"Change In CIO Mindset Can Foster Open Source Adoption"

Mudra Communications, an old and established player in the Indian advertising landscape, has created some of the most memorable ad campaigns in the country over the years. ‘Only Vimal’, ‘I Love You Rasna’, ‘My Daddy Strongest’ are some of the famous tag lines that have been featured in popular Mudra ads till date. In recent times, Information Technology or IT has been one of the strongest business drivers at Mudra. The agency has also been at the forefront of the movement to adopt open source platforms and applications. P Sebastian, VP-IT, Mudra Communications, shares his views on the adoption of open source systems in an interview with Biztech2.0.

When and why did Mudra opt for open source systems?

Our open source journey started way back in 1998. We implemented a mailing solution on Linux platform. Around seven years back, we extended the open source platform to our core business applications. Today, we use Linux, Java (J2EE) and Jboss application servers. We are also considering the deployment of open office and Flex architecture from Adobe.

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The main benefits derived from open source include savings in licencing costs, robustness, maintenance and resolution of virus issues.

Which are the main areas where open source is used?

Our mailing solution is completely open source based. All our business applications also work on open source, including our OS, development architecture and application servers. On the database front, we use Oracle due to legacy issues. We have made inroads into the open office application arena as well.

What were the major challenges Mudra faced during the transition to open source?

The biggest challenge ahead of us was to bring about a change in mindset and attitudes. It took us around six months to convince our internal IT team that open source is the way to go. It was a daunting task. Once the buy-in was obtained, half the battle was won. Post-deployment support was another major issue. We decided to follow a self-help approach in this area. This helped us in building domain expertise. Vast forums and the knowledge base available on the Web also proved to be handy. Thankfully, we still haven’t felt the need to approach any vendor for any sort of external support required.

What kind of benefits has Mudra experienced over the years?

The main benefit is in the form of cost savings, which primarily results from nullification of licencing cost. Going further, the open source platform offers robustness. We have some mail servers that have a thick layer of dust on it – the point being these servers have been functioning without any downtime till date. Our mantra in this area has been – ‘once the applications are properly configured, it is best to leave them alone’. Open source adoption has also drawn fresh and talented individuals towards our agency as they are keenly interested in working on unique and challenging projects.

Indians are perceived to be ‘Microsoft friendly’. Did you face any challenges on the end-user front while migrating to the open source platform?

Microsoft has very a strong presence in the OS and office suite space. It enjoys top-of-the-mind recall with most (if not all) users. One is bound to face mind set issues and resistance.

In any medium/large enterprise, it would be impossible to replace Microsoft Office completely. If one looks at the typical composition of enterprise users, one would find that around 80 percent are ’normal users’, about 10 percent are ‘power users’ (top management) and the remaining 10 percent are ‘status users’. ‘Normal users’ use around 10 percent (or even less) of the features embedded in the office suite. These users are the ideal candidates for office suite migration as they will hardly feel the pinch of change or realise the difference between the two.

Did Mudra undertake any significant innovation during the transition process?

We did not feel any need to modify the kernel or download the source and tweak the codes. However, we did develop some extensions to the libraries as required.

Do you think Indian enterprises are ready to embrace open source technologies?

The adoption is still in the infancy stage. The potential though is tremendous. It is almost like a virgin market. CIOs need to change their mindset to further this movement. The open source scenario today is far more mature as compared to around five years ago. Support and availability of domain knowledge have also increased significantly.

What kind of trends do you see in the future in this domain?

As Gartner has noted, over 90 percent of all enterprises will be using open source by 2010. Given that, the critical action item for CIOs should be to set up policies and processes to manage the use of open source and ensure that its benefits are retained while the accompanying risks are eliminated.

The way things are moving, adoption of open source in the enterprise will start with e-mail applications and will later jump to the office suite of applications. I also anticipate adoption in areas like application server, development architecture, database, CRM, ECM and BI.

What are your comments on usage of open source platform when it comes to scalability, security and integration?

In terms of scalability, it is good, if not better. Open source has certain limitations. However, these limitations can be overcome by going in for clusters and distributed architecture. There are large enterprises like Google and some large banks and insurance companies, which are using open source on a very large scale. As far as security is concerned, open source is as secure as any non-open source product. Most open source applications use an open architecture. Therefore, integration is not an issue.

How can open source help enterprises leverage Web 2.0 in a better way?

In my opinion, Web 2.0 has to be a business strategy. Once the strategy is in place, one should evaluate the various components that could fit in. There are a number of open source solutions that are available for Web 2.0 components like wikis, blogs and social networking.