Singapore inches toward open source
By
Isabelle Chan, ZDNet Asia
Friday, November 23 2007 12:27 PM
Although some companies and government agencies have embraced open source, the level of adoption in Singapore is still low by most counts, industry observers say.
According to Red Hat, open source adoption has grown over the years in Singapore--but not at a rate where it can or should be.
Harish Pillay, open source evangelist and Red Hat Asia-Pacific's training manager, told ZDNet Asia in an e-mail: "There is definitely an increase in the adoption of open-source software here for good reason. Businesses are becoming more aware that they have the choice, without the technology, licensing and financial lock-ins of proprietary systems."
However, Pillay added: "Things are better, but not by much."
"Things are better, but not by much."
-- Harish Pillay, Red Hat Asia-Pacific
Yap Boon Leong, managing director of open-source software house Resolvo Systems, agreed it has been a slow march. "Relative to three years ago, awareness has significantly improved but the [number of] commercial transactions related to open source implementations has not improved on a correlated basis."
Industry players believe there is still potential for the open source movement to gain more ground in Singapore, particularly if the government gave greater support. For example, Linux has been gaining momentum in China, due in part to the government's strong support for open source.
Despite the increased open source awareness in Singapore's institutions of higher learning, Pillay said, more can and should be done. For one, it would have helped if the government emphasized the role of open source in the upcoming Standard Operating Environment (SOE) initiative, which aims to reduce the cost of technology implementation and ownership across government agencies in the island-state.
"The IDA SOE project is going to cost Singapore too much by not even considering anything from the open source space. More tax payers' monies will be spent when it could be channeled to better software, as well as encourage and foster the community of open-source service providers," said Pillay.
On the outlook for open source in the next 12 to 18 months, Yap said the Singapore market will continue to be "lukewarm".
"It should be pretty much the same, with slight improvement at best," he said. "This is because, if you leave it to market forces, enterprises in Singapore are relatively cash-rich and can afford to continue to spend on proprietary software.
"Large organizations with large IT budgets would be less willing to adopt open source as they have the deep pockets to fund proprietary software, license fees and maintenance fees"
-- Prianka Srinivasan, IDC Asia-Pacific
"Also, the number of open-source providers in Singapore is still very small. And lastly, the government is taking a very neutral stand in terms of open source adoption," Yap explained.
Prianka Srinivasan, a market analyst for IDC's Asia-Pacific software research, agreed that some Singapore companies may not be attracted by the potential cost savings that open source projects promise to yield. She noted that "large organizations with large IT budgets would be less willing to adopt open source as they have the deep pockets to fund proprietary software, license fees and maintenance fees".
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