Open Source for the Enterprise

Description:

Open source software is changing the world of Information Technology. But making it work for your company is far more complicated than simply installing a copy of Linux. If you are serious about using open source to cut costs, accelerate development, and reduce vendor lock-in, you must institutionalize skills and create new ways of working. You must understand how open source is different from commercial software and what responsibilities and risks it brings. Open Source for the Enterprise is a sober guide to putting open source to work in the modern IT department.

Open source software is software whose code is freely available to anyone who wants to change and redistribute it. New commercial support services, smaller licensing fees, increased collaboration, and a friendlier platform to sell products and services are just a few of the reasons open source is so attractive to IT departments. Some of the open source projects that are in current, widespread use in businesses large and small include Linux, FreeBSD, Apache, MySQL, PostgreSQL, JBOSS, and Perl. These have been used to such great effect by Google, Amazon, Yahoo!, and major commercial and financial firms, that a wave of publicity has resulted in recent years, bordering on hype. Large vendors such as IBM, Novell, and Hewlett Packard have made open source a lynchpin of their offerings. Open source has entered a new area where it is being used as a marketing device, a collaborative software development methodology, and a business model.

This book provides something far more valuable than either the cheerleading or the fear-mongering one hears about open source. The authors are Dan Woods, former CTO of TheStreet.com and a consultant and author of several books about IT, and Gautam Guliani, Director of Software Architecture at Kaplan Test Prep & Admissions. Each has used open source software for some 15 years at IT departments large and small. They have collected the wisdom of a host of experts from IT departments, open source communities, and software companies.

Open Source for the Enterprise provides a top to bottom view not only of the technology, but of the skills required to manage it and the organizational issues that must be addressed. Here are the sorts of questions answered in the book:

• Why is there a "productization gap" in most open source projects?
  
• How can the maturity of open source be evaluated?
  
• How can the ROI of open source be calculated?
  
• What skills are needed to use open source?
  
• What sorts of open source projects are appropriate for IT departments at the beginner, intermediate, advanced, and expert levels?
  
• What questions need to be answered by an open source strategy?
  
• What policies for governance can be instituted to control the adoption of open source?
  
• What new commercial services can help manage the risks of open source?
  
• Do differences in open source licenses matter?
  
• How will using open source transform an IT department?

Praise for Open Source for the Enterprise:

"Open Source has become a strategic business issue; decisions on how and where to choose to use Open Source now have a major impact on the overall direction of IT abilities to support the business both with capabilities and by controlling costs. This is a new game and one generally not covered in existing books on Open Source which continue to assume that the readers are 'deep dive' technologists, Open Source for the Enterprise provides everyone from business managers to technologists with the balanced view that has been missing. Well worth the time to read, and also worth encouraging others in your enterprise to read as well." ----Andy Mulholland - Global CTO Capgemini

"Open Source for the Enterprise is required reading for anyone working with or looking to adopt open source technologies in a corporate environment. Its practical, no-BS approach will make sure you're armed with the information you need to deploy applications successfully (as well as helping you know when to say "no"). If you're trying to sell open source to management, this book will give you the ammunition you need.  If you're a manager trying to drive down cost using open source, this book will tell you what questions to ask your staff. In short, it's a
clear, concise explanation of how to successfully leverage open source without making the big mistakes that can get you fired." ----Kevin Bedell - founding editor of LinuxWorld Magazine

 

 

Table of Contents:

Preface

1. The Nature of Open Source

     The Open Source Debate

     Understanding Your Open Source Readiness

     The Nature of Open Source

     What Is Open Source?

     Where Does Open Source Come From?

     How Does Open Source Grow?

     How Does Open Source Die?

     Leadership in the Open Source Life Cycle

     Second-Generation Trends in Open Source

     The Different Roots of Commercial Software

     Productization: The Key to Understanding the Challenge of Using Open Source

     Comparing the Risks of Commercial and Open Source Software

2. Measuring the Maturity of Open Source

     Open Source Traps

     The Elements of Open Source Maturity

     The Open Source Maturity Model

3. The Open Source Skill Set

     Preventing an Open Source Nightmare

     Open Source Skill Levels

     Open Source Skills Inventory

     How Maturity Affects Required Skills and Resources

     Skills and Risks

     Open Source Skill Building

4. Making the ROI Case

     ROI Fashions

     How Open Source Costs Differ from Commercial Software Costs

     Making Your Own ROI Model

     Skills Versus Money

5. Designing an Open Source Strategy

     Crafting a Strategy for Open Source Adoption

     Crafting a Strategy for Applying Open Source

     Crafting a Strategy for Managing Open Source

6. Support Models for Open Source

     Open Source Support Offers

     When Is Commercial Open Source Support the Right Choice?

     Buy Carefully

7. Making Open Source Projects Easy to Adopt

     One Program for Productization

     Basic Information and Community Support

     Reducing the Skills Gap for Getting Started

     Accelerating Learning

     Integration

     Benefits of Increased Adoption

     Opportunities for Skill Building

8. A Comparison of Open Source Licenses

     Many Flavors of Licenses

     The Classic Licenses

     The BSD Licenses: FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and NetBSD

     The MIT License

     Second-Generation/Single-Project Licenses

     Corporate Licenses

     Why Pick Just One? The Dual Licensing Option

9. Open Source Under Attack

     SCO Versus IBM and the Legal Quandary of Open Source

     What You Need to Know About SCO

     What It All Means: The Implications of the SCO Crisis

10. Open Source Empowerment

     Two Poles of IT: Buy Versus Build

     Where to Buy, Where to Build

     Closing the Requirements Gap

     Open Source Empowerment

     The Vision and Challenge of IT

A. The Open Source Platform

B. End-User Computing on the Desktop

C. Open Source and Email

D. Groupware, Portals, and Collaboration

E. Web Publishing and Content Management

F. Application Development

Index