Open Debate: Focusing on business value

The future of IT in the enterprise is sometimes seen as a battle for the soul of IT between reigning champion Microsoft and the rising contender of Linux.

But one of the few issues that united a Computing roundtable was that it's time the issue shifted from political principle to business reality.

What companies need is a debate on the issues that affect them, not a theological discussion about good and evil. The Windows-Linux debate is important, but only in the wider context of how IT can deliver business value.

THE PANEL:

Nick McGrath, head of platform strategy, Microsoft
Neil Macehiter, research director, Ovum
William Knight, software developer and writer
Matt Ballantine,enterprise architect, BBC Worldwide
Stuart Jupes, server product manager, BMC

Our panel and audience were clear about the main themes:

Interoperability
Security
Value for money
Open standards

Discussion of business value means recognising that there are no black and white decisions, just shades of grey.

"The big issue for business is not really the operating system, it's at the level above, about the application platform," said Ovum research director Neil Macehiter.

"The debate is much more around .Net and Java as the insulating platform for applications that are running on the operating system. That's where businesses will derive real value."

So the platform debate between Microsoft and Linux is only part of a wider discussion where both will be judged on what they can deliver in practice.

Nick McGrath, head of platform strategy at Microsoft, believes that his company has a very strong hand, and that Microsoft is best for business because it is in the business of software. The company employs professionals with a clear sense of mission, and is accountable for its mistakes.

McGrath said that Windows Server 2003, for example, is increasingly successful because "it's a commodity, scalable, reliable solution that is end-to-end a total solution. It is not just a disparate number of technologies that have been brought together for very niche purposes."

Microsoft is committed to value, interoperability and security, he said, so its muscle in the market should be seen as a strength for the customer.

Software developer and writer William Knight is not convinced, however, believing what little change we have seen has been forced by the rise of Linux.

He maintained that organisations have realised a smarter way of doing business which does not involve betting their future on a single supplier, and have "changed faith". The drive has come from a too often under-appreciated creative force in the enterprise.

"It's interesting that software developers who have clubbed together and built themselves a natty piece of software have prompted such a huge debate," he said.

"They are the forgotten element of the decision-making unit in the business. They have created a global business with real momentum, and that proves that you can have developers as part of the business and the decision-making unit and get good results."

It's not just cost, but crucially the motivation of excellence over profit that makes open source work, according to McGrath.

Stuart Jupes, server product manager at BMC, stressed that open source had already overcome huge barriers to adoption.

"Customers I was seeing three or four years ago were saying 'open source over my dead body'," he said. "But they are now seriously asking their IT departments how to get this into their environment."

For many users, platform decisions still come down to harsh realities. "It's all very well for the IT department to change faith but they also have to convince the finance director," said Matt Ballantine, enterprise architect at BBC Worldwide.

"In my experience most senior business managers are quite focused on measurable results, on process, and on having some certai nty about what's going on.

"The whole ethos of open source development, peer review and seeing code doesn't really happen in a wage-paying environment. There's something deep down in me that thinks if something is free it can't be right."

Software developed on the open source model is more secure because it is produced with perfection rather than profits in mind, claimed Knight.

"Linux is a co-operative of developers, checking each others' code, understanding each others' code and peer reviewing each others' code. Through that process you end up with a working product.

"I don't know why, but many people fear the process. They feel they have to sign a cheque and hand it to a company and somehow that's going to make their software more secure.

"I struggle with this because I don't know where that fear comes from. It just seems to be a deep-seated lack of faith. My experience of developers is that they do a far better job when they are not in the capitalist mindset."

The notion of open source as outside and above mere money does not stand up to scrutiny, suggested Ballantine. As Linux compromises its original dreams by entering the mainstream, it too will face threats.

"Up until now Microsoft has been the main target for software attacks and they get all the publicity. The question for me is whether malicious virus writers will write for open source platforms. The answer is quite possibly," he said.

"They might not at the moment because the open source community and its ethos is not something people want to hack at. But the minute it is used for major business applications, you may well see people turning on it the way they have with Microsoft."

Paradoxically, the reason why Microsoft is such a target ð that it's big and rich ð is also the reason why it is safer for business users, according to McGrath.

"We are a big company that can afford to invest in security. For 365 days a year, seven days a week, our developers are out there looking at the challenges on the internet from viruses, worms and the like," he said.

"There are plenty of studies now that show we pick up far more vulnerabilities than our Linux rivals and fix them more quickly."

And McGrath claimed that openness is as much a weakness as a strength. "Open source lets me see how systems are built and lets me see under the covers, but that also aids exploitation," he explained.

"There was a developer recently who wrote a 20-line C program that had the ability to crash the Linux kernel. There are absolutely challenges for Windows, but they are also there for Linux.

"A big difference is that we operate at the highest recognised levels of security. No open source vendor operates at that level."

Macehiter suggested that the motivation of the company plays a big part in security. "The real issue is the level of risk and the amount of trust you have in an operating system," he said.

"Open source doesn't make a system inherently more secure just because lots of people review it. It's only more secure if you tell them to review it, and then review it and review it and review it. And the review has to be of the right things.

"The other element of risk management is whose butt you kick. If you have a security fault in Microsoft, you know where to go. So what you've paid in the licence fee gives you a degree of security.

"You can tell them that you want a problem fixed and you want it fixed yesterday. Will you get the same response without the commercial motivation?"

Which platform offers the best business support?
The theory is simple enough: open access to source code revolutionises customer support by empowering them.

"If we are open about everything that we publish, when there are problems they can be fixed even if it isn't the company that originally wrote it or developed it," said Knight.

