Saying Skadoosh to Vendor Lock-In

By Naveen Gurusiddaiah

INDIA: The popularity of open source has been spreading like wild fire in the corporate world. The ‘free’ nature of open source helps enterprises to build their system at a lower cost. Though open source makes good economic and technical sense, its widespread adoption has little to do with cost. The most and foremost important factor is flexibility.

Being flexible essentially means that a company’s technology set-up can be altered and tweaked in line with its requirements. It decides your enterprise’s ability to adapt and to support and enable organizational change, and has been linked to operational efficiency.

Though many vendors promise flexibility as a part of the package, a few of them provide it. A product or solution which claims flexibility should not be unreasonably constrained when the business requirements change. It is very important to clarify it with your vendor, especially in the area of infrastructure.

Say no to lock-in

Enterprises are realising the risks involved when they put all their eggs in one vendor’s basket. Your organization must avoid lock-in to a particular supplier as it creates dependency. Having mission-critical systems and data at the mercy of a single vendor's product roadmap and licensing strategy doesn't make business sense to evolving enterprises. By locking your business on a single platform, a monopolistic vendor is capable of placing your systemsand your business at risk. The true test for a CIO lies in negotiating flexibility with a vendor - it requires will from the management.

Most vendors convince you into a lock-in by emphasizing a feature which cannot be provided by a standard infrastructure. If you give in, your business can become dependent on the solution, and migrating to a different solution may involve hampering your business continuity. Besides, proprietary vendors tend to stop development of a product after a few years. In such cases, open source lets you retain the right to use the solution you already have.

Customize for your needs

The philosophy behind open source is all about sharing and interoperability with other systems. It is about sharing the source code and not sharing your private data. As a business, your organization should not be limited by a proprietary vendor’s idea of what you need. Most proprietary vendors do not customize solutions according to business needs, while open source vendors can easily tailor their solutions for the way you do business.

No more forced upgrades and license

The fact that the source code is published for an open source solution means that proprietary data formats cannot be used to manipulate a lock-in. Applications running on an open source platform can often provide a new upgrade path for businesses that do not want to get locked into a pattern of forced upgrades and expensive licensing programs. Going for open source against a proprietary solution allows greater customization to meet an enterprise’s individual requirements and a vendor can build a differentiated service to meet its customers’ needs. This means greater freedom, lower costs and higher margins.

Mature and Secure

Today, many open-source technologies are mature, stable and well supported. This helps both vendors and users to lower their total cost of ownership.Earlier, open source products were driven by developers, resulting in a difficult user experience. However, the technology and interface have matured to a simpler and efficient one, considering that users include business and marketing professionals.

Moreover, reputed vendors have a dedicated team of security experts who receive advance notifications of security flaws and vulnerabilities, and works with the open-source community to pro-actively fix those vulnerabilities prior to bulletin release to the public.

This ensures that fixes to security issues areavailable to the partner community nearly immediately, reducing exposure for the partner and the partner's customers.

Open source vendors now provide the same level of support and accountability as proprietary alternatives. Commercial vendors typically protect you against software flaws that can impact your organization, while you are often on your own for any issues with an open source package without a vendor.

When it’s time to take a decision, don’t follow the norms and get locked into a solution that may not be right for your business five years from now. The expensive or popular one may work well for another enterprise but may not be your best solution. Take your business needs into consideration and then choose the right one that best suits your enterprise.

(Dr. Naveen Gurusiddaiah is Head of PreSales at Micro Focus, India. Views expressed here are personal)