Open letter to Minister of State for Public Service Reform, Mr. Brian Hayes TD
Hi Brian,
I would like to share a quick response to my reading of the Irish times article: State to demand price cuts from suppliers to reduce €16bn bill.
In order to best serve the needs of the Irish people right now and into the future, you need to seriously consider open source IT solutions. Across all departments and across all of Europe, government IT departments should be collectively investing in free open source solutions that solve their common IT needs.
Investment in open source IT solutions seeds innovation and is a commitment to shared future value. Investment in proprietary IT solutions is an innovation tax and a commitment to repetition.
This is not some sort of Marxist rant; open source is the best way to innovate. Open source software is a key reason amazon, google, twitter, facebook etc. emerged; they stand on the shoulders of giants.
I imagine this would mean a small shift in how government IT is organised. You would need to extract real value from the smart people therein. Rather than out sourcing decisions to global consultancy companies, you allow a shared need to be met from within.
You enable innovation, by allowing smart individuals to take ownership of both the problem and the solution and most importantly, to share the fruit of their labour.
The bottom line is this, all of the government departments have IT needs in common, they are much more alike than they wish to admit. The also share these needs with other governments thoroughout Europe.
There is no reason to constantly reinvent the wheel. We just need to enable people to share and evolve the best designs. Open source provides the freedom and motivation to do just that.
Showing posts with label open-source. Show all posts
Showing posts with label open-source. Show all posts
Apr 22, 2011
Oct 29, 2010
Independent FuseSource, a future of shared value
The future is bright for FuseSource and open source adoption, the challenge is to spread the word on shared value so more organisations can benefit.
At FuseSource, we are independent, we have a proven subscription based business plan and we have a clear message: "The experts in open source integration and messaging". A message that that is backed up by our Apache committers and consultants, many of whom are project founders. We are on the right track.
I think the growth of FuseSource is testament to the fact that enterprises are understanding a key benefit of liberal licensed open source:
Put simply, each deployment of Apache ServiceMix, Apache ActiveMQ, ApacheCXF and Apache Camel, contributes positively to the shared pool of knowledge about these products. At FuseSource, all enhancement and fixes are delivered first at Apache, so everyone can benefit immediately. A great innovation this week becomes the start point for a new deployment next week. There are no barriers to entry. We all get smarter together.
The reality is that open source consultants rarely repeat themselves, work done for one client is work done for everyone. It is a model of shared incremental improvement. It is constantly challenging work, but most rewarding and always interesting.
My hope is that more organisations, where information technology (IT) is not the core of their competitive advantage, will see the benefit of an open collaborative approach to infrastructure investment. The approach is simple: Use the same open source products as others, invest in those products, contribute back and reap the benefits of the contributions of others. Though we consider our selves individuals, when it comes to what we need computers to do, we are mostly the same.
If you work in health care, government or retail and have an IT problem, somewhere in the world some one is struggling with the same problem as you. You need not be alone, you just need to share a common language and join the community. Open source infrastructure can be that language.
Note: those organisations that use IT for competitive advantage are already on the open source band wagon, layering higher value services over existing open implementations, standing on the shoulders of giants. They just don't always have the same incentive to share.
At FuseSource, we are independent, we have a proven subscription based business plan and we have a clear message: "The experts in open source integration and messaging". A message that that is backed up by our Apache committers and consultants, many of whom are project founders. We are on the right track.
I think the growth of FuseSource is testament to the fact that enterprises are understanding a key benefit of liberal licensed open source:
Value shared is value multiplied
Put simply, each deployment of Apache ServiceMix, Apache ActiveMQ, ApacheCXF and Apache Camel, contributes positively to the shared pool of knowledge about these products. At FuseSource, all enhancement and fixes are delivered first at Apache, so everyone can benefit immediately. A great innovation this week becomes the start point for a new deployment next week. There are no barriers to entry. We all get smarter together.
The reality is that open source consultants rarely repeat themselves, work done for one client is work done for everyone. It is a model of shared incremental improvement. It is constantly challenging work, but most rewarding and always interesting.
My hope is that more organisations, where information technology (IT) is not the core of their competitive advantage, will see the benefit of an open collaborative approach to infrastructure investment. The approach is simple: Use the same open source products as others, invest in those products, contribute back and reap the benefits of the contributions of others. Though we consider our selves individuals, when it comes to what we need computers to do, we are mostly the same.
If you work in health care, government or retail and have an IT problem, somewhere in the world some one is struggling with the same problem as you. You need not be alone, you just need to share a common language and join the community. Open source infrastructure can be that language.
Note: those organisations that use IT for competitive advantage are already on the open source band wagon, layering higher value services over existing open implementations, standing on the shoulders of giants. They just don't always have the same incentive to share.
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