"We can get support because there are now a lot of commercial companies. But if there are problems, we still have the source cod e out there that can be used for support."

That doesn't necessarily make it a sensible option for business, warned Ballantine. "My sense is that the small incremental fixing of irritants is the stuff that the open source community is going to do," he said.

"But what happens when we need to make the leap to the next generation? What open source community is going to be able to support that next leap in the way that we went from Dos to NT technologies or 32- to 64-bit?

"I don't see how an open community can start from scratch again, so we might end up with software that's kind of cobbled together over many years."

Macehiter agreed that the simple fact of having access to code does not make life automatically easier. "Does open source guarantee that in five years' time I can still get support for my software?" he asked.

"Well yes, but at what cost? Having the source code doesn't mean that you can always support the business need. It's not as black and white as some people try to portray it. It's all about degrees of greyness."

Does open source mean open standards?
The kind of business-centred interoperable world that united the panel depends on having open standards. And for Jupes, everyone could benefit from the kind of clear standards that operate in the mainframe world.

But the reason those standards were accepted was down to the muscle of a single IT player in IBM, suggested McGrath. The support of the big commercial powers are a primary motivating force in getting standards accepted. "Wherever Microsoft can find a standard to follow, we will follow that standard," he said.

And the ultimate push doesn't come from vendors, according to Macehiter. "Standards evolve; it's an evolutionary process. Who makes Microsoft the de facto standard? It's not Microsoft, it's the people who buy its technology," he said.

Macehiter also stressed that users should take more responsibility in putting pressure on vendors to adopt standards.

"The successful standards are those in which users are involved. It's easy to sit back and put all the onus on the vendors and say that it's all their fault," he explained.

Open standards are not necessarily the indisputable good that some claim, according to Macehiter. Standards can stifle innovation and act as a brake on development, but are a necessity at some stage of IT development as a stabilising force.

That may be the result of vendor muscle or regulation, but one thing is certain. "Open source does not necessarily mean open standards," said Macehiter.

Is open source best placed to ensure interoperability?
"It's not open standards in themselves that customers have been asking for, it's interoperability," said McGrath, who maintained that changes to Microsoft over recent years have put interoperability at the heart of its business proposition.

"What customers say to us is: 'We have an environment where interoperability is an issue, and we look to you as a responsible leader in the IT industry to make sure you are compliant with open standards,'" he said.

"The proof is in the pudding. You can take a Windows Server 2003 machine and it can talk quite happily to a Unix environment."

But the company has some convincing to do, according to Ballantine. "My experience is that, where interoperability has been really important in mixed platform environments, Microsoft has not been able to deliver, even when dealing with its own software," he said.

And Knight was more sceptical still. "I don't think things have got better. It all depends where you are standing. When Microsoft talks about changing its developer behaviour, I wonder how much of that is learned from the open source community," he said.

Macehiter believes that it is important to keep a clear sense of perspective. "It's interesting that the open source software and the open standards debates are blurring," he explained.

"Does open source software development as an approach guarantee interoperabili ty? Absolutely not. Does access to the source code ensure interoperability? Well, in principle it does, but at what cost and to whom?"

Do mixed environments work?
A mixed environment, embracing Linux, Microsoft and any other platforms and applications, will always be a bigger headache to manage than being a one-vendor shop, according to Ballantine.

"The worst security nightmares, for example, come when you have these environments talking to each other. It's because of all those fixes and hacks and bits of Sellotape that manage to get these things to talk to each other where you will really find your vulnerabilities," he warned. "When integration problems arise in mixed environments, it's always the other vendor's fault."

But Macehiter insisted that we might as well get used to the idea. "It's going to be part and parcel of everyday life," he said.

"We cannot have a one-vendor environment, not least because we don't throw things away because they become unfashionable. They stay there running our business.

"Does that mean open source co-existence with Windows? Well yes, in the same way that Solaris co-exists with Windows. Does the open source debate change the economics? No, it's just another thing in the mix that has to be developed in a slightly different way."

How we manage such an environment is an issue for technologies such as web services and for processes. But the deciding factor will always be business value, according to Jupes. "It's the value of the business application that matters," he said.

Is the platform debate a reaction to Microsoft's dominance?
The level of animosity towards Microsoft is a leading factor in the growth of Linux, just as independent software vendors arose in reaction to IBM's dominance in the 1970s, suggested a member of the audience.

Macehiter argued that it is a truism that has caught on, but does not reflect the complexity of the market.

"Microsoft may be seen by some as the bête noire of the IT industry and the one that everyone points to, but how much of enterprise IT or even small business IT is actually dominated by Microsoft in the way that IT in the 1970s was by IBM? It's not as simple as that," he said. "Today's debate is much more driven by this drive for standardisation and commoditisation."

For McGrath, the notion that open source is the champion to slay the monopolist monster is ridiculous. "When I joined Microsoft 12 years ago there was a lot of competition, but people chose Windows," he claimed.

"We're not complacent about that choice. If we haven't delivered that value then customers are going to look at other commercial or non-commercial alternatives. People choose us because they want flexibility, they want choice and they want to reduce their costs."

For Jupes, the idea that open source is simply a reaction does not do it justice. "Linux offers simplicity," he said.

See also:

ITV switches on to Linux

Broadcaster migrating systems to open source 'on a case-by-case basis'  26 Jul 2004

Windows Server System

Has Windows Server 2003 lived up to Microsoft's claims of being the 'most reliable, highest-performing server operating system' the company has ever built?  12 May 2004

Open source

Linux is becoming the operating system of choice for an increasing number of corporates, and even the mighty Microsoft is acknowledging the threat ...  12 May 2004

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