A perfect wave is building for Open Source based PostgreSQL in South Africa

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As far back as 2006, the government Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) policy stated: “The South African Government will migrate current proprietary software to FOSS whenever comparable software exists.”

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?Whilst some initiatives did migrate some government entities to utilize FOSS the inevitable inertia and cost of change meant that many existing implementations have persist in using commercial database software. It is understandable, the perceived risk of change and disruption held back Government CIOs from enacting this policy.

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So, what has changed?

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1.???? The imminent blacklisting of Oracle

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Government entities are going to be forced to move away from Software giant Oracle.

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“The Special Investigating Unit (SIU) has said it would institute proceedings to blacklist US tech giant Oracle” News24 – 27 March 2024

Fallout:

·????? Any new Oracle acquisitions will likely be blocked.

·????? Renewals will be rigorously scrutinized

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2.???? Maturity of OSS (Open Source Software).

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PostgreSQL for example - first developed in 1986 and released 28 years ago to the community in 1996 is now widely adopted by governments and commercial entities alike. It is the fastest growing Database being adopted globally. (As an interesting side note countries that have broadly adopted Open Source were largely unaffected by last week’s Crowdstrike/Microsoft outages.)

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3.???? Supportability of OSS

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An ecosystem has built up around OSS that enable easy migration from Software like Oracle to PostgreSQL. Third party companies now also provide 24/7 Enterprise class support for PostgreSQL – which removes any compliance friction.

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The blend of Open Source and Enterprise supportability may seem curious to some. The power of this is that you benefit from the base – where most of the costs derive – but are able to achieve cost effective supportability and ongoing development.

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Commentary from service provider in this area Techsurve: “We are seeing unprecedented levels of interest in our migration services offerings around PostgreSQL” reports Techsurve CEO - Claudine Els, she continues “And this is from our blue-chip banks and also government entities”

Public Sector leaning towards PostgreSQL

Last week I created a poll for the Public Sector - at present PostgreSQL seems to be the leading favourite to replace Oracle in the Public Sector - I will be following this closely as the week progresses! https://www.dhirubhai.net/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7222513260778913793/

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