The Conservative Party – Britain’s largest opposition party – recently mooted the idea that embracing Open Source software in all government information technology (IT) projects could save taxpayers £600 million (RM4.07 billion) a year. Shadow chancellor Gorge Osborne reckoned that opening up the software market would enable the Government to slash 5% off Whitehall’s annual IT bill as open software allows users to read, change and improve its code, in contrast to proprietary software where a company controls the source code. In Japan, the government’s edict that it wants to make Linux and Open Source a priority for all IT procurements starting this month. This has prompted the formation of a consortium by 10 global IT equipment and software vendors to develop and sell Linux-based servers and computer for the Japanese market. Tokyo reckons it would spend around 1.25 trillion yen (RM34.56 billion) on IT over the next year.
That open source software promotes cost savings is not hard to envision, according to Ditesh Kumar, user, developer and evangelist of Malaysia’s free and Open Source software (FOSS) movement.
‘A small company with limited funds may decide whether it wants to upgrade to Microsoft Office 2007 or move to FOSS. Currently, the best alternative to Microsoft Office is OpenOffice.org (OOo) v2.1. The list price for Microsoft Office 2007 is RM1,365 for the “Standard” entry level version or RM1,711 for the “Professional” version. The price for OOo v2.1 is zero,’ he says.
Ditesh adds that it is hard to compare against something that cost nothing. ‘Sure, there is installation and training costs but since Microsoft Office 2007 is radically different to Microsoft Office 2003, the training costs will be the same if not more costly when adopting Microsoft Office 2007,’ says Ditesh.
If these costs were to be eliminated and channeled towards human resource development, companies can expect substantial cost savings, he adds. ‘Just in one area – the office productivity suite – Malaysian companies can save up to 30% - 60% per terminal. In terms of server level software, there is more available savings, for example on costs which are restricted on with per client access licenses or per CPU (central unit processing).
In real practice, Royal Selangor International already has half of its server running on Linux. ‘This proves substantial saving over other operating systems which require licensing costs on a per client basis. So on average we save RM20,000 to RM30,000 per server,’ says the company’s group IT Manager Yong Yoon Kit.
In the case of desktop applications, Royal Selangor deploys OOo. The preference for OOo lies in its ease of usage, which is as good or even better than Microsoft Office 97 or 2000, according to Yong.
‘Considering that commercial productivity apps nowadays cost in the region of RM1,000 to RM2,000 per seat, we would rather spend this money on more hardware or training and use OOo, than to use software features which we hardly use,’ he tells Malaysian Business.
Currently, FOSS adoption rate in Malaysia is slow but steadily growing within both the government and private sectors. In Asia OSS 2006, the Malaysia Administrative Modernisation and Management Planning Unit (MAMPU) noted that significant savings were achieved via the reduced usage of proprietary software. Among others, licensing cost was trimmed by 88%, development and consultancy cost by 58% and software support services cost b 7%.
At the private sector end, the Federation of Malaysian Manufacturers (FMM) has initiated a small Special Interest Group on Free and Open Source Software of which Yong is a member of, to educate its 2,000 members on how to make more efficient use of their IT funds by leveraging on FOSS. This group aspires to assist members who require specific IT products from FOSS list of ready solutions.
Dwelling on software acquisition cost, Yong notes the pricing of software can be exorbitant for countries like Malaysia primarily because software prices are almost equal around the world. In other words, if the license cost in US$100 in the United States, it would cost RM370 or so locally.
‘Most of the time, it is more expensive here as the software distributor marks up the price for shipping and additional support. The “Big Mac” index is hardly used in software transactions – the price never reflects the buying power of regional customers,’ explains Yong.
However, such cost is nominal as support comes at local price. Additionally, because the system is open to all to lend support, users can easily interchange support vendors if they are comfortable with their existing vendors. Therefore, FOSS prevents vendor “lock-in” as encountered by specific vendor products in market.
Touching the issue of technical support, Yong agress that such fear has been a common excuse for not adopting FOSS. For in-house IT departments, finding a competent IT staff is no child's play, but faced with a candidate who has prior experience with FOSS almost guarantees several qualities, he says.
'The qualities include the candidate being passionate about IT, able to work out technical problems independently and almost certainly, will try to work out the most efficient use of IT budgets by evaluating FOSS first,' say Yong.
On a similar note, Yong says local support even for proprietary software is often hard to come by. 'Often, we resort to solving the problems ourselves by “Googling” for the answers. In fact, a FOSS-trained personel would be far more resourceful and have a better understanding than a curriculum-trained staff,' he adds.
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