Open source companies are increasingly targeting small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in a bid to transform the "old model" of telecommunications provision in SA, says open source guru Rob Lith.
Lith, who is director of open source vendor Connection Telecom, will speak at ITWeb's ICT for SMEs conference later this month.
The advantages of using open source solutions for SMEs are clear: better quality, higher reliability, more flexibility, lower cost and an end to predatory vendor lock-in, says Lith.
He notes that price is usually not the deciding factor as South African SMEs join the global trend towards open source adoption.
Although open source solutions are usually more cost-effective than proprietary systems, Lith says flexibility is the main reason SMEs choose open source.
In a recent Connection Telecom study on the reasons for the growing popularity of open source in SA, SMEs identified four main advantages: flexibility, ownership of the system, control and pricing.
In the past, notes Lith, SMEs had to go to one telecommunications provider, but nowadays, "open standards" give SMEs the flexibility to shop around. For example, they can choose whatever handsets from whatever vendor they want, according to their budget or other factors. They can mix and match and build the precise system they want, knowing that the open standards of open source won't "lock them in".
The result, says Lith, is a complete transformation of "the old model". The vendor "lock-in" becomes a thing of the past.
Connection Telecom's Asterisk is a free open source telecoms solution developed by Mark Spencer in 2002 and 2003. Spencer was a Linux vendor looking for an open source PABX system. Shocked by the high prices of existing proprietary solutions, Spencer sat down and wrote Asterisk, which by answering the need for a cost-effective alternative, became an immediate global success story.
However, Lith points out that even though Asterisk and other open source solutions are challenging traditional telephony, open source still faces challenges among SMEs in SA. Some SMEs are still not too sure about the stability and quality of open source compared to the established proprietary products.
The solution, says Lith, has to come from "demonstration for adoption": once SMEs see how well open source products like Asterisk actually work, he argues, they will join the bandwagon because the advantages are so compelling.
Lith's presentation at ITWeb's ICT for SMEs conference on 27 May will focus on open source as a viable alternative in SMEs and a transformation of the status quo.
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