ET Bureau NEW DELHI: As the government looks to adopt open source software development for its applications, proprietary software vendors such as Microsoft, IBM and Oracle are worried, and are looking at alternative ways of doing business, say experts.
“All the big players are already worried. They have made a lot of money in the traditional proprietary software model, but in the next 2-3 years, as people come out of the lock-in period of (their contracts), you will see the demise of a lot of these proprietary models,” said Professor Rahul De, Hewlett-Packard Chair Professor in Quantitative Methods & Information Systems Area Indian Institute of Management, Bengaluru.
“We are living in very interesting times where erstwhile proprietary software giants can no longer ignore free and open source software as part of their future,” said Mishi Choudhary, executive director at Software Freedom Law Centre, adding that while the companies may be making some moves towards open source in the backend, most of their public facing software such as Microsoft's Windows is not open source.
ET had reported in November that the Indian government was readying a policy that calls for open source software to be used as part of the Digital India initiative. The government is also planning to create a Github-like repository of software that can be collaboratively developed.
“The government should build a strong technology infrastructure that harnesses the power of global technology innovations for India’s growth. Open source software, is part of today’s heterogeneous IT environments and we have been working with open source communities for a long time - enabling and contributing to it,” said Neeraj Gill, General Manager, Public Sector, Microsoft India.
He added that technology decisions should take into account the rapid changes in the sector that require investments and ongoing effort to maintain security and privacy standards.
While IBM did not comment for this story, Oracle did not respond to an email query.
As open source gathers momentum the world over, governments and enterprises are increasingly looking at leveraging the benefits of using this mode of software development, which eliminates licence costs. From big corporates such as Google and Facebook to the state of Kerala closer home, open source is making an impact that cannot be wished away.
The way forward for these companies is to look at alternative business models. “Proprietary software vendors will have to look at emerging business models like cloud computing, and a services-based approach to maintain their relevance,” said Venkatesh Hariharan, director, Alchemy Business Solutions LLP.
The Indian IT industry is also seeing higher adoption of open source, and companies such as Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys, Wipro and HCL Technologies are also increasingly investing in training their personnel in open source technologies. Open source is also the technology of choice for startups and small and medium businesses.
“Cost is just one of the benefits of using open source software. The avoidance of vendor lock-in, the rapidly growing community around OSS like Drupal, the ability to tweak the source code, and the rapid pace of OSS innovation in emerging areas like cloud computing, big data are some of the other benefits,” Hariharan added.
“All the big players are already worried. They have made a lot of money in the traditional proprietary software model, but in the next 2-3 years, as people come out of the lock-in period of (their contracts), you will see the demise of a lot of these proprietary models,” said Professor Rahul De, Hewlett-Packard Chair Professor in Quantitative Methods & Information Systems Area Indian Institute of Management, Bengaluru.
Traditionally, all these vendors have done business in a model where they charge licence fees for the use of their software. However, most of them have been making an advance towards adopting open source technology. While Microsoft recently moved parts of its dot Net platform in open source, Oracle has also purchased open source databases like MySQL, and IBM has a huge line of business in their open source Eclipse platform product. “They are buying their insurance,” added Prof De.
“We are living in very interesting times where erstwhile proprietary software giants can no longer ignore free and open source software as part of their future,” said Mishi Choudhary, executive director at Software Freedom Law Centre, adding that while the companies may be making some moves towards open source in the backend, most of their public facing software such as Microsoft's Windows is not open source.
ET had reported in November that the Indian government was readying a policy that calls for open source software to be used as part of the Digital India initiative. The government is also planning to create a Github-like repository of software that can be collaboratively developed.
“The government should build a strong technology infrastructure that harnesses the power of global technology innovations for India’s growth. Open source software, is part of today’s heterogeneous IT environments and we have been working with open source communities for a long time - enabling and contributing to it,” said Neeraj Gill, General Manager, Public Sector, Microsoft India.
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He added that technology decisions should take into account the rapid changes in the sector that require investments and ongoing effort to maintain security and privacy standards.
While IBM did not comment for this story, Oracle did not respond to an email query.
As open source gathers momentum the world over, governments and enterprises are increasingly looking at leveraging the benefits of using this mode of software development, which eliminates licence costs. From big corporates such as Google and Facebook to the state of Kerala closer home, open source is making an impact that cannot be wished away.
The way forward for these companies is to look at alternative business models. “Proprietary software vendors will have to look at emerging business models like cloud computing, and a services-based approach to maintain their relevance,” said Venkatesh Hariharan, director, Alchemy Business Solutions LLP.
The Indian IT industry is also seeing higher adoption of open source, and companies such as Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys, Wipro and HCL Technologies are also increasingly investing in training their personnel in open source technologies. Open source is also the technology of choice for startups and small and medium businesses.
“Cost is just one of the benefits of using open source software. The avoidance of vendor lock-in, the rapidly growing community around OSS like Drupal, the ability to tweak the source code, and the rapid pace of OSS innovation in emerging areas like cloud computing, big data are some of the other benefits,” Hariharan added.
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