Barriers to Mission-Critical OSS Adoption by Organizations: A Provider Perspective

Dr Placide Poba-Nzaou Professor School of Management (ESG) Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) poba-nzaou.placide@uqam.ca

Open source Event Wednesday, June 5, 2013 from 1:00 PM to 7:00 PM (EDT)

Centre Pierre-Péladeau (Salon Orange) 300, boulevard De Maisonneuve Est, Montréal, Québec H2X 3X6 , Canada

Source

Poba-Nzaou, P. & Uwizeyemungu, S. "Barriers to Mission-Critical Open Source Software Adoption by Organizations: A Provider Perspective". 19th Americas Conference on Information Systems (AMCIS), Chicago, United States, August 15-17, 2013, 10 pages (forthcoming)

Outline

  Introduction   Research Context   Method   Findings and discussion   Conclusion

ICT Industry

Software Industry

OSS Industry

Increasing role in the economy of dev. Countries:

10% of GDP > 50% of economic growth (UNU-MERIT, 2006)

Key element driving ICT sector Critical for almost every company’ performance

(McKinsey, 2013) Global trade in IP licences > 900 billions US $/year

= 5% of world trade (Hargreaves, 2011)

Potential to strongly affect: structure, competitiveness, and performance of ICT industry (Merrill Lynch, 2001) One of the most important IT trends in the 21st century

(Forrester, 2007) Contribution to Europe’s economy: 450 billion Euro /year

(Daffara, 2012) Multiple implications: cultural, economic, societal, technological, legal, ethical, moral, and political

Introduction

  OSS (http://opensource.org/osd)   Software that is licensed under an open source

license   The source code is available to everybody and can

be used, modified and redistributed with or without condition   Examples of OSS licenses

  Apache License 2.0   BSD (Berkeley software distribution license)   GNU General Public License (GPL)   MIT license   Mozilla Public License, etc.

Introduction

  OSS phenomenon has grown beyond infrastructure software   It has now reached the domain of mission-critical

software   Definition of mission-critical software

  “Business applications, excluding email, that would bring a company to a stop if they were not running” (IDC, 2009, p. 3)

Introduction

  Examples of mission-critical OSS   ERP (enterprise resource planning)

  E.g.: OpenERP, ERP5, Compiere, OpenBravo, OfBiz   CRM (customer relationship management)

  E.g.: SugarCRM, VTiger, CiviCRM   Electronic Medical or Health Record (EMR, EHR)

  E.g.: OpenEMR, Oscar, Open Vista, OpenEHR, Cristal-Net

Introduction

  A number of OSS characteristics make OSS particularly attractive to organizations   The potential for reducing the total cost of

ownership (Bradbury, 2006)   No vendor lock-ins (Nagy et al., 2010)   Use of open standards (opensource.org)

Introduction

  Several governments around the world   Have set up initiatives or even legislate in favor of

OSS adoption (CSIS, 2010)   Belgium, Brazil, China, France, Germany, Ghana,

Japan, South Africa, The UK, The US, Taiwan, etc.

  A survey conducted in the United Sates, France, the UK and Germany   Only 10% of the companies surveyed reported using

OSS for mission-critical applications (IDC, 2009)

Introduction

  We maintain that   The apparently slow movement of organizations

toward mission-critical OSS   Has increased both the relevance and importance of

understanding the main barriers or constraints preventing organizations from adopting these software applications   (Drawing on Paré, Wybo and Delannoy, (2009))

Introduction

  We conducted a Delphi survey to answer the following research question : What are the barriers that prevent organization from adopting mission-critical open source software applications ?

