Opening new doors with Open Source

With Oracle software running on Oracle Enterprise Linux, the channel can now provide, customise and support the entire stack. They can choose between supporting the software themselves, supporting it with Oracle’s backing or letting Oracle handle the support. Channel players offering solutions that run on Windows, for example, are reliant on Microsoft’s support to solve the issue, whereas Open Source platforms allows channel players to turn to a number of sources – making them masters of their own destiny.

“While using Unbreakable Linux might broaden support options, one of the other interesting components Oracle offers is something called Premier Back Porting,” Owenby said. “Imagine you’ve got a six-month project and three months into it you find a bug in the operating system. The normal solution for all Linux distribution is to upgrade to the latest version. Of course, upgrading to the latest version could introduce a whole new set of problems.

“Our Premier Back Porting program says that if you identify a bug, we will back port the fix to the version you’re using – not just to the latest version. It’s a subtle difference but I am talking to customers and they are just champing at the bit for that. It is exactly what they want as they don’t want to take the 30 changes that come with a new version, they just want the one change they know they need.”

Although Open Source projects may offer free access to the underlying code, software license fees generally only account for a small percentage of a major project’s overall costs. Money not put into a software giants’ pocket can be invested back into the project, said Obol Software CEO Shannon Roy.

Obol Software is the developer of Fivedash, a fully featured, general-purpose Open Source accounting program. While anyone can download a free copy of Fivedash, Obol Software makes its money through deployment, customisation and support.

“If your customers are not already asking about including an Open Source option in a proposal, then it is going to come in the next six months. Resellers need to get out there and integrators need to get out there and find out what is available in the Open Source space. They really need to educate themselves because their customers are going to drive it if they don’t,” Roy said.

“In a financial accounting system rollout there are generally two costs. There is the cost of the software, which is a license fee usually updated yearly. There is big hit at the start and then a yearly hit. Then there is the set up and customisation, where the software will be modified for your particular usage. Generally the split of those costs is around about 30/70, with 30 percent for licenses and 70 percent for services.

“Immediately Open Source gives you an advantage because there are no license fees. Essentially you can take that 30 percent and put it in your back pocket, using it to develop your business in another way. Spend a bit more money on the customisation part and, at the end of the day, you’ll have a piece of software that is far more attuned to your customer’s particular business model. Too many businesses change their business to fit in with what their accounting software wants them to do. We feel that is completely wrong-headed. People should have the freedom to change their accounting software so it does what they need it to do. It is really hard to do that with proprietary software, but that is what Open Source is really about, making the software do what you need it to do.”

Another strength of Open Source technologies is their general adherence to open standards. Around the world customers are beginning to demand open standards, with government departments in particular mandating open standards as an essential part of any IT project. Particular attention has been paid to Microsoft’s Office document formats.

While Microsoft’s document formats for Word and Excel have been de facto standards for many years, international concern is growing over such reliance on one vendor. Many organisations are concerned about data sovereignty, considering it a business risk to lock their intellectual property away in proprietary formats.

Such concerns have seen the rise of OpenOffice, a free Open Source alternative to Microsoft Office comprising of a word processor, spreadsheet and database as well as presentation, vector drawing and mathematical function tools. OpenOffice has the look and feel of Microsoft Office 2003 and is compatible with its file formats, so staff require little training to make the switch. It is available for Windows, Mac OS, Linux and Solaris.