Business depends on information technology (IT) systems and these systems must be agile to enable business to manage rapid change to cope with changing economic conditions and, thus, improve sustainability.

Flexible IT systems must reliably integrate a variety of vendor solutions and older legacy systems to enable companies to leverage their investments in infrastructure.

“The sustainability of business and business plans depends on your IT strategy, which means the typical fixed medium- to long-term nature of IT system deployments and infrastructure is increasingly risky, prompting demands for interoperability and the long-term viability of investments.” says enterprise open source software distributor The Linux Warehouse MD Dr Jan-Jan van der Vyver.

Removing the risks posed by expensive IT solutions, with the possibility of them becoming redundant prior to return on investment, has led to demands for sustainable alternatives and, as part of any investments, the ability to gradually migrate to new technologies.

The open source principles of allowing many users to participate, improve and innovate in a community, be it in Linux or MongoDB or any other source code communities within their field of expertise, are significant enablers to provide more relevant developments for IT decision-makers to consider.

“The open nature of open source-based enterprise-ready systems means that issues encountered in daily operations have, in all likelihood, been encountered by other users. Problems, opportunities and gaps are transparent within the open source community, with willing problem- solvers able to correct, enhance and immediately improve on a product,” highlights Van der Vyver.

The open source philosophy means that users globally contribute to the source code within a community. With peers able to track everyone’s contributions, the collaboration among technical and expert users improves the speed of problem resolution and reduces risk to the end-user by providing a range of input and potential solutions.

“Any risks arising from using solutions from the community versions are mitigated by switching to the rigorously tested and certified version of the enterprise open source version, such as EnterpriseDB (for Postgres) and Rhel7 (for Red Hat).

“Enterprise open source solutions are significantly more futureproof than proprietary solutions, owing to the agility, flexibility and the potential interoperability of the systems, as well as the benefit of subscriptions. “Any company operating in a high-risk environment wants to ensure that it can adapt rapidly to changes or sustainability threats and be able to optimally use resources when necessary.”

The subscription model, together with the open nature of the software, means that companies can change service providers quickly. This also drives improved performance by service providers, as competition becomes intense and the quality of product and service paramount. Additionally, should a business require change while aiming to ensure relevance, a technology migration strategy using open source systems is viable, visible and adaptable.

“The main function of enterprise open source companies and service providers is to test and make any new developments stable and robust, while developing new capabilities to augment existing products and services to retain customers and satisfy their requirements,” Van der Vyver concludes.