Business Engineering
Emerging Trends
SystemicLogic News FeedSocial Media Platforms (SMPs) represent some of the Web 2.0 tools that companies are using to gain and maintain business leverage. Initially SMPs have been popular in fostering communication and conversations in informal social circles. Of late, there has been a change as the corporate world has expanded application of the concept by using the platforms to communicate directly with consumers about service issues or to promote their brands. Even though the use of social media networks in business is still nascent and has its own challenges, some financial services sector companies are early adopters of the technology. They are exploring SMPs to provide value-added products and services and stay on top of the game. SystemicLogic has been following the trends and application of SMPs in the financial services sector. This article highlights the major developments in SMPs and how banks are using them.
Social Media landscape
A survey of the terrain indicates a growth in the number and diversity of players in the social media platform space. The good thing about the platforms is that many of them are free and are increasingly moving towards alternative source. However, choosing the right combination of SMPs and implementing the platforms for maximum benefit of an organisation is not an easy task. SMPs are varied in focus although many use different ways to achieve the same goals. Thus would-be adopters face challenge of choosing the ones that apply to them. Moreover, ensuring and maintaining a good social media presence is not a slice and dice job but like any other business venture, it requires investment and smart planning.
Top SMPs
SMPs have become an important elements of Bank 2.0 technology. A number of banks are including social media platforms in their online marketing strategies. Many banks are using multiple platforms to enhance their business. This is partly because some of the platforms differ in their focus and partly because some banks are simply trying to spread their tentacles into new markets. The following are some of the popular platforms used by banks:
 | Spoke is a commercial Open Network of more than 40 million people at 2.3 million companies which facilitates creation of new business connections and keeping the old ones. |
 | Twitter is a social messaging utility for staying connected in real-time. It is proprietary, but it has an open API that various commercial and open source projects utilise. |
 | LinkedIn is a commercial interconnected network of experienced professionals from around the world, representing 170 industries and 200 countries. It connects one to, and enhances one's collaboration with qualified professionals that you need to work with to accomplish business and career goals. |
 | FaceBook is a social utility connecting people with friends and others who work, study and live around them. It is still commercial but it is set to roll out an open source platform soon. |
 | Bebo allows users to share photos with music, and blogs, and draw on members' White Boards. |
 | Friendster is focused on helping people stay in touch with friends and discover new people and things that are important to them. |
 | Ecademy is a decade old proprietary business social network with millions of users of the site each year worldwide. |
 | Xing is a commercial worldwide business platform connecting over 7 million business professionals. |
 | Jigsaw is a privately owned directory which contains more than 9 million contacts submitted from over 450,000 members. |
The new application of SMP in the financial sector
The increase in the use of SMPs for business represents innovation in customer services delivery as business intelligence is being extended beyond conventional channels. Banks are using these tools in a number of ways:
Gaining better understanding of the consumer
If carefully selected, SMPs can be very powerful business intelligence tools. Banks are using SMPs not only to improve their online presence and extend their marketing outreach but also to better understand the existing customer. By interacting with customers though these networks, banks are able to gain more insight into the behaviour, lifestyles and interests of their customers which is important in developing aligned banking products and service offerings.
Establishing a business that listens to the customers
With the weakened global economy, banks are facing a highly compromised trust from customers. However, those that have better visibility and are actively utilising social media platforms are able to become part of customer's informal conversations and can pay attention to what needs to be done to restore the public confidence.
Exploring new quasi-customer service
SMPs offer bank 2.0 technologies and tools such as live chats and discussion rooms that allow banks to interact with customers in real time and respond to their requests in much better in ways than call centers or online corporate feedback forms. Some organisation are even using SMPs both to understand current issues affecting the customer. They are even making customers part of the solutions by engaging them in guided collaborations and discussions that seek to find answers and resolve banking products and service issues.
Enhancing corporate image
Banks are also using SMPs as one way to raise their public profiles and recognition. Promotions, competitions and other outreach activities are being made available on the platforms to increase user community engagement.
ABSA is actively using its Facebook profile to facilitate and provide assistance to raise funds for Tsholofelo Baby Sanctuary donations campaign.
FNB publishes its public relations news that captures client interests on Facebook and Digg.
Nedbank uses Facebook and other SMPs primarily to advertise their primary offerings and promotions.
Standard Bank published its profile on Facebook and regularly advertise sports, community events and sponsorship programmes on Facebook, for example, Kaboom Cricket Tour 09. A basic name search on LinkedIn also indicates that its employees are utilising the platform.
