I was surfing around searching for FOSS communities in Pakistan and then i found this article, thought whynot share it around with all of you. FOSS CIO predictions from 2003 now becoming a reality by 2010? Christopher Koch predicted possible scenarios in the CIO Magazine Dec. 15, 2003 Issue titled "The Future of Software" that by the year 2010, the world will make a major shift towards Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) due to the fact that government and enterprise Chief Information Officers (CIOs) probably would find themselves hostage to a few monopolistic vendors that keep software expensive and complex. Many of Koch's predictions are becoming a reality today and this analysis takes into account such various emerging FOSS trends within both the Public and Private sectors worldwide. Koch presented the case that Free and Open Source Software will not be the answer to integration problems and instead will drive down prices in selected areas of the software infrastructure with the possibility of OSS turning expensive databases such as Oracle and IBM's DB2 into commodities by 2010. Today the scenario is relatively different since integration is no more a dream in the FOSS based products and services ecosystem as platform independence, virtualization and distributed services are at the forefront of information technology strategies. It has also been seen major enterprise vendors are introducing new FOSS products and services in today's global marketplace. A significant move has been made recently by Oracle Corporation releasing its Unbreakable Enterprise Linux Support programme thus commoditization of FOSS technologies and platforms by enterprise vendors are hitting mainstream business activity. It was also predicted that smaller vendors will move toward the FOSS model keeping in view opportunities for low-cost market entry further lowering marketing costs building a user base through word of mouth and then sell services and add-ons thus simply giving it away. This too has been the trend for the past few years and many Silicon Valley, European and South Asian technology startups have adopted this FOSS model opportunity. FOSS provides the opportunity to immediately enter target markets providing consultancy, training and support services while the core product development is carried on in parallel. This helps develop an adequate customer base before actually releasing the core product into the market. At the enterprise level, FOSS will enter into corporate infrastructure and emerge as a major rival to existing dominant software models if the integration issues are covered effectively and this too has proven true with more advancement on the Linux front and major players Red Hat, Novell, Canonical and even Google moving in towards providing customization and integration with round the clock technical support and training for Linux, this is also proving to be very valid. Moreover, for developing economies or economies in transition, FOSS has appeared as an alternative tool to combat software piracy encouraging protection of intellectual property. In terms of business and investment return issues, Koch predicted that CIO's at Enterprise level will find them stuck in an outdated economic model for purchasing, installing and maintaining software and fewer dominant vendors will do business at much higher prices proving fewer choices with very high migration costs and increasing vendor lock-in. In light of this concern, vendors will sell applications as specific, configurable components that upgrade automatically and integrate with any type of system at no additional costs incorporating minimal effort thus buyers would pay only when employees use these applications. However Koch also stated that this model would not prove to be a major revenue generating model for major vendors and won't buy in interest or stability on the Stock Exchange from investors but it seems the other way around as the buy-as-you-use model is now in practice widely and is also termed as the On Demand Services Business Model widely employed by IBM and major vendors. It was also predicted that CIOs focusing on establishing low-cost infrastructure that would be easily maintainable and less reliant on a handful of vendors to function will have the upper hand in price negotiations with vendors and the ability to adopt innovative new solutions more quickly and easily than those CIOs locked in to a vendor's software release schedule. This too has been made possible by companies investing in the development of their in-house technical support teams employing the FOSS model since updates are being made available for free and require reduced vendor support for FOSS Linux distributions including the facility to customize FOSS while benefiting from optimal IT infrastructure performance. In the second scenario Koch predicted the possible Public sector market responses towards vendor lock-in and open standards compliance that by 2010, European and Asian governments will lead the way towards the adoption of FOSS while American CIOs will be following their footsteps with the risks identified that reliance upon a handful of vendors for their IT would prove dangerous. Governments in Europe and Asia would shift their purchasing and development dollars to FOSS and this has been evident within the last three years with more joining in on the FOSS alternative. Once again the most important risk mitigation will be seen towards reducing vendor lock-in; defeating vendor dominance models, security of information, compliance to open standards with calls for compliance to vendors should they be interested to continue doing business with governments. Such a trend would force vendors to comply towards creating FOSS within Open Standard specifications. Open Standards compliance has been evolving at a very fast rate including the prominent case of the Open Document Format and Massachusetts scenario. A dominant company like Microsoft has now included Open Document Format support within their office and business productivity tools due to compliance and further similar activity is predicated from other vendors who had ignored such issues in the past. The trend is to continue within the Public sector sharing the surge with the Private sector where governments continue to mandate FOSS for communication with vendors forced to comply with the new FOSS market trends. It may also be possible that governments and enterprise CIOs have had enough of endless complex licensing agreements and upgrades on enterprise software and instead opt for FOSS alternate licensing models turning everything they've paid for out to the market for free. Such a trend has been seen recently on SourceForge.net and e-government websites worldwide where public and private sector organizations are continuously making their FOSS technologies and platforms available for free encouraging inspection of source code and extensive testing before considerable use by stakeholders. Koch's prediction regarding Europe's largest manufacturing companies deciding to freeze all spending on enterprise software until vendors agree on a standard set of truly open, free integration technologies to hook their packages together also seems to be becoming a reality with the example of Microsoft's ban in the EU marketplace until it paid huge sums of fines and made compliance to such standards as set forth by the EU. Adding to it, the