Open Source Infrastructure Appeals to Many Companies Due to Affordability and Flexibility

The devil's advocate will always be present in technology media and where would be the place more likely to find it than in a blog. ITech is the name of the one in question and the most recent post entitled, "The False Allure of Open Source Infrastructure Solutions," brings up quite a few questions about what functioning in the business world today requires.

Spending the majority of the introduction persuading the audience not to be caught up with the idea of free software, the article attacks open source infrastructure solutions for two reasons: lack of technical support and customized options.

According to the article:

Open Source solutions are extremely customizable and flexible, and they typically allow access/changes to all aspects of the underlying code. These benefits are the very reason why Open Source solutions are not always the best solutions. Customizability, flexibility, and access cause variability. Variability is a blight of running a stable IT architecture.

In the current business world where agility is required, we cannot believe the assertions this author makes. This is another case of configuring language to suit purpose. While variability implies capricious instability, that is not characteristic of this technology. Open source infrastructure solutions maintain their structure until otherwise tweaked. Additionally, many vendors do in fact offer customer support and consulting. 

Megan Feil, July 11, 2012