We talk a lot about working in partnership with your marketing team. But we also spend a lot of quality time working hand in hand with IT. When we’re in talks with a company’s head of IT, we’re often asked why we chose to go with open source solutions.
Many IT professionals are wary of open source, especially for enterprise applications. Having worked with both proprietary (Microsoft) setups and open source, I’m confident we’ve made the right choice. It’s one of the many factors which have allowed our business to scale so quickly. Here are a few good reasons to make the switch to open source.
Cost.
The server operating system and database platform in a typical enterprise stack will cost a fortune if you don’t go open source. When you try to scale an application across more CPUs and more servers, you'll quickly spend thousands more for each step up in capacity.
The added cost doesn't stop with the core services, either. Any application services or toolsets labeled "enterprise" are wildly overpriced as well. Ongoing support and maintenance agreements? Again, a huge ongoing expense.
Scalability.
Open source systems have the technical capacity to scale, and won’t limit your business’ financial capacity to scale. I’ve personally built and maintained an enterprise class set of redundant OS/application servers/database servers. There were literally tens of thousands of dollars tied up in software and maintenance plans. I wish I could have used that money elsewhere.
Google and Facebook have become the powerhouses they are using open source solutions. If they had to spend thousands of extra dollars on each server and CPU instance they spun up, would they have managed the same rate of growth?
Flexibility and Customization.
Open source also offers more flexibility in what your stack and toolset look like. Don't like an add-on component of application framework? Swap it out easily at low or no cost. When dealing with enterprise level services you're much more tightly confined in this regard. "Open Source" is by definition available for your own inspection, collaboration, tweaking and tuning.
Support.
For your development team, having a worldwide body of peers in open source development allows them to quickly learn and expand their skills and capabilities. The vast majority of enterprise level work is hidden behind NDAs and proprietary agreements. So new code and features remain in secure silos.
At OOHology, we’ve built a successful technology company using open source technologies. They’ve enabled us to grow quickly, and helped our team build world class skills as part of the robust open source development community. If you’re considering moving from Microsoft to open source, we can help you plan to make a smooth transition. After all, part of the beauty of open source is the spirit of collaboration.