Planning on Much Ado About IT

Open Source vs Proprietary in UK Central Government Organisations

Julian Knight — Mon, 20 Jun 2016 00:00:00 +0000

NB: This article is incomplete - it was converted from a previous blog site. It is included as a draft.

Open source does not necessarily mean that open integration and open data is facilitated

The issue of open source vs proprietary applications for organisations related to the UK government comes up regularly. the UK’s Cabinet Office have issued clear guidance that open source is preferred and should always be considered when procuring new systems.

However, this actually leads to confusion with many people then assuming that choosing proprietary applications will lead to trouble.

The truth is rather more nuanced and it is worth thinking about. For me, the best approach is to deliver open data and open integration rather than focusing on open source per se.

The following notes have been extracted from some internal documentation I did for our organisation. That is why is focuses on Microsoft. I am not advocating a specific vendor nor am I prioritising proprietary over open source. I am simply recommending a balanced and holistic view to get the best possible deal for the public purse.

My view, and the view of quite a number of other people I’ve had the opportunity to talk to across government, is that the focus should be on open integration rather than necessarily open source. Using open source does not necessarily mean that open integration and open data is facilitated. Conversely, some proprietary vendors have made great strides in ensuring that systems can be integrated and data shared.

At present, Microsoft, Google and Amazon all seem to “get” the issues of open integration and open data to one degree or another.

Discussion in the open source debate tends to focus on license costs. OS is license free by definition; however, you will still pay for support. OS software is often also (much) harder to implement and support due to patchy documentation and many individuals contributing different code. Not always true of course but there is certainly a degree of truth in this.

In the case of something like the Microsoft platforms, the implementation and support costs of the core software (such as Office 365) have been driven down massively and the economies of scale we are bringing to bear through greater cross-government collaboration is improving that still further. At the same time, large license scales enable organisations to make use of additional funding that comes out of our EA agreements. This gives us access to additional planning, design and implementation services that all would have to be separately paid for with open source software. These all have a tendency to balance out the books.

User and administrative training is the final element and again, proprietary vendors tend to provide more and better quality training/documentation resources than open source (again, in general). Proprietary software also has a tendency to have better developed user interfaces requiring less training. This further balances the cost equation.

So while I fully support the need to evaluate OS vs proprietary software, we must do so holistically otherwise we will not get the expected benefits and there is plenty of evidence to support this view from the likes of Germany and Brazil both of whom have extensively switched to open source software.

The bottom line is that Microsoft are often currently viewed as the best strategic partner we can have in areas of desktop operating systems, general office applications and general cloud computing facilities. They have already made good progress in opening a lot of previously proprietary code and supporting open interface standards & they currently see the health sector as one of their primary growth areas. We have made good use of this while continuing to keep an eye out for changes in their policies that will happen inevitably. The key things are to ensure that we have strategies for exiting Microsoft platforms should we need to in the future and that we continue to evaluate the value of our investment. We don’t do this blindly though. As a specific example, the use of Microsoft Dynamics Online, their cloud CRM, is relatively expensive. It is a good platform where a full CRM is required but it is expensive when only limited CRM tools are needed and we recommend other tools in those cases.

Low-cost Information Management, Communications and Collaberation Tools

Julian Knight — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 22:00:47 +0000

Although much of the work I do is for very large organisations and extremely costly projects, being an adopted Yorkshire-man, I’ve always an eye open for a bargain! More seriously, there are many small to medium sized businesses and charities that cannot afford big IT budgets but that still are crying out for good information management, communications and collaboration tools. In this article, I’ve tried to highlight a few tools that I think are worth looking at. I’ve not included anything in this article that requires a monthly or annual cost. All the tools here are available for free at least with limited features. The feature lists given are for the free versions with paid-for key features noted where appropriate. I also note if any of the web sites are blocked by typical enterprise firewalls. There is a lot more than what I’ve shared here, I’ll try to update this article from time-to-time.

Office Applications

Word processing, spreadsheets, presentations are the core of an office application suite. Additional tools might be included such as email, calendar, note taking, formula editing, diagrams, mind mapping.

SSuite Office Software I’ve not tried this free, Microsoft Windows only, office suite but it certainly looks interesting.
Microsoft Office I know that it may seem strange to include this in an article about low-cost solutions. However, you can get Microsoft Office at a very low price from a number of legitimate sources. These include enterprise licenses that allow home use and student licenses if you have a full-time student in the house. Cut-down versions of the MS Office suite are also often bundled with computer sales.
Google Docs This free offering from Google provides a reasonable choice for straight-forward documents but may be blocked from some enterprise sites. You get 1GB of free space and can pay for more if you need it.
Gliffy

Web-based diagramming like a simple version of Microsoft Visio. Free version is limited to 1 user, 5 diagrams and 2mb storage. Otherwise a monthly fee is required starting at US$5 per month.
Other options: Libre Office (forked version of OpenOffice, good enough for most people, not as good as MS Office), AbiWord, KOffice (Linux), iWork (Mac), …
Options not to bother with: Microsoft Live – far too simplistic, unreliable logins, poor sharing compared to Google (though you do get 25GB of free space).

Web Conferencing

Should provide instant messaging, voice, video, whiteboard (shared drawing space) and desktop sharing between computers as a minimum. May also provide meeting management tools, recordings of meetings and other facilities. Will generally be web applications that just require a web browser to access though plugins such as Adobe Flash may also be required and some may provide specific mobile tools.

AnyMeeting

Web-based. Free, advert supported. Up to 200 attendees, 6-way video conferencing. Polls and surveys, invitations, registration forms, optionally charge attendees. Flexible audio options: audio broadcast, conference call, VoIP (computer microphone & headset)
Vyew

Web-based, requires Adobe Flash. Free, advert supported. Up to 10 attendees. Forums, record activity, shared annotation of documents. Additional attendees and other features available on premium versions requiring monthly fees.
Other web-based alternatives: WebEx, GotoMeeting, GoToWebinar, Adobe Connect, Microsoft LiveMeeting.

Voice

Phone-to-phone voice calling.

ChatTime An iPhone app that uses local access numbers in many countries allowing international calls at low rates. Doesn’t require 3G or data access. Note that they still recommend using local SIM cards when roaming. International calls between 2 ChatTime users do not incur additional charges (both users have to call their local ChatTime access numbers).

Project and Task Planning

Tools that help teams and organisations plan complex tasks.

Asana

Team and project online task manager. Free for up to 30 members. Calendar sync, mobile web compatible, multiple workspaces (project categories), multiple projects, email in (new tasks by email), receive email updates, activity feed for each task, SSL connection, iPhone app
ReqMan

Totally free, unlimited users and projects. Project planning, time management & recording, requirements gathering, questionaires, reporting, WIKI, workflow, change requests, test cases, issues.
HappyToDos Online to-do and task management. Projects & tasks, estimate completion dates, estimate effort (hours), time reporting, team collaboration & file sharing.

Other Possibles

I’ve not yet looked at these but will do at some point

zeropc.com (blocked at enterprise site as possible malware)
https://podio.com/ (blocked at enterprise site as “Social Networking”)

Things to remember

When using web-based tools, remember that you may want more than connection security. Many tools claim to be “secure” by using SSL but that only secures the connection between you and them. Your data is unlikely to be stored encrypted on their servers and even when it is, it is even less likely that you can specify your own secure key so that server administrators at their end are prevented from accessing the data. In addition, remember that there are rarely enforceable service level contracts with web suppliers, if their systems fail, or they themselves fail; your data is history.