Open source software (OSS) isn`t really free, but the OSS movement is gaining momentum in SA nonetheless.
This is according to Mark Rotter, senior analyst at African ICT research house, BMI-TechKnowledge, who addressed Sun Microsystems open source seminars held in Durban, Cape Town and Johannesburg this week.
Rotter told delegates that OSS was undoubtedly gaining momentum in SA, with the local enterprise market and government starting to gain a better understanding of the value proposition behind the adoption of OSS.
He said OSS was not really free since someone always paid for it - be it the user, vendor or service provider. However, the consistent growth of OSS in SA over the past three years indicated that the South African public and private sectors were starting to become aware that OSS offered an affordable alternative for universal access without costly licensing implications.
While not implying that OSS would replace commercial software, Rotter said it was clear that organisations would start adopting strategies that encompassed both models. "The South African government especially, with an IT spend estimated to be in the region of R10 billion in 2002, is earnestly exploring OSS solutions," he said.
According to preliminary research by BMI-T, the spend on IT services, salaries and skills surrounding the OSS market was around R150 million in 2002. While this represents a very small percentage of the total services market, it is expected that this market will grow strongly to reach R650 million by 2007.
The research also indicates that a key driver for enterprise business is the ability to gain the maximum benefit from the existing infrastructure before new investments are made, paving the way for the adoption of OSS.
"OSS offers the promise of monetary savings and companies want to understand how to exploit this potential," Rotter said.
"The key challenge for large organisations is the issue of support, and commercial vendors such as HP, IBM and Sun are highly regarded in this context. The fact that a large number of these vendors now endorse OSS is an important contributing factor to the level of comfort organisations will have in adopting OSS, but there are still issues in terms of support that need to be ironed out."
He believes OSS is starting to become a business reality and key growth has come from specialist services companies which have built a solutions approach around OSS. Growth would also come from major IT service companies offering services model with reduced costs and a higher return on investment for certain applications.
Rotter pointed out that the top general business priorities, as they affect the IT market, are improved integration in the enterprise, increased levels of outsourcing and better customer care.
On the basis of a recent survey it was determined that in the software market the highest importance/satisfaction gaps were in the e-marketplaces, e-logistics, supply channel automation and customer relationship management arenas, which confirmed the need for better integration both within and across enterprises as well as the need for better customer care.
"We are also slowly starting to see a demand for managed services and in the long-term there will be a move towards utility computing. An infrastructure needs to be put into place where companies do not have to worry about software, hardware, platforms, operating systems and networking environments, but can instead concentrate their efforts on their business."
When asked the question, "Is OSS sustainable?" Rotter said: "Yes, in niche applications such as Web servers; somewhat in back-end applications and also in the desktop environment, although Microsoft still owns that space."
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