Redefining openness

Rodney Gedda

Rodney Gedda is the former deputy editor of CIO and former editor of Techworld.

If you were to attempt to redefine ‘open system’ so it is more relevant to today’s corporate IT landscape how would you do it? I’ll give my observations, but I’m serious about hearing it from you as well.

I’ll start by going out on a limb and saying the term ‘open system’ should be modernised to ‘open software’ instead.

When once the focus was workloads on a specific type of system, today the focus is on software to manage information. It can be hosted locally or in a public cloud.

So ‘open software’ is used here as a collective term that encompasses commercial off the shelf products (usually standards-based), public open source software, in-house developed code and public SaaS and cloud services.

I realise this is a mouthful, but the reality of today’s software landscape is you would struggle to find an organisation that didn’t rely on the mixed bag that is ‘open software’.

Furthermore, it should be clarified that ‘open software’ doesn’t necessarily imply open source. Software delivered by Microsoft’s cloud is as ‘open’ to CIOs as software delivered by Google’s cloud, whether they use public or private code.

If cloud technology tends to be closely guarded by the vendor, why should it be aligned with what can be bought and managed in-house? This is where information management standards come in.

Let’s consider a hypothetical scenario where a group of company engineers need a collaboration platform for their environmental impact documentation.

The engineers and the CIO group agree that a wiki is the best way to manage the documentation.

The CIO can either procure and manage a COTS product, setup and manage an open source product, or engage with a SaaS provider and get a wiki delivered on a contract.

Whichever path is taken, ‘open software’ has been procured. The underlying technology of those options will be different, but they essentially provide the same business outcome.

The cloud phenomenon is another reason why the concept of a system has lost pace with software.

Organisations don’t need to invest in infrastructure to achieve business outcomes and stories of start-ups and small businesses never buying a server are everywhere.

The success and continuing relevance of enterprise information management professionals will hinge greatly on the ability to leverage open software in all its forms.

For CIOs the choice is open. It’s time to make the most of what’s on offer.

Tags: open software, open systems, SaaS