Offering regional and national programs, CIO (and CSO) events bring together some of the most respected names and thought leaders in information technology and security. Presented by CIOs and other senior level executives, these invitation-only programs offer timely topics and strong networking. Learn More »
Public Council Teleconference: Application Rationalization — Hidden Costs and Smart Decisions
November 17 at 11:00 am US/Eastern (GMT-5)
Join Honorio Padrón, of The Hackett Group, who will share the drivers for companies to tackle application rationalization and the results of research that define the hidden cost of complexity. Additionally, we will discuss key decision milestones—to start or not, holding the course steady and fulfilling expectations.
Virtual Desktop Cost-Benefit Analysis — Michael Jacobs, Catlin Group
The analysis contained in this presentation measures the cost of everything from the machines and licenses to the infrastructure for virtual vs. traditional desktop environments.
Honor your best senior team members - Apply for the CIO Ones to Watch Award
Get well-earned public recognition for your top up-and-coming team members, your IT organization and your enterprise. Award winners will be announced, publicized and feted in May 2010, great timing to help attract new IT recruits to your company.
Learn more about the CIO Executive Council »November 20, 2008 — MIS Asia —
A survey by research and analysis company Gartner has shown the pervasiveness of open-source software (OSS) adoption across firms.
According to the study, 85 per cent of companies surveyed are currently using OSS in their enterprises and the remaining 15 per cent are expecting to in the next 12 months.
The survey was conducted in May and June 2008 and included 274 end-user organisations across various countries and markets in Asia Pacific, Europe and North America.
According to survey findings, 69 per cent of companies surveyed still have no formal policy for evaluating and cataloguing OSS usage in their enterprise. This opens up major potential liabilities for intellectual-property violations, said the analyst firm.
"Just because something is free doesn't mean that it has no cost," said Laurie Wurster, research director at Gartner. "Companies must have a policy for procuring OSS, deciding which applications will be supported by OSS, and identifying the intellectual property risk or supportability risk associated with using OSS. Once a policy is in place, then there must be a governance process to enforce it."
Interestingly, the survey results indicate that OSS in new projects is being deployed nearly equally in mission-critical and non-mission-critical situations.
Of the large number of application software projects, respondents indicated a higher rate of using OSS as a replacement for commercially available products while using mostly OSS components for their infrastructure development, said the research company.
In areas where OSS projects are most mature, IT departments appear comfortable with using OSS components to enhance existing infrastructure environments, the Gartner survey indicated. However, in the less mature areas of application software, OSS is more readily used as a replacement for commercially available software, probably because of the cost and sophistication level required to customise many application products.
According to the survey findings, respondents cited the following as the top three most important reasons for using OSS: lower total cost of ownership (TCO), reduction in development of cost-prohibitive factors, and the ease to embark on new IT projects or software initiatives.
Some respondents indicated that they also use OSS as investment protection against a single vendor 'owning' the entire IT department, said Gartner.
Governance, or the lack of it, was the No 1 challenge for OSS users in the survey, followed by conflicting terms and conditions and the availability of too many license types and forms.
"Understanding when and how an OSS alternative may be used is a frustrating process, especially when there are so many license types and forms from which to choose," said Wurster.
The Gartner survey also revealed that customer service continues to be the leading business process for which OSS projects are used, followed closely by enterprise integration, finance and administration, and business analytics. Sales and marketing, customer analytics, field service, ERP and CRM solutions are also moving up the adoption ramp, further increasing the influence of OSS in many enterprises, said the research firm.