EU has been investing heavily into FOSS research and adoption by both Pubic and Private sectors within all member countries and each of them making back considerable contribution to the development of FOSS. Another successful prediction presented a strong case for enterprise level availability of FOSS technologies and platforms by 2010 emerging from all corners of the globe with major vendors backing and supporting such solutions. Key factors would be customer unhappiness combined with FOSS based commodity threats forcing major vendors to completely revamp their licensing, pricing, sales, installation and technical support models. Many vendors have already initiated the process of releasing two models of software, one freely developed and distributed by FOSS communities and the other as enhanced derivations from the latter. As an exception in some cases, some vendors are also making available older versions of their software free-of-cost while selling paid support. The predicted services model is also present today where smaller vendors are also making money by selling paid supplementary consultancy, training, deployment, migration and technical support services around FOSS technology and platforms developed by larger enterprise vendors thus an Open and Inclusive open standards based ecosystem is in evolution. This is also helping CIOs changing their role into architecture experts taking hands-on roles creating cheap, standards-based IT infrastructures building highly customized IT-enabled business processes based on FOSS standards as predicted by Koch. The "Don't pay for the software but pay only for services" business model is in full play today. Nick Gall, SVP and principal analyst for Meta Group has also predicted that "Open source and commoditization is a bottom-up process. It will move slowly up over the next 20 years to the top of the stack. It will be a slow, painful process for vendors." This may also be true since no one model for FOSS business fits all and every entity has to explore which services model suits its product. Some FOSS business models have not made money with respect to pay for service and instead have relied on Venture Capital supporting their sustainability. It has also been witnessed that many online businesses provide all sorts of services free to their members but make money out of targeted opt marketing strategies. Koch also predicted an emerging market for FOSS based ERP and CRM solutions opposed to the expensive ERP solutions from major vendors but the fact remains there are only a few FOSS based ERP solutions in the market. This prediction is still valid and very beneficial in terms of ERP solutions being developed under FOSS and open standards complying with international GAAP, financial, electronic data interchange and transaction procedures. The market may prove to be really big and fruitful. Various companies that have attempted to use FOSS based ERP and CRM solutions have invested in custom development projects to add functionality to these packages freely incorporating the new code into future releases as a contribution back to the FOSS development communities. As already mentioned, Koch also referred to the individual software developer or developer groups that they would be paid for coding as well as servicing and supporting their work thus if their clients decide to make such code available for incorporation into a FOSS package for redistribution, they will be able to sell services to other companies that adopt that distribution. FOSS will develop into an immediate preference for startups, small and medium enterprises as well as Venture Capitalists and Brokers. So what does it take to get out there and cash from the FOSS ecosystem? According to Jeremy Allison, developer of Samba software, "All you need is one good set of code out there" to act as a foundation for building the complex software systems. FOSS avoids the biggest barrier to entering the software industry: marketing and sales. FOSS needs no sales and marketing budget, only a good development leader, quality software and word of mouth for adoption. The FOSS enterprise software is not free, but it is cheaper, and services vendors that install and run it for customers are happy to contribute paid developers to the cause. He further adds that innovation will flower because it will be much easier to get new projects going and to sell add-ons for existing open source. To separate the promising software from the bad, good CIOs will be more in demand—and more valued—than ever! Disclaimer: The above information has been analyzed on a non-commercial basis for information purposes only from an article written by the author Christopher Koch published in CIO Magazine online dated Dec. 15, 2003 titled "The Future of Software, A Land Where Giants Rule" at the website address http://www.cio.com/archive/121503/softfuture.html thus proper copyright attributions as informed by CIO Magazine should be made where necessary. The author takes no responsibility whatsoever of the views and material presented within the references provided and readers are encouraged to research the facts on their own where deemed necessary. Online references for further reading: Koch, C. "The Future of Software, A Land Where Giants Rule", CIO Magazine. (Dec. 15, 2003) http://www.cio.com/archive/121503/softfuture.html Ohloh: Explore Open Source. Mapping the open source world by collecting objective information on open source projects. http://ohloh.net/ Source Forge Free and Open Source Software Foundry http://www.sourceforge.net FOSS in South Asia http://www.bytesforall.net/aggregator/sources/11 European Working Group on Libre Software http://eu.conecta.it/ E.U.-Funded Project to Test Open-Source Viability http://www.cio.com/blog_view.html?CID=25904 IDABC Website, dedicated to Free/Libre/Open Source Software to encourage the spread and use of Best Practices in Europe http://ec.europa.eu/idabc/en/chapter/452 Oracle Unbreakable Enterprise Linux http://www.oracle.com/technologies/linux/index.html Canonical and Ubuntu Linux http://www.canonical.com RedHat Enterprise Linux http://www.redhat.com Suse Enterprise Linux SLE http://www.novell.com The Economic Majority against Software Patents http://www.economic-majority.com/testimony/silicide/index.en.php Starting with Linux ZDNet http://whitepapers.zdnet.com/whitepaper.aspx?docid=166160&promo=590&tag=nl.e 590 Microsoft Vista gets criticism before its launching in Europe http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number4.18/vista EU threatens Microsoft with Vista ban - vnunet.com http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2152965/eu-threatens-microsoft-vista Free Software Foundation http://www.fsf.org Could the EU ban the Windows desktop from Europe? http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=12684 Adobe and Symantec seek EU ban on Vista bundling - ZDNet UK News http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/windows/0,39020396,39283555,00.htm Open Source Initiative http://www.opensource.org UNDP-APDIP-IOSN International Open Source Network http://www.iosn.net International Free and Open Source Software Foundation iFOSSF http://www.ifossf.org BytesForAll Network South Asia http://www.byetsforall.net FOSSFP: Free and Open Source Software Foundation of Pakistan http://www.fossfp.org -- marketing mailing list marketing@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing
