Analyzing The Open Business Cost

The presence of new opportunities could not be a reason sufficient to extend open business model to more traditional development environments. Hence, in this section we are including a simple analysis of the cost of open source business for a company.

The effective, combined cost of acquisition and deployment of an information technology is the total cost of open business. Gathering information, acquisition, deployment, training, common use and maintenance are the steps of transition to a new technology. Below, we discuss them to throw light upon the open business cost.

This initial stage comprises of the acquisition of data on the possible solutions available to the organization. As there is not much advertising on open source projects, it is sometimes more costly to gather information on open source model.

As there are no per-copy or per-use fees or creation, acquisition has a lower cost with open source model. If the system has to be deployed on many platforms, the lower cost of open business is even more evident.

As deployment is considered in different ways depending on the author, it is a difficult stage to evaluate. This stage comprises of the steps needed to bring the information system to a complete working implementation. But thanks to better installation strategies, the deployment time is apparently shorter. The higher configurability and the availability of the source code of the installation systems makes further customization possible, and thus helping in large scale deployment.

The open source business has a limited advantage due to the possibility to check the source code. A large scale training processes, documentation, and teaching material is made easily available to all interested parties. Distributing the open source to the interested parties will help the development of good quality documentation by third parties, at a reasonable cost.

As the availability of the open business code allows for immediate bug fixing and remedies, it is always possible to fix anything. This aids in the achieving a longer lifetime for the software, with incremental reuse and improvement.

Data translation to a new technology is often a difficult process. However, in the open source business models, information technology systems are generally built to replace existing systems to ensure a smooth and streamlined transition process. This keeps the cost factor low as abandonment is not really a part of the real use of a technology.

To conclude, it can be generalized that many stages that are to be considered for open business cost, due to the open source nature do not contribute to any significant differences. As the open source business model matures and is used more and more, the cost factor gets lower and lower. Using open source systems provides clear advantages and potential benefits within an industry.