Document Type

Closed Project

Publication Date

Winter 2012

Instructor

Tugrul Daim

Course Title

Management of Engineering and Technology

Course Number

ETM 520/620

Subjects

Computer software -- Development, Knowledge management, Open source software, Technology -- Management

Abstract

Over the past few years, major IT and non-It companies have increasingly adopted open source software (OSS). OSS is developed by organized communities of interested parties and sometimes by major software companies.OSS is developed by applying high quality standards and rigorous processes used when developing proprietary softwares. In most of the publications, much of the assessment of the drivers of growth and factors which hinder the development of OSS has been done form the technical perspective .Managerial perceptions of benefits and drawbacks that impact the organizational adoption of OSS has been neglected due to its focus on software development. In this paper we have tried to analyze the benefits and drawbacks mainly from the perspective of the IS/IT managers by analyzing various case studies of the leading companies that adopted OSS in their software portfolios. We also conducted surveys with two leading corporations like Nike and Intel in the city of Portland in Orgeon and also tried to contact the people from few global companies.

After analyzing surveys and case studies we found out that benefits outweigh drawbacks in adoption of OSS. Companies are strategically adopting OSS as they have incorporated OSS in their IT strategies. The issues which were thought to be hindering the growth of OSS were found to be insignificant in front of the large amount of savings, escape from vendor-lock-in and customization of processes which companies are able to achieve after switching to OSS. Despite of many benefits some concerns surfaced up like lack of formal guidelines for the adoption of OSS in an organization. Lack of management support also hinders the adoption of OSS. OSS can be the best choice for the company if it aligns its business objectives with particular OSS before switching to it.

Today,OSS is in the software portfolio of more than seventy five percent of the major companies and is expected that by 2016 OSS will be in mission critical software portfolios of more than ninety nine percent of global companies.

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Comments

This project is only available to students, staff, and faculty of Portland State University

Persistent Identifier

http://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/22079

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