT systems.
Mission critical use
More often than not – and contrary to views perpetrated by some software developers who say that enterprises are largely ignoring open source software because it in fact costs more to deploy than proprietary solutions – enterprises have been choosing open source software for mission critical use.
This move away from tactical-only execution has created a second wave of implementations and is obvious in the steady rise in demand that we have seen from our clients. Organisations have become comfortable with using open source, and the more that they apply it successfully, the more they start to realise that there are benefits other than cost savings.
While the advantages are real, enterprises pursuing open source must ensure that proper safeguards are in place that will address key challenges. The first of these stems from the absence of strategies that clearly articulate the long-term value of open source for an enterprise. Many organisations pursue open source opportunistically because they understand that for an individual project the overall costs to build skills and level the path to production may outweigh the saved capital expenses. However, additional costs may arise as a result of missing governance structures. In many organisations, open source is managed in an unplanned fashion.
While this is not necessarily an issue for a single project, it becomes challenging in enterprise IT when suddenly dozens of projects pursue open source in an uncontrolled, unmanaged manner, without consistent policies, procurement processes and ultimately ownership to maintain the various components in production.
Articulating your strategy
The real potential is unveiled once a complete OSS strategy is articulated (e.g. outsourcing, application portfolio optimisation, legacy migration), that considers the entire enterprise context.
For example, if an open source substitution is pursued strategically (the low hanging fruit is typically in the periphery of mission critical systems) and promises reduced TCO over the next years by migrating identified commercial software to open source equivalents, the savings can be significant. And this is despite an initial upfront investment.
But this decision must be fact-based and needs to consider all aspects that drive both savings and expenses.
Other challenges that can be overcome but need to be planned for stem from the way OSS can be obtained from disparate sources, including web sites that aggregate OSS applications and tools. This can create integration challenges as well as threaten to run open source under the radar of the IT environment. Organisations must also understand that OSS changes rapidly and provides no guarantees of built-in support. Finally, interdependencies between discrete open source software may result in overlapping software licenses and integration issues.
It is not surprising that in the face of these challenges, many public sector organisations, remain confused over the potential of open source, when they should use it and the costs and investment required. While widely touted as ‘free software’, open source requires the same level of investment, training and governance as proprietary software.
Finding the right approach
What approach should IT leaders take? The Accenture Innovation Centre for Open Source has developed the following recommendations:
- Adopt – Use open source where appropriate to lower licensing costs and increase flexibility. When possible, OSS should be established as a first-class option in new development. This includes securing procurement support, implementing preferred solution stacks and embedding OSS as part of the enterprise architecture standards.
- Manage – Create a disciplined approach to using and governing OSS to understand which applications are being used, and to ensure standardised stacks are implemented for different applications styles.
- Support – Instead of taking a self-support approach to open source, which too often dilutes its benefits, support should be obtained from a third party at a modest cost.
Open source software needs to be treated like any other software. There is a temptation by many organisations to pursue open source in the absence of any IT planning, control and management. While this may not necessarily be an issue for a single project, it can have negative side effects when deployed enterprise-wide across multiple projects.
Open source makes long-term business sense to many enterprises and by taking the proper steps, organisations have the opportunity to use open source software strategically and more extensively in order that they realise greater benefits. |
