The pace of adoption of open source software (OSS) among micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) has not gained traction, despite the slowdown and IT costs hitting a downside. “We have about 8,000 MSME members in the Confederation of Indian Industry’s (CII) MSME division and hardly, any of them use the OSS. CII has planned a host of initiatives to promote OSS considering that it can improve productivity considerably,” said a CII official at a seminar on open source software and MSMEs organised by CII on Wednesday.

Open source refers to a program in which the source code of a software is available to the general public for modification. This permits the user to change, modify and improve the software to suit his business needs. It is created as a collaborative effort wherein the users and programmers come together to improve upon the code and share changes within the community. Also, the users don’t have to pay any upfront licence fee for the software; they just need to foot the bills for the subscribed service and maintenance.

Software and related expenditure form 45% of capital costs of MSMEs integrating IT into their businesses.

R K V S Raman, senior staff scientist, CDAC, Bangalore, said, “The OSS has faster development and a product release cycle. So there will not be issues like obsolescence as in case of proprietary software. With no vendor lock-ins in the OSS, small industries can customise their services depending on the need.” C-DAC is an R&D centre involved in the design, development and deployment of advanced information technology (IT)-based solutions.

CII attributes the lack of interest on the part of MSMEs and low awareness that has failed to drive OSS adoption. “Most SMEs in India are not technology-savvy and this makes them averse to using the software,” said Vinay L Deshpandey, ex-chairman, CII Karnataka and chairman & CEO of Encore Software Ltd.

CII officials added the government is also not pushing enough to promote the adoption of OSS among MSMEs. This sector contributes 40% to the industrial output and has the second-largest workforce after the agricultural sector. Another spot of bother for the MSMEs is the inter-operability issues and other technical concerns associated with the OSS. Also with the number of service providers being very few, MSMEs are hesitant to switch to OSS keeping in mind the business continuity in case of a software failure. “While transferring a file saved from proprietary software to the OSS, documents appear to lose its original format. Also, we do not have too many service centres around in case of and technical glitches,” said L Balu, who runs an engineering unit in the city. SMEs are also not able to judge what their particular needs are and what software suits them best. Sasikumar M, associate director, research, C-DAC, Mumbai, said, “ As there are so many Open Source softwares available, it is very difficult for smal
l industries to choose the right one that that suits their needs.”

Some industry insiders also say that many big vendors are focused on bigger clients and the MSME focus is therefore lost. “We are currently focusing on big clients and MSMEs do not form an interest group for us as of now. However, going ahead, it would make sense to market our services more aggressively to SMEs as well,” said Manish Malhotra, head, software practice, Sun Microsystems India Pvt Ltd. 

A host of vendors including the likes of vendors like Sun Microsystems, Red Hat, Novellus provide a range of software products and servicing functions for a variety of needs ranging from basic desktop solutions to ERP and human resources solutions.

Pranav Nambiar/ DNA-Daily News & Analysis Source: 3D Syndication