Five Considerations: Evaluating Open Source Business Solutions

Before an organization decides to undertake implementation of an Open Source Software, it is important for them to understand the benefits of it. It is not a bright idea to pick up an open source software simply to avail of the wisdom of IT majors, even though the implementation might impact productivity. Despite the criticism that open source software is constantly faced with, it is becoming increasingly popular. For instance, Mozilla's Open Source Firefox is taking over the Microsoft Internet Explorer as a competitive web browser. This paper looks at the browser war and explains how LMS (Moodle) to CRM (Sugar CRM) to CMS (DotNetNuke) have come to be regarded as useful open source solutions. These are constantly being used as alternatives to traditional licensed proprietary software. The implementation of open source also introduces a transparency that is not available from a typical vendor relationship. This results in a lot of savings when one is not piled with unnecessary applications that require extra space to upgrade. The paper points out that with effective implementation of open source, a company might even be able to discover new markets and be able to achieve new streams of revenue. With the development of the Web 2.0, open source software is becoming even more popular. This paper discusses a study it undertook to evaluate CMS platforms. Five primary concerns arrived as result of the evaluation - cost, security, support, and ease of use.