Dylan Jay from PretaWeb is talking about migrating to open source solutions from a management point of view. PretaWeb is a Sydney-based Plone integration company.

What’s Open Source?
– It’s more than a ‘no cost’ license.
– It’s more about an open distributed development model. The people who develop the software are also the key users. The feedback cycle for improvement is much shorter than for proprietary software.
– It has brought us key software … Linux, Apache, Firefox, and many more.
– Is being used by corporations, governments and NGOs

What are the Benefits?
– More freedom. You can switch vendors a lot more easier than if you have a proprietary platform.
– Reliability and security … are better with open source.
– Much more people working on the projects.
– Greater innovation on core and supplementary ideas.
– Flexibility
– Increased competition … companies competing on their level of service.
– No dead ends … you can customize a product much more in open source than in closed source.

Strategy for Migration
– Evaluate … look at the policies, focus on the business problem, list viable options, see what other companies have done, talk to participants
– Select …
– Implement … install the software, customize it, migrate your data, train users
– Adopt … communicate the advantages, revisit the requirements, gather feedback, implement a more full solution
– Enhance … report bugs, fix bugs, open source your enhancements, future benefit from the innovations of others

More About Plone
Dylan provided a demo of Plone.