An interesting post that I’m reading today on the SpreadFirefox website, an IT director sharing his experience about Open source software and how it could compete with commercial solutions ? I quote it all, because it’s very interesting to read :
I am an IT Director for an approximately 1400 person firm, which is a subsidary of a 26,000 person firm. I participate in the IT strategy and direction for the umbrella corporation, and am the primary decision maker for most all IT decisions at my company level. Our firm spends 5% of their net revenue (read: ALOT) on IT, and are great about investing in technology. A solid chunk of that is spent on software licensing to the following: Microsoft, Autodesk, and Adobe.
So if one of my goals is to spend less money and deliver more services, something we should theoretically be able to do as innovation and competition drives down the cost of technical solutions in response to increasing need, why is firefox the ONLY open source product I use?
We use: Windows server, Windows OS at the desktop, SMS, all web-based applications (3rd party and in-house) are optimized for IE, Outlook email, etc. The standard for probably 98% of the enterprise business world. Outside of universities, design shops, and open source companies, is anyone using *nix on the desktop? For file/print servers where more than 1,000+ employees are involved? In a consulting, professional services, or sales driven industry? Why not?
Well, one of my theories is: I’m not entirely convinced that the business leaders of the open source community want that market. If they do, what’s the plan? If they don’t, is it because they do not feel there is a request for providing tools in the enterprise market? Are the tools mature enough to compete for enterprise dollars? Will they be in the next 2-3 years? How is the introduction and increasing need for NAS technology going to affect people’s reliance on W2K3?
I certainly don’t want to continue writing bloated checks to Microsoft. Are there any other IT leaders within this community that would like to discuss concrete strategy planning for leveraging open source as a way to mitigate IT expenditure? Developers, do you know what we need? Are you interested in learning? Maybe you’re not, but I bet your VC is…..
Anyway, I like open source. I like firefox. I like competition. I like insightful, non-inflamatory, interesting responses and questions.
~ xkbj
