IT Study Finds Open Source CRM 'Strategic Imperative'

By David Sims

TMCnet Contributing Editor

 

The acquisition and deployment of CRM and other open source software is now a strategic imperative for UK business, according to research released by Ingres Corp., "The Managing 21st Century Business Information" survey.

 

The study questioned IT professionals from the UK's largest public sector and enterprise organizations on a host of open source and information management issues.

The report found that the versatility and adaptability of the open source model is allowing companies to eliminate historic vendor lock-in, reduce database management costs and rapidly develop critical business applications, including Business Intelligence, Data Warehousing and CRM products.

And open source is gaining in popularity. 77% of businesses were either planning to deploy, or had already deployed, open source software in their core business systems, shattering outdated preconceptions of the inappropriateness of such technology in a mission-critical enterprise environment.

The top three issues keeping IT Directors awake at night are "reducing cost'," "adding value to the business" and "keeping the IT lights on" -- while the drive to achieve real business benefit through rapid application delivery was a strong theme running through the findings.


The survey also found that two out of three IT professionals believe that security is no more or less of an issue for open source software as it is in the closed source world, seven out of ten respondents agreed that open source will deliver the cost savings that are now demanded from today's IT departments and 69% of respondents believe closed source software vendors cannot justify the high license fees they typically charge.

 

Despite the relative immaturity of the open source database market, respondents believe developing and deploying applications is more straightforward on open source, than in the proprietary world

Commenting on the survey results, Brian Mort, Senior Vice President, Northern Europe, Ingres Corp., said open source "had to grow up and offer the highest levels of service, support, security and enterprise-grade reliance, on top of the well documented business model flexibility and collaborative nature of product development."

 

Earlier this month a study by PMP Research into customer relationship management systems, commissioned by the U.K.'s Evaluation Centre, found that many companies are still struggling to extract the full benefits from their investments.

The largest number of companies, 42%, have only been "partially successful" with their CRM systems and have achieved "limited benefits for the business." A further 11 percent have seen "no major benefits" and four percent say their implementations have been "very unsuccessful."

But on the flip side, 37% think the business has seen "some clear benefits" and four percent view their CRM system as being "very successful" and delivering "all the benefits sought."

 

Sounds to this reporter like the classic Bell Curve applies again. Basically, the Bell Curve is the idea that in most any sampling, most will be grouped in the middle, with few at either end -- take 100 high school students. The Bell Curve says a few will be geniuses, a few dolts, more will be somewhat smart or somewhat dim, but most will be in the middle somewhere. It gets its name from what it looks like when graphed out.

David Sims is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To see more of his articles, please visit his columnist page.