HSBC Bank is on Facebook and a number of SMPs including Twitter, LinkedIn and Xing.
Bank of America has a very comprehensive profile with links to almost all its business portfolios on LinkedIn. Over 500 of the bank's employees are signed into the network. It is also available on major SMPs.
Citibank's full profile is available on Facebook and besides being on the major platforms, it has a presence on Digg, Zoom Info, Infousa as well.
Royal Bank of Scotland does not provide detailed information about themselves on SMPs. However, it appears on most of the platforms.
SMP Best Practice
New players in the banking sector are delivering interesting products based on SMPs. A case in point is edo Interactive, which has launched FaceCard, a product which merges banking with modern social networking technology. Facecard which is targeted toward Millennials and Generation Y, uses social media to make spending a social experience for its members.
The future of social media platforms
Social media offers many promising possibilities for financial services enterprises. Nevertheless, there is a substantial number of organisations either turning a blind eye to SMPs or using them half heartedly. The main issue is that such companies are less prepared to deal with the risks, complexities and compromises associated with operating in social media environment. The future of these organisation will be at stake given the pervasive influence of Internet and Web 2.0 on the behaviour of key customers. Concomitantly, SMPs have formally and informally penetrated their employees' working environments. Therefore its time to innovate or face extinction.
Key questions about SMPs that still need to be addressed
- How can banks and other financial services companies choose the best social media platforms that fit them?
- What management models apply to use of social media networks in business particularly in banks?
- Is the advent of social media networks the beginning of an end to call centers and online customer care service on corporate websites?
Join SystemicLogic Research Group in LinkedIn for discussion on challenges associated with SMPs.
Related articles...
Built To Thrive Thoughts on designing the social innovation system
Online Community Best Practices
Visible Banking: Social Media, The Inconvenient Truth
Process Measurement Projects: Success Stories
Aspects such as profit margins, stock levels, cycle times, inventory turns, days sales are normally analysed and interpreted as indicators of corporate performance and operational effectiveness. However, even though some leading companies are succeeding in measuring critical performance relating to their businesses, many Information Age organisations are still struggling to answer basic questions around process rationalisation. How do we effectively measure our business processes? What is needed to make business understand the value of process measurement? Is business process measurement just another draining process? The Challenges
SystemicLogic's has undertaken a number of projects in the process management area. Challenges militating against sound administration of process were identified:
- Business processes can be too many within a single organisation, for example, in large organisations so many business activities can be found at different level of process abstraction, that is, at strategy, tactical and operations levels. Further complicating the process landscape is the rise of the global economy and the growth of computer mediated networks that has created networked enterprises consisting of a disparate constellation of distributed electronic and non-electronic processes and technologies in one organisation.
- Business processes are usually not accurately and appropriately documented because of lack of attention to best of practice methods and information management practices. Sometimes organisation expand so rapidly that there is barely time to document the process and keep track of changes to processes.
- As a result maintaining process measurements becomes a Herculean task for process practitioners.
- Process is now fighting for survival and more often than not it is misunderstood because of the above challenges.
What Needs To Be Done
SystemicLogic recognised opportunities that process leaders need to explore when dealing with process performance measurement quagmires.
