just think for a moment if the only option to get your software is to pay for it. Actually, this wouldn’t be a problem, I support paying for the intellectual property and all the hours developers spend to make applications. However the real point is access to the source code so you can understand what the software does and how it does it.
I love Open-Source Software, I know how powerful it is and understand the community behind. People usually are happy to spend their own time to make software better.
I Started using Linux back in 2000 just because Windows Millennium was very unreliable blue screens for every click and years later I have been part of the community supporting OpenStack and Kubernetes.
Openstack vs VMware SDDC
this is not a fair comparison, however some customers are moving away from VMware to a opensource private cloud for multiple reason. License costs, vendor locking or not pleasant experience with sale team or professional services.
I’ve only seen successful migrations where you smart people (or the right people) are working behind scenes to support this transformation. One of the natural advantages of proprietary software is the easy management capability and the ability to have more automation out of the box and reliability for some products.
Openshift vs Kubernetes
when I start working with Kubernetes, there were few people who actually understood the capability and functionality of Kubernetes, one of the most read documents was Kubernetes “the hard way“, support was limited making a bit difficult to manage your K8s clusters.
On the other hands, you can get a product like OpenShift that will enable enterprise organizations to have a PaaS environment easy deploy and ready to be consumed in matter of hours without the painful and slowly learning curve.
Cisco vs OpenSource Networking
Similar situation if we talk about the software than run most of 80% all the switches in the world. Its proven technology, tested and with Million man hours in R&D vs the freedom of open networking, with difficult interfaces, an high price learning curve. however having the right mindset and people you could create a very powerful network fully automated end to end with the benefit of savings millions of dollar for Organizations
bottom line
OSS is always an attractive alternative to run in your data center, its definitely cheaper to run and maintain in short tern and with the support from the OSS community + enterprise support in some cases, it will have enormous benefits for your organization.