Are you owning your business automation software?
Pranay Pandey
CIO @ NOI Technologies | Customer Success | Member @ The ASF | Apache OFBiz PMC Member, Committer | Ex VP HotWax Commerce
Well said Sir Richard Stallman(the man behind the free software movement) -Nowadays computing is so important in the society that the freedoms of free software are among the human rights that society must establish and protect. You can watch the TED talk by Sir Richard Stallman for having a clear understanding of Free and Open Source software here.
Are you controlling your software or your software is controlling you and your business? With free software, you have the freedom to own your software, copy, modify it for your custom requirements.
A few days back, I was discussing the topic with our company COO Mr. Anil Patel and we concluded something interesting as - nowadays software plays the same role as of salt in your food. Imagining a business without having a software is like having food without salt. And when it comes to salt it's always taken as per your taste, then why do you want someone else to decide how much salt you need. So own your business software which is free or open source which allows you to customize it based on your own business needs and future growth plans.
If you have got business process automation requirements and you want to own the solution as Amazon, Flipkart and Uber did. They are a huge success because they didn’t rely on proprietary software. They didn’t rely on someone else to fulfill their technical needs. They opted to own the technology they are using. Owning the technology and software has contributed a lot to their massive growth.
So evaluating your options with Free or Open Source Software is always going go long ways. With available codebase, you will have all the freedom to customize and extend the solution to address your custom business requirements instead of waiting for the software company to announce its software next release. It also empowers you to set up your own IT team so that you get the complete freedom from any control from third parties.
What's your opinion? Please put your thoughts in comments below.
ERP Consultant / Software Automation
6 年Really nice article sir.. Nice analysis on Open Source S/W.
CIO @ NOI Technologies | Customer Success | Member @ The ASF | Apache OFBiz PMC Member, Committer | Ex VP HotWax Commerce
7 年Thanks Swapnil M Mane. Yes very true- Technology you are choosing give you the wide flexibility of customization. Your business, your way with your software.
Educating developers on Open Source & AI | Vice President, Apache Community Development | ?? @ Webiny
7 年Very nicely written Pranay, I am 200% agree with you. As per my thought process, I believe the success of any business is/will depend on their IT. Previously, it was optional to automate your business but nowadays it is the necessity (no more luxury). Now choosing the technology for automating your business is a very crucial task since it will decide the future of your business. Every business owner runs their business in a special manner, their business processes are customized. So, we can agree on one thing, that 'customization' is the key thing. "Therefore the technology you are choosing should give you the wide flexibility of customization." And it is the prime feature of Open Source technologies, they allow you to do the customization in an affordable way.