Microangelo

1. What Should a Business Consider When Evaluating Open Source Solutions? Open source solutions are becoming more widely accepted and implemented at the enterprise level. There are many factors that need to be considered when a business decides to explore open source solutions. It is essential to perform careful research and analysis of both the proprietary and open source software available to ensure that any solution selected will meet the current and future needs of the business and also be a financially sound decision. Click this site IT Support Why should a company consider open source? One primary reason is the ease of adoption. Initially, open source has fewer limiting economic factors. For example, consider a newspaper that wants to go online but does not have money

2. to pay for development of a website. In the proprietary world, the newspaper is out of luck until they have money available to spend on development or to purchase a proprietary solution. The open source world is an entirely different ball game. The newspaper has a number of free options from Joomla! to WordPress which can be deployed immediately and that will provide the basic functionality necessary to start posting information to the web. As resources become available the newspaper can build additional functionality on top of the open source application. Even if a company is not prohibited from implementing a proprietary solution based on budgetary concerns, the company has the option with open source software to take it for a fully functional test run. This is not always the case with proprietary software. Another factor to consider is the cost of scalability associated with proprietary software. It is usually possible to scale up on a given proprietary solution but it will come at a substantial cost. The proprietary pricing model is usually based on a cost per user or per system basis. Open source software does not have such limitations. For example, consider a company that primarily uses Microsoft Office. Every time the company hires, it will incur a cost of several hundred dollars for an additional license. The cost will be in the thousands of dollars if the company hires fifty employees. A company that primarily uses OpenOffice avoids this cost. Additionally, most open source development is based on open standards which makes it easier to switch from one type of technology to another in the event that a company becomes dissatisfied with its current solution or sees the benefits of switching to something that may integrate better with the company's current setup. Not all proprietary companies embrace open standards. What about security? One of the most prevalent concerns about open source solutions are questions regarding security risks. Is open source secure enough for an enterprise solution? The answer is - as with most everything - it depends. It depends on the solution itself, the needs of the business, and the way the solution is implemented. It should not be assumed that an open source solution is less secure than a proprietary solution. Each and every solution needs to be independently evaluated based on the criteria that are important to a business. It is only within the context of the needs of a given business that any type of realistic and accurate determination on security can be made.

3. The fact is, that in some cases, open source projects go through a very rigorous development and verification process. This generally happens because the community of developers and users have a strong incentive to make sure that the program is as secure as possible. Public scrutiny can be beneficial if there are enough developers who have reviewed the code and have taken the time to submit bugs and fixes Another feature of open source is that it can be modified and installed in a minimal fashion. Why is this important? First, resources are not going to be tied down by unnecessary processes and systems running in the background. Second, because of the minimalist approach there are fewer points of entry into a system. This is similar to security on a house. Fewer doors provide less options for a potential intruder.