English 421Y: Technical Writing Online

I've been researching studies that involve costs and other related material of software in both education and business settings. A helpful resource I've located is a study completed by Gartner in late 2008 that attempts to make some predictions on the open source software model and its future trends. Important facts identified include, "Through 2013, 50% of mainstream IT projects using open-source software (OSS) will not achieve cost savings over closed-source alternatives." and "Through 2013, 90% of market-leading, cloud-computing providers will depend on OSS to deliver products and services." These facts are based on market research and use statistics to highlight important trends. These could easily be used in the text itself for the white paper, and as quotes that are "pulled out" to highlight.

Alongside these key findings, the study also lists several recommendations for companies to follow if they want to keep up with open source software movements. These include "Move aggressively to establish an effective enterprise adoption policy, and bring OSS and hardware under asset management controls." and "Do not expect to automatically save money with OSS or any technology without effective financial management. Do expect to carefully manage open-source solutions in the appropriate scenarios to realize total cost of ownership (TCO) advantages." The second point is very important, as it summarizes a key point of our entire white paper. Small schools should probably take this advice, and utilize a combination of closed and open source software, each in a place where total cost of ownership of the software makes sense.