As we know, open source technologies are universally growing in implementation, and several factors drive this adoption. It has progressed from being used in traditional deployments to becoming a preferred choice for up-and-coming IT scenarios and initiatives. Be it small or large, organisations are largely deploying open source solutions for what it brings to the table – collaboration, free exchange of ideas, agility and cost-efficiency.

Here are some key elements you can look at for a successful open source adoption in your organisation:

Right Solutioning and Designing

To begin with, as a business, you must avail the right solutioning and designing of your enterprise application or architecture. It is also important to gauge and understand whether your project will need beyond one or more open source technologies. Including just one technology throughout your architecture may not be the best choice. Hence, it is key to understand how the applicable open source technologies can interact with the diverse components and the underlying platforms. Furthermore, with newer platforms emerging, such as container or cloud-based, it is imperative to keep up with how open source technologies can respond in different environments.

For example: one of our recent customer’s teams migrated its infrastructure, application, and database to Cloud. As it was a lift-and-shift scenario, the architect assumed that the database, application, and database failover scenario would all work as it is, so everything was deployed and tested, only to find out that it didn’t work (especially the database failover scenario). The reason is that the database on the cloud can behave considerably differently from it does on the VM platform in the event of a database failover. If the customer had availed of a suitable platform design, they could have avoided this.

Plus, when application developers are not taking part during the design phase, the teams cannot maximise the benefits of open source environments. Most application developers, especially databases, containers, and web servers, will run into problems if they continue using their previous knowledge or experience based on outdated or older technologies and components. Even if they have designed the best solution for the database layer or web servers, or others, the disconnection with the application developers creates complexities of each of these components and disables the teams to leverage it successfully.

Conducting a Pilot Run

Every organisation will have its unique business scenario. Hence, just test cases are not a smart choice to assess new-age solutions. The best way is to run a pilot and subject them to’ near real life’ settings. It ensures the methodical testing of the scenarios before implementation or go-live. Because of the nature of open source, piloting of projects is straightforward and helps give a better grip on the roadmap of the charted-out digital journey more constructively.

For example: one of our customers, a top bank, is working on a version of its mobile banking application, but the architecture changed significantly. Hence, the bank plans to open it up first to their internal 30 to 40 K users as a pilot. It ensures that they assess the application in a near realistic scenario before officially launching and taking live to their 10 million clientele. So it was not just a test, but they worked with a pilot version of the application – which is the appropriate practice, as it gives insights and acumen on what works and what doesn’t in a real-life setting.

Training of Employees

93% of hiring managers report difficulty finding sufficient talent with open source skills, according to a recent survey. One way out is training the existing workforce and re-skilling them to upgrade their skill-sets. While businesses understand the value of training, the pressures of project deadlines and the need to go live quickly, it is tedious for technical teams to get suitably trained or certified on open source technologies. Many banking and telco clients tell us they don’t have the required capabilities because they cannot spare their present team members for training days. Their teams are being used solely for operations.

Training is more beneficial to system integrators and solution consultants than enterprise teams, which is another hiccup in getting business teams enough time and training to elevate skills. But to get a better technical grip and control over business-critical workloads, it is vital to skill, re-skill, and constantly re-skill your teams.

Introducing open source to your architecture does not have to be an intimidating process. Open source software can be just as secure as proprietary software, with far greater benefits. The cost efficiency and collaborative nature of open source technologies allow for faster and more sizable innovation, resulting in improved efficiency business-wide.

Several global companies have announced that implementing open source software is among their top priorities. If you are contemplating to take the leap, here are some interesting case studies to look at. Looking for help on any of the above factors for your open source adoption?