Understand and communicate the business value of measuring processes
Measuring business activity properly means ensuring a tight link between the business process measurements and overall strategic objectives of your organisation. Prudent process measurements can be a powerful competitive weapon that,
- Enables an organisation to ascertain its efficiency and effectiveness of its processes in meeting customer needs
- Is a prerequisite to process improvement and re-engineering, you cant improve what you cant change
- Makes process performance visible and easily manageable
- Increases objectivity and facilitates sound decision-making
- Directs organisational behaviour towards continuous process innovation to gain competitive advantage
- Leads to incremental process improvement across the enterprise resulting in a business as great as its products and services
If a process measurement value proposition based on these business fundamentals is well communicated Management support and buy-in is likely to be assured.Know the WHAT of process
This simply means get both the technical(process architecture) and non-technical(process information management) aspects of process documentation right. Documenting critical processes and standardising tools for doing the job is a good starting point in rationalising your process terrain whether your organisation is small, medium or large. Process documentation is very important in understanding the As IS environment of process and guiding deliberations on the expected future of process within an organisation (Road Mapping).Know the WHY of process
In a large enterprise it is usually not feasible to measure just every process at the same time. Needless, in order to determine what processes needs to be measured before others, you need to establish a process measurement strategy that takes into cognisance the nature of the business environment and your current business priorities. Though measurement strategies can vary from one organisation to another, certain characteristics manifest across effective process performance measurement strategies:- Ensure the company avoids investing time and financial resources on cosmetic process measurements. Start by measuring what matters most
- Are aligned to business requirements
- Target critical processes that directly impact on the customer
- Have an end-to-end process measurement focus
Understand the HOW of process
The next milestone will then involve ascertaining measurement attributes for the scheduled processes.- Establish the right KPIs for your processes
- Identify the appropriate process measurement metrics (establish whether you need to measure process quality, cost or risk)
- Develop a metrics architecture for different strategic, tactical and operational areas that really matter to your organisation
Enlist professional expertise
A fast growing company approached SystemicLogic for assistance in crafting a high level effective process measurement strategy that could get a buy-in from business. Process value proposition was the major challenges since management needed justification for further investing in process measurement initiatives. SystemicLogic assisted in creating a customer-focused, inclusive end-to-end process measurement strategy with an emphasis on strong governance and best practice measurement techniques. The client managed to get buy-in from its management and the strategy is currently being implemented.Point to Ponder
Measurement alone will not improve performance in business but requires ongoing, continuous cycle of performance measurement, effective goal setting, consistent monitoring of process and outcomes, performance notification, course reviews and application of technology as an enabler.
- Ensure the company avoids investing time and financial resources on cosmetic process measurements. Start by measuring what matters most
Application Server Landscape
Application Servers have resulted from a need to simplify the task of creating, managing and maintaining huge and complex applications. The rise in the importance of the Internet as a platform for business applications in the last decade has elevated Application Server technology to become a crucial piece of the Internet infrastructure jigsaw. In the early years commercial vendors such as IBM, Microsoft and Oracle dominated the Application Server market. It was not until recently that the Application Server landscape now hosts both commercial and Alternative Software models. Nevertheless, like many other software category there is now a coexistence of commercial and Alternative Software models as shown in the Gartner diagram.
Application Servers have become one of the most popular Alternative Software categories. The following are some of the major contenders:
- Jboss from RedHat
- Geronimo from Apache Software Foundation
- Glassfish from Sun Microsystems
- dm Server from SpringSource
- JOnAS from ObjectWeb and Evidian
- Resin from Caucho and Zope from Zope Corp
Research on Application Servers
SystemicLogic has recently completed an analysis of the products for large financial services organisations. The approach was to identify and compare key Open Source business solutions (JBoss, Geronimo and IBM Websphere Community Edition) with their Commercial counterparts in the Application Server category, based on how well they match client business requirements and also the maturity of the product. The core product measurement attributes and their descriptions were listed in and the scaling of attributes and final scores are qualitative in nature. Some values used quantitative information, which were subsequently converted to a qualitative scale relative to the sample.Findings
The report identified that Alternative Software Application Servers have become a strategic investment for today's companies and their usage is increasing. Findings do however suggest that Alternative Software is kept under the company radar and procurement policies usually do not cater for Alternative Software adoption.Increased demand
SystemicLogic's findings revealed that licensing costs, vendor lock-in and inflexibility (unavailability of source code) associated with Commercial Application Servers are the major factors pushing organisations to adopt Alternative Software. This has been supported by a recent survey following an OpenLogic Webinar, indicating a growing interest among buyers to replace proprietary Application Servers in order to save money. Geronimo scored 2nd highest after IBM's Websphere in a Users’ Choice Application Server Rankings conducted by Evans Data Corporation in last quarter of 2008. Thus Alternative Software Application Server are not only growing in strength but also in popularity.Standardisation
SystemicLogic also noticed a trend towards standardisation of technologies in this space. By September 2008, a market-wide adoption of the OSGi Service Platform turned it into a de facto industry standard for modularisation in enterprise Application Servers thus paving a way for integration across both Commercial and Alternative Software products.Implementation Lessons
However, there are a number of factors to keep in mind before acquiring these solutions. Understanding Alternative Software is not just bout Open Source with community support but also Commercial Open Source.Understand your needs
Before acquiring a solution there is a need to rigorously scrutinise and identify your organisation's application requirements. It will then be possible to evaluate contenders against a set of support and technical quality attributes in order to narrow down to a few that matches most of your Application Server requirements.Select the best solution for your organisation
Choosing the right package can be tricky since every Alternative Software Application Server has its own merits and failures. Selecting the right Alternative Software Application Server for your environment requires detailed functional evaluation. The ideal is to start is to compare features of Application Servers by hosting environment and match them with your needs. However, it is very important to understand how the initiative can leverage the enterprise technology stack and suit your integration needs. There is also a need for organisation to understand that vendors view standards differently and as a result integration is sometimes a gray area.Stay current
With the constant changing landscape, it's important to watch out for the latest developments and ensure that your organisation is using the Alternative Software Application Servers that best suit your current and future needs and initiatives. A case in point is the recent release of the SpringSource dm Server, which deviates from the Java world altogether. For IT decision makers, this has created new imperatives for changes with regards to deliberating on Application Server technology adoption.Challenges
The following are concerns expressed by Alternative Software Application Server clients:- Need for SLA level support
- Lack of in-house competencies
- Value proposition (selling OSS initiatives to management)
- Application Server performance concerns
Needless, clients are prepared to work around the challenges as long as they can enjoy cost savings from Alternative Software projects.Whats Next
Alternative schools of thought believe Alternative Software Application Servers will do best by competing at the lower end of the market and not venture in the space occupied by the big commercial Application Server products. However, as shown by the current trends, an increase in cooperation between large commercial vendors has pushed Alternative Software Application Servers up the market stack. For example, IBM’s WebSphere Community Edition is based on Apache Geronimo.
