There are different models for software support in institutions, and these vary between fully locally developed and supported to fully 3rd party developed and supported. Many applications sit somewhere along this spectrum.

This definitely isn’t about open/closed/proprietary – it is about how you pay for development and support – you could have open source s/w developed and supported by a 3rd party and I think the economics (for the institution) are similar.

One difference I can think of is that for Open Source s/w there tends not to be a capital cost. I think SaaS offers this benefit also. I don’t think that avoiding capital cost necessarily means that you won’t be able to get this back again – capital costs are by their nature one off. I suspect that it does make SaaS and OSS more attractive, and actually will mean in the longterm the ‘software costs’ will reduce to close to zero – after all, the implementation is going to be the expensive bit (and where SaaS, OSS and Closed s/w companies all make income via consultancy/project management fees in my experience)

I do think that when you move between employing people to do development and support locally, and outsourcing these functions you may find yourself on a slope – it is easier to go one way than the other. However, I think it is much easier to go from local to 3rd party than the other way round – institutions like to cut salary costs (less overheads, possible longterm savings), and payments to 3rd parties are easier to manage.

What you lose (as we saw in one of the recent government data loss incidents) is control – and sometimes this can compromise what you can achieve with the technology.

There are different models for software support in institutions, and these vary between fully locally developed and supported to fully 3rd party developed and supported. Many applications sit somewhere along this spectrum.

This definitely isn’t about open/closed/proprietary – it is about how you pay for development and support – you could have open source s/w developed and supported by a 3rd party and I think the economics (for the institution) are similar.

One difference I can think of is that for Open Source s/w there tends not to be a capital cost. I think SaaS offers this benefit also. I don’t think that avoiding capital cost necessarily means that you won’t be able to get this back again – capital costs are by their nature one off. I suspect that it does make SaaS and OSS more attractive, and actually will mean in the longterm the ‘software costs’ will reduce to close to zero – after all, the implementation is going to be the expensive bit (and where SaaS, OSS and Closed s/w companies all make income via consultancy/project management fees in my experience)

I do think that when you move between employing people to do development and support locally, and outsourcing these functions you may find yourself on a slope – it is easier to go one way than the other. However, I think it is much easier to go from local to 3rd party than the other way round – institutions like to cut salary costs (less overheads, possible longterm savings), and payments to 3rd parties are easier to manage.

What you lose (as we saw in one of the recent government data loss incidents) is control – and sometimes this can compromise what you can achieve with the technology.

Of course if an expensive closed source software deployment goes wrong, you get to write it off (losing more “profit” in the process). But if an expensive open source deployment goes wrong, you can still either move to another one, or make some staff redundant and make the big capital investment.

I think this is six and two threes!

Of course if an expensive closed source software deployment goes wrong, you get to write it off (losing more “profit” in the process). But if an expensive open source deployment goes wrong, you can still either move to another one, or make some staff redundant and make the big capital investment.

I think this is six and two threes!