Meltdown pushes up demand for open source

[dwarakesh]

CHENNAI: At a time when companies are anxiously watching their bottom line sag, Varad Gupta's business is booming. "I am inundated with calls every day," says the founder of Keen and Able, an open source support and services company.

As companies are looking to save every rupee, open source software is becoming an attractive option. Free and open source software, unlike proprietary software, gives the user freedom to modify the source code and does not have licence.

"With budget pressures, organisations have two options: squeezing new projects or cutting operating budgets, and both of which are harmful. So companies investigate open source," says Vivek Bhatnagar, country director and global alliances director, Ingres, which offers open source information management services. Open source has a lot of options available now, especially for business intelligence and enterprise resource applications (ERP), that help companies cut costs, he says.

Increased adoption of open source software means that the demand for companies which can help maintain these products will also go up. Most of the bigger IT services firms in India follow an open source practice. Many mid-size companies with open source services as their main business are also emerging, Mr. Bhatnagar says.

The push to have an open source practice comes from the Western economy, the main clientele of Indian IT services companies, says Dibya Prakash, technology manager of Azri, an open source technology consulting firm.

"As there is recession there, the technology options are changing from proprietary to open source." The fear over building a robust application on open source is not there any more, he adds.

The employment opportunities in open source are huge, Mr. Gupta says. IT infrastructure is seeing an aggressive adoption of open source, increasing the demand for system administrators and network engineers skilled at open source technologies.

His inbox sees 12-15 emails every day, seeking open source professionals, he says, and this indicates the size of the market. "You don't get a lot of readymade resources." It would be better to groom students, because for experienced professionals adaptability is not easy.