It does look like the time has finally arrived for open source – specifically in the commercial point of view within local enterprise market.
So it seems, the current good fortune of this worldwide Open Source leader in Malaysia is attributed to the curious case (taking phrase cue from Benjamin Button) of unsuspecting conglomerates with regards to the matter of software license fees.
Simply, this is what is how the Story-Which-Has-Nothing-To-Do-With-RedHat goes:-
Large Malaysian conglomerates which have bought into giant IT brands such as IBM, Oracle and SAP, amongst others, are reporting cases of being slapped with fees amounting to millions of dollar from what has been findings from the ‘audits’ of software license usage.
All across the market – telcos, utility companies, airlines, ministries and agencies;where these periodical audits are being done; are being informed that they now suddenly owe a colossal amount of outstanding, unpaid fees for the software licenses that they have ‘unwittingly’ been using over the years.
This unaccountability, according to a reseller source familiar with these cases, is mostly attributed to the ignorance and/ or non-dilligence of the company, in monitoring the users of these enterprise applications that had been installed.
“It is common for the business customer to unknowingly over-activate the number of allowable software license for their users, especially when license policy is not monitored or enforced regimentally.
Departmental heads and managers come and go, and the often complex and confusing legal license definition and documentation make it very easy for IT administrators to lose control over what their business users ‘turn on’ and use in the application.”
In the industry, there are already a couple of on-going million dollars cases; and faced with legal letters from these large brand IT vendors that have caused some resignation (and even axing!) of IT heads, long-running payment negotiations, and some ‘public hanging’ of scapegoats.
Frightened by these sudden fines, companies are looking for options to replace their solutions or at least substitute the parts that they can no longer afford.
And when the dust settles, Red Hat’s open source model stand out as a now pretty good-looking alternative to the problem.
IT BYTES BACK! says: While IT Heads learn a hard million-dollar lesson in paying heed to the issue of software licensing, Red Hat can certainly capitalise on the situation to paint the enterprise town a deeper Red with open source as they have successfully done within the Malaysian public sector.
