Rajat Sharma, President IT (Global CIO) Atul Limited and Director Atul Infotech, talks to Pankaj Maru about why many business and government organisations are now using open source software. Excerpts:
Your organisation is using open source software in a big way. Is your preference for open source only due to cost benefits or is it because you are able to achieve more adaptability and flexibility through such systems?
The prime drivers of open source solutions are factors like TCO, flexibility, adaptability, as well as the scope for better knowledge management. We have our inhouse team which engages in conceptualisation, solution identification, POC, internal tests, actual trial dry run, rollout and the subsequent maintenance of the solutions. A number of organisations prefer to procure their open source solutions from us. We collaborate with our clients in creation of open source solutions, which can drive business efficiency.
What kind of improvements do you see with the usage of open source solutions?
The adoption of open source is primarily due to the flexibility and adaptability that such solutions offer. The open source that we have deployed led to the achievement of the desired business outcomes. We have been able to amalgamate these open source initiatives with our core ERP Oracle eBusiness Suite. These open source solutions are being conceptualised, designed, implemented and maintained by our own inhouse IT team.
Have you planned any long term strategy for ensuring that the best solution, either open source or vendor driven, gets implemented in the organisation?
We have adopted a conscious IT strategy wherein we do not intend to procure any IT solution or application till we have explored and ruled out the open source option, be it on the operating system, application or development or diagnostic tools.
At times questions are raised about the security of open source systems. How are you ensuring that you don’t end up compromising on security while adopting open source?
We are primarily utilising the open source technology solutions in the application and operating system stack. This is an area where security is not a major concern. In enterprise security operations, we use the conventional stringent security solutions and best practices.
IT solutions are ever evolving and there is a constant need to upgrade. So how do you decide what should be the quantum of your IT spending?
We like to see every IT solution on its merits. When we come across any worthy IT solution that we had not anticipated earlier, then we get a direct approval for having that solution in the organisation. In the current fiscal, we are mostly focussed on enhancing our cloud based portfolio, and on upgrading the mobility systems and the data centre.
Atul Limited is also an IT services provider. What kind of demand are you seeing for open source solutions from clients?
The response for our open source solutions is encouraging. The enterprises are showing great amount of interest in opensource technologies, because of reliability and the distinct TCO advantage.
There is the view that earlier the CIOs used to be apprehensive about using open source. It is assumed that open source solutions can be riddled with glitches. I don’t subscribe to this view. If a solution has been properly designed on open source platforms then it will work with efficiency. Today there is no dearth of CIOs who prefer open source.
Do you think that in future the demand for open source is going to go up?
That is certainly my opinion. This open source phenomenon has now developed deep roots in the IT community. In days to come its popularity is going to improve further. Many case studies have been conducted in India and abroad that prove that organisations can derive the same amount of business efficiency and competitive advantage that they would by using expensive proprietary solutions. So it makes sense to go for open source. We have been in the forefront of creating such highly efficient and relatively low cost solutions, many of which are now being adopted by our clients.
