MUMBAI: Open source is certainly not free, as many would wrongly perceive, but only cost effective over propriety software. This was one of the perspectives that was rolled out of the panel discussions at the technology forum of Nasscom 2004 titled, ‘Open Source-The Next Generation.'

Innovation would also be one of the biggest drivers of open source movements across the globe. However, it has to be lead from bottom up of an organization. A community within a company could lead the movement along with chief advocate by adopting open source and building more commonly used applications.

Matt Thompson, Director, Technology Outreach and Open Source, Programs Officer, Sun Mircrosystems, said, "there is a fair cost involved in open source. The cost of development, cost of community support and cost of community involvement. Open source merely reduces cost and complexity of IT in an organization."

On the other hand, adoption of open source has been with bare minimum of risk involved. "telebanking was one of our least priorities when it was initiated in our bank. The person in charge for this project was persistent and went ahead and adopted this service on an open source platform, despite a cash crunch. So open source adoption in UTI Bank was by accident. But it was robust, reliable and also cost efficient and hence what started as a casual operation has led to serious deliberation of adopting more and more open source systems in our operation," said, VK Ramani, President-IT, UTI Bank Ltd.

Even a propriety software user like Punjab National Bank is considering moving to open source. "Initially there was a stressing need to implement IT without any risk involved. So Microsoft was the most preferred. But lately we find that it is beginning to be a costly affair. Every time there is a new release, we have to shell out more than what we initially paid. Now we are looking at open source as the best alternative," commented KS Bajwa, DGM-IT, Punjab National Bank.

CIOL Bureau

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