Fast Forward With Open Source

This blog post is featured on the Black Duck Software Blog: Open Source Delivers. 

A lot of people think open source is about cost, but I don’t believe this is the case at all. The key benefit of open source is speed to market and ease of maintenance via open standards. Back in the days, it might have taken six months to a year for any major enterprise system to launch. Fast forward to the present, with using open technologies that integrate well with other frameworks, the time to market can be shortened to three months or even less.

As a company, we believe that there is great potential on the open source market. We watched the industry moving towards open source and open standards back in 2007. A great example of this is the Executive Office of the President of the United States of America relaunching their website, Whitehouse.gov, on the Drupal platform. This was a huge shift in the adoption of open source and an opportunity for others to see the value and speed of this technology.

Open source enables innovation to happen rapidly. By sharing knowledge, everyone can build upon what’s been done already. As Thomas Edison once said: “There’s a way to do it better – find it.” The support community that comes with open source is truly unique, and one that is rapidly evolving and focused on continuous improvement. Being engaged with the community is something that’s really important for getting the most value out of the open source experience.

At Appnovation, we work with customers who support our community contribution. With the support of these customers, we’re able to work on their project while at the same contribute code to the community. On top of this, we also have a great Corporate Social Responsibility program which contributes development time to great causes around the world.

I believe that open source is mature in some key technology areas such as middleware, content management and enterprise mobility; and less mature in areas such as ERPs. For a company that’s looking to get their feet wet, they should start by developing smaller applications in these mature areas to get the exposure to open source technology. Then when they’re ready, they can dive deeper into replatforming enterprise systems on open source technologies.

I see that certain less mature open source areas such as ERP, BI and CRM will become much more mature in the coming years. I also see the rise of the term open technologies which encompass both open source software and cloud based open systems.

This is the 10th year of the Future of Open Source Survey, and although it’s just kicking off, I already can’t wait to see the results and data on new developments, trends and insights.

If you haven't already, take the survey now!