Open source has gained significant traction in the market today with companies like RedHat, now an IBM-owned company, Cloudera, MongoDB and DataBricks among others making a viable business model out of it. It is not just the strategic business models but also the benefits and value it delivers to the software ecosystem.
Germany-headquartered SUSE has played a pivotal role in advancing open-source software. The company has completed 25 years working in this domain and is still growing, with efforts to take open source to a whole new level. AIM got in touch with Brent Schroeder, Global CTO, SUSE and Rajarshi Bhattacharyya, Country Manager, SUSE India to know about the company’s strategic initiatives and growth roadmap for India. Germany-based open source major is best known for its SUSE Linux enterprise product and is one of the “largest independent open source company” providing enterprise-grade open source solutions for the cloud to edge.
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The Rise Of Open Source
If you go back a decade ago, the major concerns about open source have always been agility, robustness and security. These aspects were always on top of someone’s mind every time they would think about making a transition from closed source to open source.
All the proof points, all the testing in the industry over the years has proven that it is as or even more secure, robust and agile than any non-open source or closed source solution. “Open source is open, and you can have a look when security is implemented. It is a major advantage. If the implementation is done right, it is going to be secure. And today, I see individuals and organisations are more than ever comfortable with open source,” said Schroeder.
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Looking at the Indian scenario, today, almost all mission-critical workloads are on open source — be it any data lake projects, be it AI, be it machine learning etc. Open source through the years has become the de-facto standard of any innovation, and the major reason behind it is the community that works behind open source.
“Today, even large organisations in India such as the Bombay Stock Exchange, Indian oil, Reserve Bank of India, State Bank of India etc. are heavily investing on open source. Indian oil even runs their recipe on open source,” said Bhattacharyya.
Open Source’s Role In Analytics
Data Science, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, are the most buzzing topics in the industry. The entire technology space is tapping into deep tech to advance their business objectives. One of the elements playing a vital role in advancing solutions is open source.
“I see the whole Data Analytics space evolving and today it all based on open source — from the core to storage to backend tools,” said Schroeder. “I think all the data stores are moving very quickly to open source model, and most of the vendors that are not on the open-source model are finding that they are being challenged significantly.”
Schroeder also said that soon, the industry is going to see more and more analytics tools themselves to be based on open source. And one of the best examples of this is Cloudera, the US-based software company that provides a software platform for data engineering, data warehousing, machine learning and analytics, recently open-sourced its whole portfolio.
“In India, the largest data lakes project that has happened are all on open source,” said Bhattacharyya. “So, you can imagine the impact open source is having on the analytics domain. Open source is everywhere.”
Transition To Open Source Platform
When you think about why you should make the transition to an open-source platform, it all comes down to the ability to move along with the industry. If you think from the innovation standpoint, open-source has already started to make an impact, helping companies of all sizes to rapidly advance their innovations.
“If somebody is stuck with proprietary implementations, I think they would get left behind. Even the nimble ones have moved to open source and It is definitely the right time,” concluded Schroeder.
