By Christopher Saul, Territory Sales Lead for East Africa at Red Hat
Discussions about open source software can often be misguided thanks to several persistant myths. Misconceptions include open source being less secure than proprietary software, enjoying less support, and being harder to maintain at an enterprise level. Those myths extend to enterprise open source, where questions like “Why are you paying for something that was built to be free?” can halt further consideration.
And yet, despite those myths, open source continues to be one of the biggest and most prolific business enablers in the world. According to the Red Hat State of Enterprise Open Source Report for 2022, the use of enterprise open source is increasing while the use of proprietary software is decreasing.
In fact, proprietary software as a percentage of software already in use by organisations is expected to drop by 8% over the next two years, while enterprise and community-based open source software will increase by 5% and 3% respectively.
All this points to the value enterprises see in open source software. To comprehend that value, it’s important to know the origins of the open source movement, the opportunities that came with it, and how enterprises in Kenya are reaping the benefits to help transform themselves.
The freedom of open source
Open source dates back to the 1950s and 60s when early internet technologies and telecommunication network protocols relied on an open and collaborative research environment. Different groups and communities would share and build upon each other’s source code, with forums facilitating conversations and developing a shared understanding. Those values of collaboration, communication, and openness served as the foundation for the modern internet that emerged in the 1990s and today form a critical component of the technology’s ongoing development.
That element of collaboration is also exemplified by the four freedoms of free software as laid out by the Free Software Foundation. These freedoms include:
- The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose.
- The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish (access to the source code is a precondition for this).
- The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help others.
- The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others (access to the source code is a precondition for this).
Importantly, “free software” does not equate to “non-commercial”. For free software to achieve its aims, it must be available for commercial use, development, and distribution. This is how it serves as the basis for modern enterprise systems and infrastructure – the backbone of business today.
The role of software today
Enterprises can no longer view software as something that’s “bolted” to the side of their business or does not play a critical role in their core offering.
Research conducted by McKinsey shows nearly 70% of the top economic-performing companies are using their software to differentiate from their competitors, while one-third are monetising software directly. Software is running the world, and for enterprises to keep up, they need to invest in their capabilities.
And Kenya is poised to do so as well. The country is one of the top five African nations with the highest concentration of professional software developers, and, according to Research ICT Africa, has enjoyed significant growth in the number of its open source users during the last decade.
Open source software has a significant cost advantage. According to a recent company survey by the Linux Foundation, 67% of respondents said they believe it would cost significantly more to provide software functionality by writing their own code than to use open source software instead.
As for the other concerns surrounding open source, they are countered by the capabilities and service offerings of open source vendors, working with enterprises to leverage the full power of their products to build comprehensive, intuitive systems.
The enterprise possibilities
From the get-go, adopting open source yields important advantages for Kenyan enterprises. The adoption can reflect the size of the business, starting small with community versions and then later migrating to commercially supported solutions. There is no need for a one-size-fits-all approach.
In addition to cost-effectiveness, enterprise open source represents flexibility and agility. Enterprises can avoid their IT teams and departments being restricted because one vendor doesn’t offer a particular capability.
Open source also lets enterprises work at faster speeds, deploying those community versions right away and using them immediately to identify how to extract maximum value from them and expand their initial capabilities.
As for security, enterprise open source has a solid information security record. Both open source communities and vendors have a proven track record of responding to vulnerabilities thanks to having long-time access to the code. This is evident in the sentiment towards open source by IT leaders. According to the Red Hat State of Enterprise Open Source report, 89% of IT leaders believe enterprise open source to be as secure or more secure than proprietary software.
This is the value of open source. With the help of trusted vendors and the right solutions, enterprises in Kenya can take a giant leap forward with their relationship with software and start to build systems and infrastructure that take their business into the future.
The writer (Christopher Saul) is the Territory Sales Lead for East Africa at Red Hat