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By Adam Jollans, Open Source Strategy Manager for IBM.

Our world is changing technologically at an astonishingly fast rate. Billions of computer chips are being embedded in devices from mobile phones to traffic sensors. All these new devices are being linked together along with the computers already connected around the world through the Internet.

And this is generating an explosion of potentially useful information – if only we could make sense of it all.

But how can the IT industry create useful software applications that run on these billions of chips – before they're replaced by the next new technology wave? How can all these devices be interconnected efficiently so that they can instantly exchange information and work together reliably and securely? How can governments and businesses analyse and find trends in all this data, so we know the traffic jams to avoid before we set off? And how can we achieve all this at low cost or save money into the bargain?

This is where “open computing” comes in. Open computing is a flexible approach based around choice, agility and interoperability. It recognises that different organisations will want to exchange information and do business with each other, and that governments and businesses will use software and hardware from multiple IT vendors. Open computing incorporates open standards and open source, but it's not limited to these. It's all about flexibility – and this flexibility can lead to lower costs.

Open standards are the starting point. Would the Internet have succeeded anything like as well if we had to use different web browsers to access different web servers, or if we could only send email to people who used the same software products? It's the open standards underpinning the Internet that have made it all possible. Today we have a ongoing debate about whether document formats should be open, free and usable by your choice of office software, or controlled by a single IT vendor. At the heart of the discussion are considerations of freedom, data access and interoperability, and as we connect billions of devices together these issues are only going to become more and more important.

But it's open source that has shot to the top of the news agenda recently. Is open source free, how good is it in practice, and can it really save millions?

Open source is an approach to building software based around radically different concepts in three areas – licensing, development, and community.

* The licensing of open source software describes how users can use the software, the rights that they have, and their responsibilities. There's over 60 legally defined open source licenses authorised by an organisation called the “Open Source Initiative” and they vary greatly, but they all provide free access to the source code and allow users to modify the code for their own purposes – hence “open source”.
* The development approach for open source software uses a community approach and peer review. Since the code is openly published, everyone can see whether it is good or bad, and offer feedback on how to improve it. This development approach has many similarities to the way university research works, and can result in very reliable and secure code.
* The community behind open source is perhaps its most interesting characteristic. Instead of being developed and tested in isolation by one programmer or a single IT vendor, open source software is built by a community of developers, users and IT vendors working together to build better software. Open source can also be a great way to promote the adoption of open standards.

The net result of these three concepts is that open source software can be lower cost, can be higher quality and can be developed faster than proprietary software. Of course, this also depends on the terms of the license, the quality of the programmers, and the breadth of the community. There's an estimated 200,000 open source projects today, so as with proprietary software, some open source software is good and some not so good. Well-known projects such as Linux, Apache and Eclipse have shown the quality that open source can deliver when it works well.

Open source software can be cheaper than proprietary software, but remember to include factors such as the cost of support and service in calculations and understand the business model. Open source software can also prove to be very reliable and secure, but this depends greatly on the quality of the developers, the effectiveness of the peer reviews and community testing procedures, and the speed of fixing bugs and security exposures - so it's worth reviewing these when considering selecting an open source package or component. And open source can be very fast and agile in its development, but the quality of the community is key here.

It's important to note that open source software is licensed software, and so is still highly dependant on the legal basis for copyright. Many licenses have strict provisions on, for example, attributing authors and maintaining and releasing any code changes back to the community. Whilst these differ greatly from proprietary licenses, they are nonetheless enforceable and organisations should be careful to do due diligence in releasing code in the first place and compliance thereafter.

In reality, most organisations are pragmatic in their use of open source software, assessing if it is mature, choosing it where it makes sense, and mixing it with closed source software to build the complete solution. Good questions to always ask revolve around the availability of support and skills and also around responsibility for the integration of open source components.

What then does open computing mean to governments - and what might it be worth considering when specifying requirements? Simply put – adopt open standards to avoid being locked-in to any one IT vendor, ensure the software you use fully implements these open standards, and consider open source alongside closed source software based on functionality, proven maturity, availability and cost of support, and value for money.

Adam Jollans is Open Source Strategy Manager for IBM.