Is OpenSource software right for your business?
The obvious benefit is the price (It's generally free!) The
downside is it can be difficult to install, support and manage .
We look at the pros and cons and offer you a few good resources
and show you how to evaluate the packages your considering.
Opensource software is software or applications that are
developed by people with a real intereset in developing
applications for everyone to use for free. The biggest
repository of opensource software on the web is
www.sourceforge.net.
Keypoints of open source software
1. It's free to use and usually distributed for free. Some
companies will package it up and make it a little easier to
install, for this they charge a small fee. Other companies will
sell the product but then give you free support for a limited
time.
2. Most open source software is developed for the linux
platform. Before considering adopting linux as an operating
system you'll need to make sure you have easy access to linux
support people. One really good tech, who happens to be the same
guy who sold you the software isn't good enough. He'll end up
owning your business.
3. Because the operating systems and programming languages the
software is developed in are themselves open source,
installation, support and upgrades can be exceedingly difficult.
How to evaluate an open source solution.
Despite what your IT staff or consultant might say you want to
evaluate any open source solution you're considering. The depth
of the evaluation is dependant on the complexity of the
solution. An apache web server would be fairly quick to
evaluate. A CRM solution for thirty sales people and several
hundred customers is going to require at least a few weeks of
testings.
The first step is to set up a test bed server. This can be an
older server, just something reliable and fast enough to
approximate real world results. As we've mentioned before most
open source software is linux based so you're going to need to
decide on a linux distribution. Red Hat linux and Suse linux are
two of the best and both are supported by the companies that
distribute them. Suse linux is now owned by Novell. More than
likely you'll need a development environment and a sql server.
Make sure the technican loads a distribution package to do this.
The best for Apache, MYsql and PHP is Xampp which can be
downloaded at apachefriends.org. Don't let your techs tell you
they've got a better way by just installing it piece by piece,
you'll end up paying for it later.
Have your techicians document the installation process, get the
application stable and then step back from the test. If they're
spending every day with the end users resolving little problems
it should be a red flag that the solution is not stable.
Make sure that the application you're considering has some
external support. This may be as simple as a forum of users but
they're needs to be a place you can go to for basic support
issues. Also make sure the application has a user manual. Many
open source packages are released with nothing more than a few
sentences describing the installation process.
This next step is extremely important. You need to test for a
failure. Have the techs rebuild the system from scratch and
restore all of the data. If it's not done within a day, that's
another red flag.
After the evaluation ask yourself these questions.
We're most people able to take advantage of the software within
a day or two? Was it easy to restore from the simulated crash?
Were problems fixed in a timely manner? Did the software stay up
and running throughout the test? Did they end users feel like
they benefited from using the application?
About the author:
Eric Gurr is the president and CEO of Intralink.
Intralink is a computer
consulting and search engine optimization company located in
Cincinnati..
