Corporate Finance and Open Source
For those of you banging your head on why it is difficult to get needed IT expenditures approved, Paul Keeble offers the following, highly-accurate, explanation:
In corporations Open source is thriving, and not because its the strategy:
In large corporations if you need to buy a tool for development, especially one no one has used before good luck in completing the order. The developer wanting the tool will have to justify it over and over and the odds of getting it aren‘t dependent on the need but whether the department (and hence what time of the year it is) has any money. Big purchases tend to be much easier because they have to be approved further up in the organisation. Little purchases just drag on and on. I don‘t know why it is the finance mechanism in companies causes so much grief, but the truth is they are not designed for quick purchases for strategic reasons. Any CFO that tells you otherwise is lying or has no idea. The real reason for finance control is to stop money leaking out and the company loosing money and not knowing why. The fact that redeveloping the library will take you 6 months is unfortunately lost on them as your an expected cost.
[Via: JRoller]
Paul goes on to expand this discussion to show how Open Source fits into the financing process which is a key reason for its continuing adoption by corporations.
Of course, this doesn’t explain why some IT shops are afraid of open source, but my gut tells me it’s about responsibility. IT shops unwilling to take responsibility for their own decisions and solutions tend to rely on vendors who are ready to serve as punching bags during a crisis.
