By: Insticc Digital
Let’s face it, open source software is thriving for enterprise. Why you may ask? Fundamentally because it allows visible technological, social and economic advancement for economies and sectors that embrace shared and transparent progress. Open source software is a prime example of the building blocks of a truly democratic system.
According to Aristotle, “the underlying principle of democracy is freedom, since only in a democracy can the citizens have a share in freedom”.
In similarity to democracy, the most important benefit of open source is that it can empower those individuals and sectors working the closest to a shared problem, allowing them to collaborate and develop a solution beneficial for the whole.
The rise of containerized applications snaps this into a highly granular view as any individuals can rapidly sandbox application instances without the need for an extensive understanding of the broad intricacies innate to enterprise software as a sector.
The vibrancy of open source enables enterprises to react rapidly in times of changing business needs, fast-tracking them to agility and the ability adapt to IT game plans, while avoiding extensive expenses, licenses and training fees. Again, in resonance with democracy, the mecurial nature of open source broadens the reach of the number of people which can be engaged around a software solution or invention, and in turn, contributes to a burgeoning local talent pool, for the whole. In addition, by lowering the walls to traversing open source code, businesses can become assured that they are engaging technologies which command a solid and growing following.
The divergent progressions of the internet have undoubtedly forever changed the way enterprises and individual customers adopt technology – particularly when it comes to software development. It has fuelled a generation of PaaS (Platform as a Service), SaaS (Software as a Service) and IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) technologies, while crumbling the walls dividing end users and developers, allowing code modification in real-time to rise to meet the new and ever-mutable demands enterprises face on a daily basis.
Just as in a free and fair democracy, an open source community applauds and bouys the concept of transparency, giving back to not only a local or commercial community, but the global economy. This mindset of constructive, free collaboration gives rise to creating not only superior software solutions, but in our opinion, a better, more democratic world.
According to a Harvard Business School study, giving back to open source reaps rewards. The study shows that enterprises which contribute and support the open source movement, reap up to 100% more value from software expenditure, versus companies who only use software without contributing to its evolution in any way.
If IT business leaders fully appreciate this mental paradigm, and morph their strategies accordingly to adopt open source, they’ll be positioned to reap the benefits of its wide variety of use cases, without compromising the conventional principles of commercial enterprise software, namely, scalability, security and reliability.
The adoption of these principles, alongside an innate desire for transformation, shared progress and rapid advancement for all, has never been more important against the backdrop of an ever-expanding global digital world. For our own sense of democracy as corporate citizens in this country, we could take a leaf out of the book of the open source philosophy and its inclusive ideals. The road to democracy need not only apply to open source, we believe that this principle holds merit across the broader technology and business approach in South Africa.
Join us in leveraging open source technology to solve your unique business challenges through collaborative best practice, breaking down cost barriers, and fostering a beneficial and democratic value chain in your enterprise software development.
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