Economic Meltdown – Friend or Foe of Open Source
danny October 1st, 2008
I considered looking at my retirement account balances today, but with the sinking feeling I got the last time I did this, I elected not to subject myself to that torture today. We are truly in the midst of a financial market meltdown of unprecedented proportion. The road kill became clearly visible here in Huntsville, AL on Monday with the sell of Wachovia, which had previously acquired Southtrust Bank – a bank with a broad investor base in the state whose linage can be traced back to its founding in Birmingham, AL in 1887. Many Alabamians watched in horror as the share price fell from more than $50 to less than $2 over the past 12 months. The impact of the economic meltdown will certainly be felt for years to come.
During periods of economic turmoil, businesses often become much more conservative in managing expenses as a hedge against an uncertain outlook. Couple this with a dramatic change in the availability of credit, and the market for IT related expenditures, and more specifically communications infrastructure in the case of Digium, could suffer a real setback over the coming months. While this intuitively seems negative for equipment suppliers, this sort of financial turmoil has proven beneficial to Digium’s business in the past. During periods of strong economic growth, companies are less motivated to find ways to preserve capital. However, when forced to trim budgets out of necessity, IT managers often entertain lower-cost alternatives to traditional solutions.
Open source is one of those alternatives that deserves a closer look. With the growing adoption of open source based solutions across the corporate landscape, history suggests that once an organization becomes receptive to the idea of utilizing open source – the end result becomes their adoption of open source. Look for this to be the case over the coming months. An economic environment so strong that the tide rises all boats is not a bad end to the current melee. Until then, necessity may be the mother of all invention, but I contend that she’s a close family member of collaboration too.
[...] 2 weeks, a man I truely admire had written a post entitled: Economic Meltdown - Friend or Foe of Open Source? (written by Danny Windham, CEO of Digium). Danny talks about the various aspects of companies [...]