Open Source is going mainstream
This year at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona the COO of a large Telco asked for a demo of our MVNO and SDN platforms. During the presentation it became clear that he was mainly interested in the Open Source components of these platforms and I noticed that a significant shift in his thinking had taken place. Here was one of the most conservative guys in the industry, whom in the past would go on and on about “Telecom Grade” systems, now willing to put critical parts of that system on Open Source. At that moment I realized that Open Source had really gone mainstream.
Wipro has been a very early adopter of Open Source and we have a large practice dedicated to it. Together with Oxford Economics we have recently concluded a global survey of senior business and technology executives about their use of open source software and development methods. The results of the survey, show clearly that open source is widely used to drive innovation, while at the same time underpinning a variety of other critical technologies.
Here are some of the key findings of the survey:
- Open source software is a mainstream technology, and a key enabler of other technologies. Open source is in wide use, and most respondents say it will create a net positive impact for their industry in three years. Open source underpins Big Data and social technologies, and will be highly important to cloud computing in the next three years.
- Open source software powers innovation and strategy. Companies are focused on open source supporting new products and services, and over one-quarter say open source has improved the quality of their products and software.
- Open source software requires a new focus on skills and processes. Complexity of integration with existing systems and the lack of available skills to implement are top challenges for companies today; many are looking outside the company for expertise.
- Open source methods are valuable beyond the realm of software. Fully one-fifth of respondents say they use open-source methods widely across the business. This collaborative, iterative way of working has already led to more co-creation with customers, new lines of business, and other benefits.
It interesting to see that 80+ % of the respondents have now implemented open source software and say that open source software will be critical to achieve agility over the next three years. Respondents also mention that it has facilitated co-creation with customers and increased collaboration with business partners.
Of course there are still some challenges in Open Source and they key challenges that people mention are lack of skills, legacy integration and concerns about the software quality and security.
More details of the study can be found here
Hi Jack, this is such a great topic and inspiring article. I think the implications of open source go really far. What I saw was that telcos turn to open source to improve their ability to innovate, create new services with partners and customers. I talked to a good number of large telcos on the topic and saw that almost all of them set up a dedicated organization for such innovation. They hired young people with a fresh mindset, and changed the rules of the game to be more agile. I saw two big challenges that companies have to face in this field: 1. You need to have people who understand both telco and the opens source world. Professionals with a startupper mindset. These people are hard to find, but they are crucial to create real value. 2. I saw conflict of interest within sales/marketing. You have to try new services with real customers while you need to protect your existing market positioning and image. This often implies that marketers are very careful to take risks and many new ideas will never reach real customers. I also saw a shift in BSS/OSS focus. While the last decade was dominated by CRM and billing investment, product innovation brings focus closer to the network and service exposure. The super internal world of BSS/OSS is opening up to the public. And all this is moving towards real-time transactional operation. All this looks like an exciting opportunity, I absolutely agree that it goes beyond the realms of software. Even two years ago most telcos were active in the field, still it's hard to find good success stories. Based on my experience the above two points were the main factors to slow the change. Another factor was budget allocation. Large telcos have developed a reflex to centralize operations and save costs on synergies. I believe that open source, as the name suggests, should be open and decentralized, coordinated but not controlled. Another field to adopt an agile mindset. I'm happy to see the topic in the center of attention. Good luck Jack, hope it will work out well :)
Interesting Article Jack. One big challenge i realized it the consevative behavious by big Product companies to allow fair competition by Open source products in their stack.