Check out for the next Alternative Software article on Business Rules Engines
- Need for SLA level support
Understanding EA Drivers
From humble beginnings in 1987, EA has grown into a powerful tool for addressing current and future IT and organisational complexities for both start-up and established companies. While for new companies establishing a viable and visible EA is a proactive way to plan for future growth and profitability, large enterprises need to develop EAs to simplify complex organisational environments (elements, systems and processes) that drive business.
The main drivers during the incipient stages of EA development and even in this age remain,
- system complexity that results from companies spending heavily on building IT systems and
- poor business alignment which emanates from challenges faced by organisations in aligning the increasingly expensive IT systems with business requirements.
Today, the cost and intricacy of IT systems have catapulted, while the chances of gaining real value from those systems has been greatly reduced. But the current question is:
How can architects make EA work for their institutions?
The obvious answer lies more in the ability of the EA executives to undertake a rigorous organisational self-introspection, carefully select and apply appropriate EA methodologies. They must also acquire EA applications that best meet the business needs at hand and in future. However, architecture practitioners need to broaden the scope of EA. In order to leverage EA within their organisations, they should focus more on integrating it with high level organisational strategies and innovation initiatives rather that confining it solely to aligning IT and business.
Selecting Architecture Methodologies
Although EA has been around for more than twenty years, it is still a growing discipline. However, several methodologies were developed and some have outlived their usefulness. The Zachman Framework for Enterprise Architectures, The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF), the Federal Enterprise Architecture (FEA), and Gartner (formerly, the Meta Framework) are leading the pack of current architecture methodologies.
- The Zachman Framework for Enterprise Architectures, described as a framework although more accurately defined as a taxonomy
- TOGAF, referred to as a framework, but is actually more accurately defined as a process
- FEA, viewed as either an implemented enterprise architecture or a prescriptive methodology for creating an enterprise architecture,
- The Gartner Methodology, which is best described as an enterprise architectural practice
Common organisational challenges targeted by the methodologies
- IT systems that have become unmanageably complex and increasingly costly to maintain
- IT systems that are impediments to the organisation's ability to respond to current and future market conditions in a timely and cost-effective manner
- Mission-critical information that is consistently obsolete and/or inaccurate
- Distrust between the business and technology camps in an enterprise
Interestingly these methodologies are divergent in goal and approach.
So how should a company choose from among these different approaches to enterprise architecture?
- In trying to find the right choices Enterprise Architects should view the methodologies not as substitutes for each other, but as complementary elements of a holistic architecture solution. This is because no approach provides a cut and dried solution to every organisation's architecture challenge. Each methodology has strengths in some areas and weaknesses in others. For the majority of enterprises, none of these methodologies will thus be a panacea. A blended methodology involving extracting the best attributes from the available methodologies, modifying and merging them according to the specific needs of the organisation can be highly beneficial.
- Executive commitment in fostering the needed change and innovation. Architects should also understand that even a blended methodology cannot work without the executive commitment to making changes. With a real commitment to change and a tailored methodology for guiding that change full benefits of implementing EA can be realised.
