NI3 » Why Do Businesses Shy Away From Open Source?

NI3 » Why Do Businesses Shy Away From Open Source?:

If you have proper configuration management and a knowledgeable staff, how does using Open Source software differ from using commercial software? It doesn’t. So why do businesses shy away from Open Source?

It does, though, in two key ways, and they are things that rattle down to the bones of the skeleton of most IS organizations.

Configuration management translates into a stable environment which means higher availability and a higher level of service. What business doesn’t want this? With Open Source you can build a more knowledgeable staff quicker and less expensively than with commercial software since everything is “open.”

But what if, deep down inside, those aren’t your organization’s goals?

What are the two things you don’t get with open source, no matter how good it is?

1. You don’t get a support contract.

2. You don’t get a phone number to call.

Those two things are actually two aspects of the same issue: where the responsibility lies. And that’s the the core in many IS/IT organizations, no matter what they may say, put into mission statements, or in briefings to management. They may not even realize it consciously — I didn’t until just recently.

Open sources requires you, as a manager of IT, or as a staffer, or as the CIO, to be willing to commit to being responsible for fixing a problem, and therefore, be responsible for the problem itself.

I remember one of the first meetings with my director when I moved into IT at Apple (a decade ago). He wanted to know how we could get a support contract for the mailing list software I used. I told him there was none. He was horrified. He wanted to know who would fix things if there was a problem. “I will”, I said of course. He was horrified.

Now, a lot of water has passed under that particular bridge, and a lot of teaching and learning has gone on over Open Source, and its strengths (and weaknesses) are much better understood by IT managers that are willing to learn. It’s also not coincidental that many of the top open source environments that have been adopted into IT — from Red Hat to MySQL to PHP — also seem to have commercial arms that sell support packages to generate revenue.

What I didn’t realize until just a couple of days ago, when having just this discussion in an interview.

The support contract is not about fixing the problem. The support contract is about allowing you to shift responsibility for the problem. It is the tool that allows you to go (as the IT person, manager or organization) to the customer, or your manager, or the CIO, or the VP of whatever organization is pissed at you for the problem, and say “we’re doing everything I can, but we can’t fix it until we hear back from the vendor”.

I doubt ANY of us don’t understand the deeply-ingrained attraction of being able to walk into the CIO’s office and being able to say “it’s the vendor’s problem” instead of “It’s my problem”. When a key system is down and you’re seeing millions of dollars of productivity and revenue draining off the bottom line, who really relishes walking into a VP’s office and saying “yeah, it’s our problem and we’re working on it”. It happens in IT far too often anyway — so I can’t blame someone for looking for opportunities to avoid that particular scenario.

I think a secondary aspect of a support contract is that it allows IT managers to think that they can perhaps operate with less experienced (aka cheaper) staff: there’s a fallback position. I don’t believe that this is actually TRUE, I just believe that it allows them to believe it to be true. Buying expertise instead of hiring it — and given there are very few IT organizations in the universe that aren’t squeezing every nickel, that can also be a very persuasive thing to convince yourself of, as a manager.

But ultimately, open source is the IT high-wire without a net, and many IT organizations simply don’t have the nerve for that. And part of that net, sometimes the most important aspect of it, I think, is the ability to continue the chain of pointed fingers past you and off-site where someone looking for heads to chop can’t go.

and I’ll bet anyone who’s spent any amount of time in an IT department has been in one of those meetings where they really, really wish they could have had that option…

Updates:

Dann @ NI3 follows up:

NI3 » Open Source Post:

If these are not your organization’s goals then it sounds like there is not an alignment between IT and the business which is always striving to do more with less. This misalignment between IT and the business is a great source of revenue for consultants.

And JP Rangaswami. @ Confused of Calcutta thinkgs about it, and takes it deeper and into a different direction:

Confused Of Calcutta » Blog Archive » Opensource makes you Responsible:

And that got me thinking hard about the importance of accountability. I’ve always felt that rights come with duties, power with vulnerability, empowerment with responsibility. Something to do with my upbringing, I guess.

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