Open Source: Rocket Fuel for Business Scalability
The open-source market is set to be valued at more than $30 billion by 2022
By Gautam Rege, Co-founder & Director, Josh Software
A few years ago, an industry leader and wise man said the following words: “Certainly there’s a phenomenon around open source. You know free software will be a vibrant area. There will be a lot of neat things that get done there.” This man was none other than Bill Gates himself, and boy was he right!
For a tremendously evolving industry like IT and computing, the most amount of change has come in the last decade, especially after the digital transformation movement started peaking. The open-source software that was once not considered viable for businesses to use has almost taken over the world today, and across industries at that! The POS you shop at? Open-source. Your favorite web browser? Open-source. Social media sites like Twitter? Open source! The examples talk for themselves. It’s not a stretch to say that open source has effectively transformed the entire IT landscape!
But why does this matter to you, a business leader who has nothing to do with core IT operations, or a C suite professional whose job is to delegate the technical stuff to other team leads? I’ll tell you. It matters because when we talk about Open Source, it goes beyond just software. It matters because if you use the open-source correctly, it can add great value to your bottom line and help you innovate at scale, making for organisations that are more digitally prepared, resilient and have a solid competitive edge. In a recent Red Hat survey, 69 per cent IT leaders said that enterprise OSS was “very important” or “extremely important” to their enterprise’s overall software strategy, and that’s exactly why you need to think of this now!
Why Business Leaders Should Care About Open Source
The open-source market is set to be valued at more than $30 billion by 2022, and that’s not all. As new-age companies move towards stability, focusing on business outcomes becomes imperative. With open-source, these business outcomes can be met with more agility since its entire approach is to make computing better, further and faster.
With collaboration at its core, having an open-source led strategy ensures a lower total cost of ownership for the enterprise. IBM, SAP, Adobe and hundreds of other industry market leaders use open-source generously today, look where they are! The current business landscape is evolving rapidly and with customer as king, enterprises need to be prepared for changing requirements. Embracing an open-source culture also means better accessibility to vendors, so you can tick that box too!
The Impact of Open Source on the Bottom Line
It’s not just the top line that benefits from open source use; this directly affects your bottom line too. For one, off the shelf software may seem cost optimum at first, but it’s more expensive in the long run. And second, if you ever need to customise it, you need to go back to the people who own that proprietary software which means even more investment, in terms of time and money.
Open source helps you avoid vendor lock-ins, unnecessary system deployments, bundling and overkill in terms of functionality. The cost comes to a fraction of the same, as the code is more or less free, and all business leaders need to focus on is the cost of deploying teams.
How Open Source Helps Build Scale and Innovation
The transparency of open source is largely driven by the open-source community which is one of the most rewarding factors about this culture. This is what makes it a force multiplier for innovation! This dedicated community of developers keeps the bar high in terms of customer support, answering queries and developing new-age solutions for the most complex problems.
It is a culture backed by contributions and collaboration at all times. If you’re part of the open-source community as a business leader, you can be rest assured that you will find the best talent here that will enable businesses to scale effectively!
Using open-source software is becoming the new common all across, and as developments spark across sectors, it is clear that this is what will drive the future of tech ahead.