Pitfalls to avoid in EA development and implementation
For several reasons many organisations have failed to realise return on investment from implementing EA. Their EA programmes have been blown up when they stepped on the following EA landmines:
- Declaring the architecture effort done when architecture development is an iterative process
- Assuming that technical people make good architects
- Not communicating early and often
- Mistaking standards for architecture
- Forgetting to assess people and process impacts
- Aligning and realigning with strategies, rather than with business goals and cultural values
- Wrong timing in introducing technology,
Note that the right measure of success is not how fast it takes to introduce a new technology but its whether or not the choice is made against the correct or appropriate investment decision.
Check the SystemicLogic EA Roadmap for guidance on to kick start and run Architecture projects.
Finding the Right Architecture Modeling Tools
The next step after methodology adoption and/or customisations, will be to introduce technology in the EA development process. EA modeling applications assist architects to consolidate information on a variety of subjects, including business processes, organisation structures, applications, both structured and unstructured data, technology of various kinds and interfaces. There are dozens of commercial and open source tools and application for representing enterprise architecture. In as much choosing the right methodology is an involving task, selecting the best software is no easy task. Most tools have roots in the modeling or a metadata repository space, with the modeling-heritage tools having better visualisation capabilities, and the repository-heritage tools generally having better import or export and management capabilities. Fortunately SystemicLogic has a model for evaluating EA UML tools. The model has been used to evaluate some common applications against a specific criteria for assessing modeling tools.
When choosing an EA tool, consider five broad functional capabilities:
- The ability to flexibly structure information in a repository in meaningful ways
- The ability of the tool to exchange information with other related tools, possibly supplemented by the ability to generate models and other artifacts within the tool
- The ability to analyse the information in the repository
- The ability to communicate information to address the needs of EA stakeholders
- The ability to administer and manage information in the repository
Other factors to take into cognisance include:
- Coverage and customer base (local and global)
- Industry and customer reviews
- Viability of the vendor
- The availability and capability of the vendor's sales and support organisation
- The vendor's experience in your industry and any related tool capabilities such as support for an industry-specific architecture framework
- The vendor's understanding of EA
- Innovation and continuous improvement (number of releases in five years)
Indicators of EA success
- The manifestation of the following in your organisation help measure the success of your EA:
- Improvements in using IT to drive business adaptability
- Closer partnership between business and IT groups
- Improved focus on organisational goals
- Improved morale, as more individuals see a direct correlation between their work and the organisation's success
- Reduced numbers of failed IT systems
- Reduced complexity of existing IT systems
- Improved agility of new IT systems
- Closer alignment between IT deliverables and business requirements
Conclusion
Success of EA is more a result of a rigorous self analysis and a willing leadership than a serendipitous end-product of deploying a single methodology or a technology. Company executives should be capable and eager to steer EA initiatives, stimulate discourse and innovation that ensures alignment of all the enterprise components with current and future business needs.
Gifts from Red Hat!
One very hectic day ended on a relaxed note as staff at SystemicLogic shared an assortment of gifts from Red Hat as part our ongoing collaboration with them and several other Open Source Software (OSS) companies in the field of research. Hats off to the great work SystemicLogic has done in the realm of OSS in 2008. Thank you!
2008 was a hive of activity for the OSS team. Clients in the banking and insurance sectors were offered wide ranging consulting solutions on OSS. The main consulting focus was placed on articulating to clients the benefits of OSS realisation. Big lessons were learnt, huge opportunities were identified and made available to the clients. SystemicLogic also conducted extensive research that investigated several issues regarding OSS realisation. One of the research focus areas involved providing strategies for organisations to effectively select and deploy OSS applications from a maze of available OSS packages.
The biggest fit achieved in this area was an in-depth, end-to-end evaluation of the OSS applications for financial services clients. The packages evaluated included application servers, business rules engines, security, business intelligence, portal platforms, IDEs and enterprise content management solutions. The applications were placed under the critical lens of a very comprehensive evaluation model developed by SystemicLogic's OSS subject matter experts. Watch the space for a series of related articles in the next coming weeks.
What Most Companies Do Not Know About OSS
The Interesting Trends
OSS has gathered significant momentum in the past decade. However, not many companies understand the OSS concept, its truisms, technology landscape, adoption strategies and business implications. Nevertheless, while others are still grappling to understand OSS, some technology savvy organisations across various industries have already started integrating these applications together with proprietary software products. As a result they are reaping notable rewards in operational savings.
