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Open Source Solutions

Build vs. Buy vs. Open Source

“Build the application versus buy an application” is a common question for many companies, especially those with special needs or who want to automate unique processes. The difficulty exists because even though off-the-shelf solutions can deliver 80% of what you need, the lacking 20% can represent a great deal of cost and effort in integrating the software with your business process and often results in lost oppotunities to improve your operations. Building solutions from scratch is often cost prohibitve and high risk.

Open source software offers a much better solution than either “build” or “buy”. With open source software as the basis for your solutions, your customization needs can be implemented for much less than if you wrote your entire solution yourself. In many cases customized open source solution will meet your needs while costing 25-50% of what it would cost for a solution built from scratch or one based on proprietary, closed software.

With open source software you get the best of both worlds. You get the initial functionality that provides most of what you need just like you would with the buy option. You can make the software do anything you want, just like you could with the build option. You save on the initial and maintenance license costs just as you would with the build option. You get a tested and proven architecture and a best-practices based design, just like you would get with the buy option.

Open source also brings your firm the security of knowing that a community of developers exists that is already familiar with your systems and that your firm will never be at the mercy of vendor lock-in.