  The study was carried out in two different countries namely France and Canada   To lessen socio-economic context bias (Pudelko,

2006)

Introduction

France Canada

General Context GDP\capita (US$) 42,377 50,345

International Telecommunication Union’s Digital Access Index (ITU-DAI) 0.72 0.78

ICT Development Index (IDI) 18 22

OSS Specific Context Open source Index Ranks (out of 75 countries)

Activity Rank 1 28

Government Activity Rank 1 34

Industry Activity Rank 25 17

Community Education Activity Rank 3 16

Environment Rank 15 10

Government Environment Rank 18 11

Industry Environment Rank 18 15

Research Context

Sources: UN (2012); ITU (2012); Open Source Index Ranks (2009); HDI (2011); Center for Strategic and International Studies (2010)

Method: Delphi Survey

Phase 1: Brainstorming (n=29)

•  A brainstorming round was conducted to elicit as many barriers as possible from the two panels of experts. Panelists were asked to provide short descriptions of the barriers in order to aid the researchers consolidate the responses into a single list

Phase 2: Narrowing down (n=29)

•  The initial list of barriers was validated by panelists •  Each expert selected 10 barriers he/she considers most important •  Only barriers considered by at least 25% of the experts were selected for the following phase

Phase 3: Ranking (round 1: n=26) (round 2: n=23)

•  Each panelist rank ordered the final list of barriers •  A mean rank was calculated for each item •  Degree of consensus was assessed using Kendall’s W •  Ideally, the process continued until an acceptable level of agreement was reached

France (n=18)

Canada (n=11)

Gender Male 16 (89%) 10 (91%)

Female 2 (11%) 1 (9%)

Age (years) 30-39 2 (11%) -

40-49 6 (33%) 6 (55%)

50-59 3 (17%) 2 (18%)

> 59 1 (5%) 3(27%)

OSS expertise ERP 7 (39%) 6 (55%) CRM 6 (33%) 8 (73%)

Database software 6 (33%) 5 (45%) Communication 6 (33%) 10 (91%)

Operating systems 5 (28%) 7 (63%) Software development 5 (28%) 5 (45%) Business intelligence 3 (17%) 4 (36%) Network management 2 (11%) 2 (18%)

Other 6 (33%) - Average (median) Average (median)

Experience in the IT industry (year) 13 (16) 15 (15)

Experience with OSS (year) 8 (12.5) 9 (9)

Method: Panel Demographics

Findings and discussion

BARRIERS TO MISSION-CRITICAL OSS ADOTION FR QC EN

VIRO

NM

ENTA

L External political pressure

Lack of guidelines from public authorities

Disadvantageous tender/procurement processes vis-à-vis OSS Mission-critical solution

Lack of reliable information about mission-critical OSS products

Lack of homologation by government bodies

ORG

AN

IZAT

ION

AL

Conservative nature of CIOs and CEOs attitudes and practices

Lack of internal IT resources and expertise

Internal political pressure

Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD) with regard to Mission-Critical OSS service providers reliability

Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD) with regard to Mission-Critical OSS product reliability

Misunderstanding of OSS products and business models

OSS

SPE

CIFI

C

Mission-critical open source software product stereotype and prejudice

Lack of responsible third-party engagement

OSS industry and business model stereotype and prejudice

Insufficient market visibility and lack of marketing actions

Complexity of open source ecosystem

5

1

2

3

4

8

6

9

5

7 10

1

2 3

4

6

7

8

9

10

Conclusions

  Our overall goal   to contribute to the effort of identifying barriers that prevent

organization for adopting mission-critical OSS

  In total, 7 out of the 16 most important barriers that we found were not reported in the literature

  We complement the OSS literature by adding new insights to the existing body of knowledge dominated by client perspective alone

Conclusions

  The present study provides managers, consultants and policy makers with an exhaustive, yet validated set of mission-critical OSS barriers   Identifying the barriers is the first, necessary step to overcoming

them

  It demonstrates the influence of socio-economic context and the maturity of the field on the relative importance of these barriers

  To conclude, we must recognize the main limitations of our findings   Additional Delphi studies must be conducted with OSS experts from

other parts of the world to allow more generalizability of the findings

THANK YOU ! THANK YOU !

Dr Placide Poba-Nzaou Professor

School of Management (ESG) Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM)

poba-nzaou.placide@uqam.ca