There has been a clear evolution of an OSS community that has grown up and produced intelligent, cutting-edge technologies that has made computing faster, smarter and cheaper for corporate users. Companies like Openmoko are challenging the mobile device market with its notion that users should control what applications are installed. Others like XAware and SnapLogic are opening up data integration possibilities, and still more are tangling with virtualization, databases, and trading systems. The companies' aim is to make computing less complex. The decision is no longer a question of open source, but about what product is best at solving computing problems regardless of the models used to construct it.
Moreover in the past sustainability of OSS business model has been questioned but the growth of viable business models has cleared the air. Open source is becoming so pervasive that big proprietary vendors are not just embracing open source but now must be careful not to be seen as impeding the progress, fearing both developer and customer backlashes. Microsoft has partnered with Novell, Oracle is targeting Red Hat’s customer base, while Linux is eyeing on enlarging its influence in the growing market for mobile phones and set-top boxes.
OSS Implementations
Alternative source gives companies cost-effective tools to modernise operations, develop new products and services and compete more effectively in the world market. Many organisations, including financial services are embracing and implementing it without publicising it. The business logic is that currently OSS is a gold mine that is better kept under lock and key. Fortune 100, Fortune 500 and Fortune 1000 are in it. Its being used for both critical and non-critical business processes. According to Actuate, the world leader in Enterprise Reporting Applications and pioneers of the Open Source Business Intelligence project, 39 percent of financial services companies are using open source software.
Royalty Costs
OSS scores high in business strategy bent on minimising software investment costs. With OSS software, the code can be obtained, viewed, changed and re-distributed without royalties or other limitations. Even in cases where a fee has to be paid to a vendor the cost is far less compared to a license fee for a commercial products. In addition, OSS implementation comes with a great deal of enterprise freedom. Organisations are not tied to a single vendor.
Risk of OSS
The risk of acquiring the products has been inflated by OSS critics. A major issue which justifies the criticism is lack of support for some applications. The good thing is that new business models and companies that provide quality support have emerged over the past few years thus reducing the overall risk. Apart from Red Hat there is a growing number of vendors and communities providing support. Among companies to look out for includes Marketcetera, Kickfire, Vyatta, Sonatype, XAware and SnapLogic
Adoption Strategies
OSS should not be adopted just to unreasonably shame commercial vendors. Like commercial packages, customisation and integration to meet your organisation at point of need should represent some of the principles guiding adoption.
Architectural Resilience
Top rated OSS also supports open standards which is a plus for organisations that require integration of different kind of software for example merging legacy with cutting edge software packages. There is also a growing evidence of a synergy between alternative source and Service Oriented Architecture. Open source has been attributed to the huge drive in SOA adoption and a further increase. "Open source code is extremely well adapted to service-oriented architecture," says Winston Damarillo, a co-founder and chairman of startup LogicBlaze
How to Participate
It is a worthwhile effort for corporate organisations to understand the OSS landscape in order to effectively reap the associated gains. Some external research organisations have found out that many companies are using open source but a majority do not have formal OSS management team. This would mean corporate institution must strongly consider training existing IT personnel in OSS. Companies will also benefit from identifying innovative OSS projects that directly benefits them and commit their financial resources into participation.
OSS is the Mother of Innovation
Software testing is no longer a specialty of Test Analysts. OSS extends software testing to keen user communities thereby opening a platform for collaboratively fixing bugs. Red Hat's anecdote, “together, we grow” summarises the OSS model. This philosophy stimulates community-based collaboration that results in innovation. In addition the rise of OSS which has given way to a healthy competition with commercial products is another innovation driver. With widespread adoption in future, an innovation could be promoted an environment resulting from enterprises adopting best of breed OSS applications across their IT architectures! From the vendor side, leading a pack of top ten innovators include Zenoss, Qumranet, Simula Lab, rPath and Scalix.
The Future is Orange
In future we are likely to see new wave of widespread adoption of top of the spectrum products as the OSS ecosystem's level of maturity gradually rise. For organisations embracing alternative source, the ultimate benefit will be flexibility, security, reliability, performance, high return on investment, total cost of ownership and the proliferation of an innovation culture.
With the introduction of new models in this space such as Freeware, there has been a shift in OSS nomenclature. In order to avoid confusing the terms it is now better regarded not as “Alternative Software” rather than “Open Source Software”. This is because OSS is not the same as Freeware despite the fact that hey are both alternatives to commercial software.
Check the following artefacts on the resource portal:
How to Evaluate Open Source Software / Free Software (OSS/FS) Programs
Some Myths Surrounding OSS
