CTO Strategies: Greg Royal of Cistera Networks

From your perspective, what has open source meant to your business of managing your IT enterprise?

Linux for us is a core IT strategy - rather than simply an adjunct to a Windows network - because we don't want to live within the limitations of a Windows-centric network. Quite simply, using Linux means we can do more for less. We maintain two database standards (MySQL and Ingres), which means we do not apportion a large part of our budget to OS and DB licensing, but rather toward getting various projects and capabilities up and running.

From where you sit, where are proprietary solutions headed? Is there plenty of room for open source and proprietary solutions to coexist peacefully?

There is definitely room for both proprietary and open source platforms to coexist. While the quality of the offerings available for Linux has increased dramatically in recent years and is now supported by all major software vendors with the exception of Microsoft, there will always be companies that are comfortable with Windows-based solutions - just as there will be companies comfortable with Unix systems However, it is becoming harder to justify the cost of implementing and running a proprietary solution when there is such a high quality available at a lower cost. We also question the wisdom of tying specific applications to desktops. What we may lose in functionality on the desktop - but AJAX seems to remove that gap too, we more than make up for in the reduced maintenance cost of the desktop Our single desktop image for Dell laptops now consists of Firefox, Microsoft Office and Cisco VPN.

Let's talk specifically about Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). How is TCO changing for those who go Linux, that others in the IT community might not realize or deny?

The biggest observation that I can make from hiring engineers is that Linux-experienced people are typically of a higher skill set. I look for people who run Linux servers at home and are not afraid to try things and test things at home. We run a large test environment made up of different configurations We don't worry about the licensing cost and hardware is very cheap these days to run big test systems.

Engineers are encouraged to try out new software, especially open source to see what is possible In fact, we pilot open source projects to see what we actually need, and from there we may go and purchase a commercial implementation. The key is that we have a much better understanding of our needs from these trials.

Open source means we can try things without worrying about the cost and it means a better, informed decision when we do decide to purchase.

As the Linux application environment improves dramatically and the number of service offerings increase, our ROI also increases. We don't need to make decisions quickly and hope they are the right ones. After all, a 30-day trial can only get you so far.

We are able to get onto new projects faster and keep the interest of the engineers.

Finally, a Cisco/Linux combination is very compelling.