Sun Federal President and COO Bill Vass offers up four reasons to move to open source software.

1.) Improved Security

Commercial open source code is more secure, writes Vass, who cites that the majority of intelligence agencies, FAA, IRS, etc., run on open source. Posted on his blog are a couple of graphs of risk data provided by the Airius Risk Report developed from Homeland Security's NVD which clearly shows the higher security risk with proprietary software and open source products statistically more secure. Offering many examples and analogies of why open source is the best security bet, Vass shares one about Sun's own Solaris. "...when Sun open sourced Solaris - Solaris previously had the highest rating in security that the government offers in enterprise operating systems and still does today. Plus it is certified by the federal government, reviewed by all the best experts in Sun (there are a lot of smart of people at Sun) the intelligence agencies and lot of other smart people out there in the community. When we released the code, within one month we had 28 new vulnerabilities identified by the 160,000 people that are in the Solaris community, and we were able to fix them before some one used them to do something bad."

2.) Reduced Procurement Time

There is no piloting or long evaluations with open source. All that is required is a download. Again, providing a real-world example, Vass outlines how the Health and Human Services' (HHS) Nationwide Health Information Network (NHIN) decided to rely on Sun's open source, enterprise class, middleware. In regards to procurement time, the open source solution took three months versus the three-year delay the HHS was facing with another vendor's proprietary middleware. "There are numerous great examples like this one all over the federal government, mostly in defense and intelligence, where agencies have moved to open source not only because it is the most secure, but also because it can be deployed much faster...weeks verses years," he says. "It can also scale very quickly, so if it needs to be deployed to 7,000 new sites, it can be done quickly and then followed up later with a support contract. No one is held back by 'the process.'"

3.) No Vendor Lock-in

There is no need to question whether open standards interfaces are being used, as one needs to ensure with proprietary software, because with open source anyone can see how the interfaces are implemented. This also is beneficial for interoperability since the implemented interfaces are open for all to view. Open source also allows one to choose which company to go to for support and offers investment protection since the code is in the public domain. "The selection of an open source product keeps you from being locked into a vendor and provides 'investment protection' throughout the entire life of your project and beyond the life of the vendor," Vass points out.

4.) Reduced Cost

Open source software, Vass estimates, provides "90% of the functionality for 10% of the cost." He points out that the design requirements of open source are Web 2.0-ready since most developed alongside the Web and therefore meet its security and scale requirements. "Very few proprietary products were built out of the box to support deployments the size of Google, Yahoo, Facebook, and eBay. All of these deployments are built on open source for many of the reasons I have been talking about in my blog, because open source provides better security, huge scale, all at a much lower deployment cost," he writes. A cautionary note is added regarding licensing and support agreements. Vass strongly recommends understanding what they call for since some open source products - though few and far between - can cost more than proprietary solutions. He concludes, "Bottom line, you are saving money on the licensing cost, support cost, deployment cost, and manpower to deploy it. It's just all goodness from a cost perspective."

More Information

The No. 1 Reason to Move to Open Source is to IMPROVE Security

Reduced Procurement Time is the No. 2 Reason to Move to Open Source

The No. 3 Reason to Move to Open Source is to Prevent Vendor Lock In

The No. 4 Reason to Move to Open Source is the Reduced Cost

Sun\'s Free and Open Source Software [...read more...]

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