Choosing Open Source

I always thought that if I were a CIO and had to make a decision about open source it would be a hard one. Afterall, you have to take so many things into consideration. What is your “main thing”? What strengths does your organization possess? What does your “product” run on? These are all very important questions for somebody in charge of the technical direction of an organization.

Most people know me as an advocate of open source; a guy that will always do the right thing at the end of the day. I’ll not try to hide it; I believe open source solutions are good ones in most cases. So its hard for to imagine being in the shoes of a CIO and having to make that sort of decision. Let’s be honest; in 20 years from now, you may be in a position of a CIO but your skill set will be entirely different. What would set you apart from others in seeing open source as a valid choice and then being able to execute on it?

Well, I believe I have a couple of opinions on that matter …

1. Evaluate your options: Look around you. What are you competitors doing? What are your peers doing? This sounds silly but a lot of people don’t do this. In the very rare case you will in fact be blazing some sort of trail with the decisions you make but it won’t happen on accident. If you’re not taking time out to evaluate your options and think about your overall strategy then you aren’t doing your job.
2. Choose people: Your people are your biggest asset. Again, sounds simple but most folks miss it. Where are your people’s strengths? Who are your shining stars? What path do they want to take? Where are your shining stars headed? This can sometimes be an indication of their decision making skills … if they are on the path to professional growth and not just in a holding pattern they may be on to something that you can tap. Look for the people in your organization that analyze the problems at hand. People who make snap judgements without looking at all possibilities are the same people that will end up getting you locked into some vendor/product that will cost you in the long run. The people who take a moment to examine the facts are a huge asset and totally infectious in an organization that promotes transparancy.
3. Know tactical loss vs. strategic win: I was talking with some folks on the Indiana University staff and we were discussing their choice to totally scrap their working course management software in favor of re-building it with a J2EE-based tool chain instead of sticking the its current development track which was Microsoft ASP/.NET. This is a huge decision to make. 95,000 students, faculty and staff that were quite happy with the solution they already had and they decided to scrap it in favor of building it again. This is called a short term tactical loss leading to a strategic win. That was over 2 years ago and the migration is complete. IU is now better leveraging their strengths in J2EE for the CMS development as well as being able to tie that software into their other J2EE applications that drive ERP and FIS. So many institutions think on the short-term when we will actually be here for the long-term and we might as well just do it right the first time.
4. Know your strengths: Where do the strengths of your company lie? I met with the CIO of a small medical software company a few months ago. By small I mean less than $1 billion a year in revenue. He had a hard path to take. As the new CIO at this company he had to make a decision; what development platform should his company choose for their systems. The expertise of his company was Windows, pure and simple. What was his decision? Go with .NET as a platform for the future.
5. Look at the facts, ignore the pundits: How Laura DiDio still has a job is completely beyond me. She is the Yankee Group’s “unbiased” technologist at large often pontificating on why TCO of Windows is way lower than any other solution. Funny that Microsoft are the ones that are paying the tab on these “reports” they put out. Anyhoo … how do you sift through fact and biased opinion? Even your people will do this … the fact is people don’t like the unknown and it forces them to push what they do know even if the technology or path is flawed. One thing you should always keep in your cadre of CIO tools are some technologists that you can depend on. People that you can put hard questions to and get an honest response from. If you don’t have something like this or you don’t have people in your organization that you can depend on for this then you are just flying blind.

These are just some of the things I have seen while looking up through the myriad of organizations that I’ve been involved with. Thanks everybody … I’ll be here all week …