Keeping your options open

An Executive Interview with Opennet

We ask David Allinson whether open source is the answer for IT in the face of the economic crisis?

“Data on the Middle East is much harder to come by but there is a general consensus that spending is down and CIOs are being more cautious with budgets”
-David Allinson

BM. What do you think is the main challenge facing CIOs in the face of the economic crisis?
David Allinson. The obvious answer is that most CIOs will have a lot less to spend in 2009. In the US, where the crisis first hit, a CIO Survey conducted late last year showed that approximately 60 percent of those quizzed were re-evaluating budgets, re-negotiating contracts and putting those projects deemed non essential on hold. Data on the Middle East is much harder to come by but there is a general consensus that spending is down and CIOs are being more cautious with budgets.

BM. How can open source help in such a situation?
DA. The most obvious area to look at is at the operating system and platform level. If a company was looking at a Database or ERP system from one of the proprietary vendors like SAP or Oracle they might have been planning on a proprietary hardware solution running a variant of Unix. By replacing the platform with an Intel or AMD system and replacing the OS with Red Hat Linux there are immediate cost benefits. Moving to Linux is also an easy transition for existing Unix skilled technical staff. Additionally, it allows you to expand systems incrementally rather than having to factor capacity into your hardware purchase immediately.

BM. Are there any other benefits from using Red Hat as the platform of choice?
DA. Yes, if you are looking at virtualising your environment to make the best use of existing hardware resources and allowing a number of applications to share servers. Red Hat offers products that include virtualisation with the base operating system at no extra charge. With their acquisition of Qumranet, you will soon be able to virtualise your desktops, too. You may previously have been planning to purchase virtualisation software from VMWare, but by opting to use Red Hat, you save again.

BM. What about other open source offerings ?
DA. While previously open source software might have been looked upon with some suspicion by corporate decision makers, today there are around 500 commercially supported open source projects. In the database area alone, there are products in use in corporate production environments such as MySQL, PostgreSQL and Ingres. There is also Zenoss in system management, Digium/Asterik in telephony, Jaspersoft in business intelligence ,SugarCRM and Compiere in the CRM and ERP space, and Zimbra for messaging and collaboration. If you are looking at a major in-house development project, you now have options such as Red Hat's JBoss, an open source alternative to Websphere and Web Logic. All can offer significant cost savings over their proprietary counterparts.

BM. Initial cost saving is one thing but what about ongoing support?
DA. Clearly quality and availability of support is of major concern to corporate decision makers. One of the biggest advantages of open source is the community itself. A user can go on-line at any time and will get the response and support from a community that is very active on-line. For Red Hat specifically, as its master distributor in the Middle East and North Africa region (MENA), Opennet operates the Red Hat Middle East support centre. We also operate a Middle East training centre in Dubai where your own support staff can achieve RHCE or RHCT certification instructed by fully accredited Red Hat instructors.

BM. Where do you see most of the activity in open source in 2009?
DA. Up to this point in time we have mainly seen the growth of Linux running proprietary software solutions as a means of reducing platform costs and improving IT flexibility and this will continue. However, looking at the scale of the economic downturn I think 2009 could well herald the wider consideration and implementation of open source software to realise significant cost savings available in many application areas.

David Allinson is General Manager of Opennet MEA, responsible for directing their growth as an open source software and services company primarily focused on Red Hat products. Opennet is the Red Hat master distributor for the Middle East and North Africa and also operates the Red Hat Middle East support centre. For further information, please email david@opennet.ae.