by Andrea Pollastri, Backend Developer at Excellence Innovation
What is meant by an Open Source solution?
By Open Source (or OSS) is meant a sof… development model based on source code that is open and accessible to anyone. This allows anyone to study, use, modify, and redistribute the code, within the limits and conditions of the specific licenses that regulate the use and distribution of the code.
Is Open Source code secure?
Contrary to what one might think, Open Source is n… necessarily less secure than closed code. On the contrary, the community model encourages many developers to review the code, identify bugs, and contribute patches, thereby identifying and quickly resolving any vulnerabilities.
Why is Open Source advantageous for Enterprise solutions?
The value of an IT product is increasingly based on its ab… to generate business value and on speed of delivery, rather than on rewriting the wheel project by project as happened in the past.
Thanks to the use of Open Source frameworks (which are nothing more than mature, tested components that offer functionality useful to build custom software), a development team can focus on the distinctive features of the project, integrating into it algorithms and customizations.
Speaking of “numbers”, for example, the use of Laravel (one of the … PHP frameworks for the web) allows a reduction of development times thanks to … more standardization of patterns, a richer ecosystem of packages, and a wider pool of professionals available on the market. The result is lower costs and greater agility in responding to market needs.
One must also consider that the adoption of Open Source technologies, thanks to the breadth of the community and the abundance of documentation and training resources, simplifies onboarding of new developers, reducing in the meantime the time of internal training of the team.
The adoption of Open Source in IT multinationals
Numerous technology giants have recently replaced p… solutions with OSS-based platforms for the development of their Enterprise products. Here are some examples:
- IBM has abandoned its proprietary platforms such as AIX and currently 95% of its mainframes use Linux.
- Microsoft has moved from the NT kernel and closed tools (such as .N…) to a strategy that embraces Open Source by releasing a large part of its frameworks and contributing to open projects; today it is a global-scale player for the distribution of Open Source.
- Oracle acquired MySQL from Sun and began to distribute it … by contributing to the project, ensuring reliability, security, and scalability.
- SAP, once focused on proprietary solutions, has integrated … Open Source components into its stack; today many services and enterprise applications offered by SAP are based on Open Source solutions.
- Facebook developed internally technologies such as Hack (for the l…) and has released them as Open Source, maintaining a very active and responsive community that ensures its security and stability.
Conclusion
The use of Open Source solutions in the enterprise world has become a s… choice to remain competitive and innovative, improving software quality, reducing costs and time to market, and enabling continuous evolution in the medium to long term. Adopting OSS is not a concession but a strategic lever to build a technological platform that is robust, future-proof, and capable of attracting talent—an essential factor for being win… in a market that is increasingly fast, demanding, and competitive.
