The brutal truth is this: when your key business processes are executed by opaque blocks of bits that you can't even see inside (let alone modify) you have lost control of your business. You need your supplier more than your supplier needs you—and you will pay, and pay, and pay again for that power imbalance. You'll pay in higher prices, you'll pay in lost opportunities, and you'll pay in lock-in that grows worse over time as the supplier (who has refined its game on a lot of previous victims) tightens its hold.I heard Chris Di Bona of Google say exactly this at a conference in DC last year with respect to Google's own strategic software direction. For anything that is core to their business, they use open source if it is good enough, or build it themselves if it is not. Being beholden to a vendor would be a huge competitive disadvantage to them.
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
"Risk"
Great quotation on the OSGeo-Discuss list:
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5 comments:
And some people still wonder why open source?
Sometimes, there's only so much clue stick you can hit people with. After that you just gotta let them sink in their own denial.
I think that there may be room for some shades of grey in terms of the question of risk vs cost. I'd timidly offer that Google doesn't necessarily operate within the same constraints as most/many/any other businesses and so the cost of rewriting/recreating something doesn't play into their decisions in the same practical way that it may for many other organizations.
Looking at it another way, why go for the "Euro Sedan" Mac when you could put together a "Volkswagen Van" Linux system from pieces for alot less and know for certain exactly what you have inside?
It comes down to value, and so buyers need to be getting value when they license software, and vendors need to honour the trust that their customers have placed in them and make darn sure they are providing back value in spades to their customers. As a commercial software vendor, this is something we are keenly aware of and take very seriously. In any case, this equation of cost vs. benefit is something that I'd think would have a role to play in any purchasing (or not) decision.
Dale
Is it true, Paul, that if spatial data is your company's bread and butter, there's no way you could risk using FME? That's certainly not what we heard at FOSS4G 2007. Instead we heard about the great synergies between open source and proprietary software like Dale's, something that sorely tested my endurance.
I bet Google uses the FME, Dale :)
You are right, they are a pathological case, in many respects, but what they illustrate is the idea that using a vendor is in fact itself a SOURCE of risk, which must be balanced against all the other sources.
Too often, in the discussion of risks when choosing system components, going with a vendor is considered only as a form of risk mitigation. The risk cost of being tied to a vendors solution is not added into the system cost.
Unfortunately, a lot of vendors have realized that good marketing or market dominance can in fact be a successful substitute for providing a competitively functional product at a competitive price. As true in software as in jeans.
sean_g, it's entirely possible my rhetoric is outrunning my reality, since I've used the FME in my work for 10 years and will keep on doing so for many more. The marginal cost of building something better independently outstrips my licensing costs. IMO, FME lives in a desirable segment of the value/money plane, and I say that as someone who is well aware of the alternatives.
So, in answer to your question, if my business depended on converting spatial data and I chose FME, I would do so knowing that I was placing, as Dale notes, trust in the organization. Buying a product is not a one-way street, so you had better feel comfortable with the motivations and history of the organization behind it.
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