The Hindu Business Line : ‘Software development business hinges on collaboration’

Hyderabad, March 9 As small and medium enterprises increasingly opt for open source software, chances are they may continue to stay with open source as they become bigger down the line, according to Mr Rich Green, Executive Vice-President, Software, Sun Microsystems Inc.

This is significant as most large products companies do not see big opportunity in small companies. And their analysis that when these companies become bigger they would opt for licensed software may not be right, he explained.

A proponent of FOSS or Free Open Source Software Movement, Mr Green said, “We are witness to a changing consumer behaviour and where content generated by people is driving the growth of Web 2.0. And software begins and ends with developers.”

Changing software models

Speaking to Business Line during his visit to Hyderabad for Sun Tech Days, Mr Green outlined how software models are changing and said proprietary software companies would need a fresh look at the changing business models. The traditional way of selling software by cutting out disks would be difficult to sustain.

Giving the example of the Glassfish application server, Mr Green said this has had over four-million downloads since July 2006. And Open Office Suite has had over 10-million downloads last year. And when enterprises enjoy its advantages and features, the likelihood of them continuing with it are more.

Therefore, even the software development model is undergoing rapid changes. As more software is being developed in ‘islands’, the accent now is on collaborative development. This actually helps develop more by doing less through collaboration, he said.

Historically, a lot of software work is done over and over again and this is where platforms have made a difference. This was one of the reasons for developing virtualisation capability for the desktop to help run multiple operating systems and allow concurrent development. This feature can be used by non-developers too and does not need an operating system, he said.

Document standard

Developers are struggling to keep pace with all the innovation happening in cilos. Therefore, free and open source with collaboration is the only way forward. Volume is the principal driver of profitability, he said.

Asked about the current debate on document formats — one driven by Microsoft and the other by proponents of open source, Mr Green said some sort of a joint standard is likely to evolve which harnesses the advantages of both standards to ensure interoperability between one format and another.

However, it would be difficult to predict when this would occur.