Pursuing An Open Desktop, Why Not!

A key aspect of running IT as a business is to remain alert to opportunities to significantly reduce costs or increase revenues for your organization. This is true for both private and public sector organizations. Open Source represents a major opportunity to lower operating costs and/or increase revenues.

In this series I will be presenting some of these opportunities that are being created by open source technologies but appear to be overlooked by many if not most CIO’s. For me the prime example is implementing an open source desktop. The estimates that I have seen indicate that an organization can reduce the hardware and software costs of a desktop or laptop computer by potentially as much as $1,000 per unit. When I was a CIO in the State of Oregon we had approximately 35,000 desktop/laptops, the potential savings was around $35.0 million.

So why was the State bureaucracy so hesitant about going after these potential savings. Yes, one can argue that changing the desktop is a significant effort but so are the rewards significant. My assessment was that the major roadblock was fear of change and the potential backlash from a major commercial vendor. Interesting given that the Governor had declared that Oregon is the epicenter of the Open Source industry, which indeed it is. No that change and vendor objections aren’t real concerns, look at the experience in Massachusetts, but I can’t personally imagine telling my boss that I won’t pursue such an opportunity for purely political reasons.

In these cases the driving principle for me is what I would do if it were my money and I recently faced this very issue. I had purchased a new laptop computer which included at no cost a version of Microsoft Office. It was the basic word processor, spreadsheet and presentation software but there was a catch. I could use the software 30 times and then I had to purchase a license. My new laptop ran the new Vista operating system and I had a desktop running Windows XP. Since it was my money, I went to the Oregon State University web site and downloaded the open office suite rather that continue to use Windows Office. The suite works great and includes Open Office Draw, Math and Database applications in addition to a word processor, spreadsheet and presentation applications. In addition to saving a bundle of money, the look and feel is intuitive and an easy adjustment, you can save in a number of formates to make exchange of documents quite easy. I especially like the button that creates and stores the document as a pdf file.

To me the open source office application suite is an obvious cost savings opportunity that is being overlooked by both private and public sector CIO’s. I’ll be discussing other opportunities in coming postings.

William A. Crowell

Principal

Magellan Associates, LLC

http://www.magellan-associates.com/

Open Source, Can You Afford Not Considering?

There is a lot of talk recently about alternatives to Microsoft’s desktop applications, see my recent posting “Pursuing An Open Desktop, Why Not!” as well as “P&G Flirts with Google Apps and Scares the Bejesus Out of Microsoft” posted by Tom Wailgum on October 1st, “Fighting Government Waste One Google Application At A Time”, and “Cost Savings Found When Microsoft Outlook Ousted for Gmail at British Construction Firm”.

The Open Office desktop and Google Apps are only the beginning of  a  readily growing availability of  software alternatives. Compiere’s ERP and CRM applications, SugarCRM’s relationship management application, OpenWorkbench from Computer Associates, Mozilla Firefox web browser, Openbravo ERP and many other can be found on Wikipedia.  The point is that many of the most sophisticated enterprise applications are now becoming available through an open source provider.

Why is this important?  Let me share a personal experience.  It was June and the Oregon Department of Human Services was going to implement the new HIPAA compliant codes for our Medicaid application in January of the coming year.  This had a significant impact on our health care partners, since they had to modify their systems in order to be able to submit electronic invoices to the State.  If our partners didn’t update their systems before January they would have to file paper invoices, which we estimated would increase the States workload by around 60,000 paper invoices per month.

As we investigated the situation, we discovered that a number of different State employees were coordinating communications with various health care providers, there was no central repository of this information and follow up information was being kept on sticky notes.  There was a clear need for a relation management application, but with only six months to get this job done there was no time to go through the traditional procurement process to procure and implement potential solutions such as Siebold or SalesForce.com. 

One of our top system architects came to our rescue when he discovered SugarCRM’s application on the Internet and since it was an open source application he was able to download and install it in a single day.  Our customers loved it and since it was an open source application we were able to make some minor modifications (mostly to screen literals) and have it in production within days.  We were also able to download contact information from our mainframes and create a comprehensive partner database.

The bottom line was that when we went live with the HIPAA compliant transactions and code sets almost every electronic filler was ready and there was almost no increase in paper invoice volumes.  While the cost savings were substantial the speed in which we able to meet everyone’s needs was the big payoff.

As a CIO you need to be investigating these open source and other alternative software options.  Next posting will discuss what I see as the biggest payoff from the open source development model and that is collaborative development of none strategic applications.

William a. Crowell, Principal
Magellan Associates, LLC
www.magellan-associates.com

Evaluating the Alternative Desktop – The Time Is Now!!!

In a recent blog that I wrote “Pursuing An Open Desktop, Why Not!”, I argued that CIO’s should be exploring an alternative desktop as an opportunity to significantly reduce life cycle costs of IT within their organizations. After a recent conversation with one of our clients, I realized a framework is required to make this assessment. I also realized that the topic should be expanded to an alternative desktop now that Google has entered this space.

The first element of this framework is to recognize that considering a change in the desktop is a strategic IT initiative and not simply a technical option. It’s strategic because it could lead to a significant reduction in the cost of it and extend the useful life of these assets. During these difficult economic times the potential of reduced costs needs to be brought to the attention of senior management and the CEO and CFO. Clearly the potential should not be oversold and the drawbacks of such a major change need to be considered. The key word here is change.

The second element of this framework is communications. You need to communicate early and often to the most senior levels of management and to the organizations employees to avert their fears of such a basic change. You need to stress the prospective benefits of the change and IT’s understanding that this type of opportunity deserves a complete and through investigation and if justified a thoughtful implementation plan.

A through investigation of this opportunity includes the follow activities:

• Documentation of the current situation to include technical capabilities, requirements and costs,
• Documentation of the impact on your technical infrastructure and technical staff,
• Identification and definition of alternatives to include open source, SaaS, etc…,
• Evaluating a potential “mixed” environment (for example, Vista and Open Office),
• Detailed evaluation of alternatives from a technical and cost perspective, and
• Proposed implementation plan, costs and expected savings.

It is important to note that Microsoft is a potential alternative to be considered and the simple fact that your organizations is considering alternatives will most likely effect their position on the costs of upgrading their offerings. If you don’t believe this to be true, I suggest you read the recent blog on cio.com entitled “P&G Flirts with Google Apps and Scares the Bejesus Out of Microsoft”.

Given the potential savings, which I believe for larger firms and government will be in the millions of dollars, I don’t believe getting started on this evaluation can or should be put off.

William A. Crowell, Principal
Magellan Associates, LLC
http://www.magellan-associates.com/