[OFBiz] Users - full life cycle costs of open source software

[David E. Jones]

Hans,

Thanks, that is an interesting article. It would be nice if they  
opined a little more strongly that it is still overall significantly  
cheaper, though that was certainly implied. Of course, I guess with  
the right management an open source based project can end up far more  
expensive than a similar commercial software based project... ;)

I can second this opinion in my experiences with OFBiz, as I'm sure  
many on this list can as well. It is easy to forget that  
customization and maintenance costs and such can be really  
significant when you are deploying something that consists of half a  
million lines of text in its raw form. That does mean it has to be  
expensive, there are people running OFBiz without putting much money  
into it at all on an ongoing basis. However, if you want to take  
advantage of the flexibility, it costs money. It costs a lot less  
than what it might with most commercial solutions, but a lot more  
than 0, which I think is what this article communicates well.

It's an easy mentality to understand really. It is natural to dream  
about all of the neat things you want to do in life or that you might  
be able to do to increase profits or market share of your business.  
It is also easy to forget or simply not understand the costs of doing  
such things. Those that come from a big business world usually find  
OFBiz an excellent option: it's quite capable for a lot less money  
and give them the flexibility to jump from one corporate goal to  
another and actually get each implemented before the next comes  
along. For small companies, or even in some cases small divisions of  
large companies, they see what they can do with OFBiz and start  
drawing up plans that they can't even afford to staff, even if they  
can afford to implement the technology behind it.

Always makes for very interesting conversations with prospective  
clients... and it is amazingly difficult to help people get an  
accurate picture of the reality they are getting into, complicated by  
the fact that sometimes they just plain don't believe you (usually  
goes along with sticker shock because 1 day of work for an engineer  
or consulting is a LOT more than the cost of QuickBooks Pro, which is  
what they were hoping for...).

-David


On Sep 24, 2005, at 5:09 PM, Hans Bakker wrote:

>
> Perhaps an interesting article:
>
> People forget to consider the full life cycle costs of software,  
> including
> open source. "The pitfall is that people say, 'We can save money  
> because
> we're not paying licensing fees,'" said Drew Ladner, general  
> manager of the
> government group at JBoss. "But the reality is you have to look at  
> the whole
> life cycle."
>
> http://www.linuxinsider.com/rsstory/46288.html
>
>
> -- 
> Regards,
> Hans Bakker
> ANT Websystems Co.,Ltd (http://www.antwebsystems.com)
>
> _______________________________________________
> Users mailing list
> Users at lists.ofbiz.org
> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/users

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