Enterprise open source Toolkit

Assessing the scalability of open source

Tags:
Open Source

Deb Shinder Tech Republic

Published: 21 Dec 2006 11:39 GMT

Small businesses with small budgets can save a lot of money by deploying open-source software — at least in theory. The Linux operating system and office productivity software such as OpenOffice can be downloaded free. That sounds a lot better than paying $200 (£101.49) for each system's OS and $300-500 more for an Office suite.

Also in theory, large companies stand to save even more because they need so many more copies of each software program. Multiply $500 savings per machine by 100 computers and we're looking at substantial cost savings: $50,000 (£25,373).

But is open source really scalable enough to grow with your company? Let's look at some of the pros and cons of switching to open source solutions for both small and large companies.

The cost factor
We included the caveat that the savings mentioned above are theoretical, because deployment of open source software may carry hidden costs that affect the comparison with commercial software. For example:

The learning curve for open source software may be greater, especially for end users who are not "power users". Depending on the particular distribution and the graphical interface, an open-source operating system may require more technical skill to master.
Administrative overhead may also be greater, as IT professionals are expected to master a command-line interface and be proficient in scripting, writing their own device drivers, and so forth.
Technical support may not be provided by the vendor, or may cost extra. Of course, there are also commercial distributions of open-source products that do include tech support, but their cost is not zero and may even approach or exceed that of proprietary software.

According to the Red Hat website, a per-system annual support subscription for Enterprise Linux AS costs $1,499 (£760.78) (standard) to $2,499 (£1,268.16) (premium). Thus, in evaluating or planning for an open-source deployment, always be sure you're comparing "apples to apples" by including any additional costs for training, overhead, support, and so on.

Benefits of open source
Cost considerations aside, open-source software can provide a number of benefits, especially to tech-savvy users. These include:

Because the source code is available and the licences generally allow modification, your in-house programmers can customise it to fit your needs.
Another benefit is "security through disclosure" — anyone can examine the source code and discover security flaws, and anyone can write fixes for them; you don't have to wait for the software vendor to do so.
Open-source software that has matured and been through the peer-review process continually for years is reliable; as an example, much of the software on which the Internet runs (DNS, Sendmail, Perl, etc.) is open source.
Most open source software enjoys a great deal of community support — user groups, web boards, newsgroups, mailing lists, and so on, where you can go to ask questions and get help.

Open source advocates tend to "stick together" and share knowledge just as they share the software. However, in some communities you may find that "newbies" — both those who are new to technology…