The adoption of open source infrastructure management tools is rising among Indian CIOs as a way to reduce IT costs and manage growing infrastructure needs. Open source tools like Nagios offer many of the same monitoring capabilities as proprietary tools at a fraction of the cost, with estimated savings of hundreds of thousands of rupees per year. While lower costs are a major motivation, customization possibilities and mature support ecosystems available for some open source tools are also attracting CIOs. Proper planning and support are still important to fully leverage open source tools' potential.

1. cover story open source
Adoption of open source infrastructure
management tools on the rise
A growing number of Indian CIOs are considering open source network management
tools to manage their infrastructure
By Srikanth RP
With shrinking IT budgets and “The open source tool performs the role
growing scale of the IT infrastructure,
of an ICU center for us, as it gives us
a rising number of CIOs are looking
at open source solutions as a viable predictive reports on the health of the
alternative. Today, the open source entire IT infrastructure”
ecosystem is quite mature and offers
a number of attractive alternatives for Ajay Dhir, Group CIO, JSL
CIOs to save operational costs. As many
of these open source infrastructure
management tools have many of the to monitor applications, services, center for us, as it gives us predictive
same capabilities that their commercial operating systems, network protocols, reports on the health of the entire IT
proprietary counterparts offer, they are system metrics and infrastructure infrastructure.”
being actively considered by many CIOs components with a single tool. Fast Cost is perhaps the biggest
in India. detection of infrastructure outages are motivator as organizations can save
India’s largest integrated stainless made possible as alerts can be delivered huge costs with respect to licenses. In
steel manufacturer uses open source to technical staff via e-mail or SMS. the case of JSL, the implementation
infrastructure management tool, Escalation capabilities ensure alert costs have been limited to the
Nagios, to manage an IT landscape that notifications reach the right people. procurement of a server and modem –
consists of over hundred servers, 2,500 The importance of the open source which works out to ` 10 lakh. Dhir says
desktops, 50 network printers and 20 tool is best summed up by Ajay Dhir, that a comparative commercial system
Wi-Fi devices. With the implementation Group CIO, JSL, “The open source would have easily cost the company a
of Nagios, the IT team has the capability tool performs the role of an ICU minimum of ` 40 lakh.
Manoj Chandiramani, who was
earlier a CIO with MF Global, and is
WhO is Using Open sOUrCe infrastrUCtUre management tOOls? now President and CEO, SAIMAA Global
Solutions, explains the mathematics.
Company Open source solution Usage
“On an average, the bare minimum
JSL Nagios Uses Nagios to manage an IT landscape software license cost for managing a
that consists of over hundred servers, 2500 desktop is ` 600. For an organization
desktops, 50 network printers and 20 Wi-Fi with 300 desktops, this works out to
devices
` 1.8 lakh per month. If you add the
InfoAxon Technologies Nagios Uses Nagios for monitoring 25 servers for server and network components, the
overseas customers costs go up exponentially,” explains
Lifespring Hospitals Zabbix Uses Zabbix to monitor its internal IT Chandiramani. For large organizations
infrastructure with thousands of servers and network
components, the infrastructure
Indo Asian Fusegear Nagios, ntop Uses open source solutions to monitor 50 management costs only due to licenses
servers in addition to routers, Wi-Fi devices,
can be upwards of ` 50 lakh per year.
print servers and IP cameras.
While lower costs continue to
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2. cover story
remain a big attraction for adoption of “organizations need to identify and
open source solutions, what has also fill functionality gaps in open source
swung the tide in the favor of open
source is the rising number of firms
solutions such as nagios”
who offer professional support services.
The icing on the cake is the fact that
professional support services are Nikhil Kapoor, CTO, InfoAxon
provided by most of the open source
companies that have created the open
source product or platform. any cost,” points out Balwant Singh, monitoring 25 servers for overseas
Some CIOs are also looking at Head-IT, Indo Asian Fusegear. The firm customers using Nagios.
open source solutions as an alternative is using Nagios and ntop and is also
vendor strategy. “We wanted an exploring OSSIM (Open Source Security Lessons from the open road
alternate licensing strategy against Information Management). Using open For enterprises that are used to
going with the normal strategy of source solutions, the firm is monitoring consulting the vendor for any problems
choosing a traditional software vendor. 50 servers in addition to routers, Wi-Fi that they face while using the vendor’s
Usage of open source tools is a viable devices, print servers and IP cameras. solutions, open source may initially
strategy to reduce software licensing The ability to customize and pose some minor roadblocks. While the
costs, which are probably the single innovate is a big draw for system software itself is free to use as there
largest cost for most IT capex budgets integrators and service providers, as is no license, many enterprises may
in an enterprise,” says Noel Thomas, VP
- IT and CISO, Integreon.
Besides lower costs, customization the open source community thrives on sharing
is a big attraction. For example, of knowledge and overcoming issues. hence,
InfoAxon Technologies, which calls itself
India’s first open source integration
organizations must be open to share their experience
company, uses Nagios to monitor the – both good and bad with their peers
health of its servers and proactively
manage the availability of mission
critical business applications for its they can add features according to find the learning curve steep. To get
customers. The firm chose Nagios as business requirements. acquainted, Indian CIOs are turning to
it wanted a tool which was easy to “We have enhanced Nagios and the Internet, and resolving problems
configure and did not have a complex written our own monitoring agents for by posting their queries in dedicated
and heavy footprint. monitoring processes and integrated forums.
Hence, as open source tools it with an SMS engine for automated “We did self learning over the
are maturing with active help from alerts on mobiles. We have also Internet, installed the package ourselves
the community, CIOs are using this integrated Nagios with other open on a test server, learnt the nuances
opportunity to customize open source source BI frameworks for complex of the same over a period of time and
tools to suit their unique requirements. data analysis and visualization. This then started the implementation,” says
“In the case of open source, we select has helped us in providing SLA-based Dhir of JSL. Dhir says that his team
the features required by us and not support and maintenance services to had to adjust the threshold levels for
what the product offers. Moreover, our customers,” explains Sanjib Dey, alerts generated by the application so
if you have an internal IT team, then OSS Infrastructure Head, InfoAxon that there were no false alarms and
the same can be implemented without Technologies. The firm is currently the firm did not miss out on important
alerts. Once this was fine tuned, it has
been smooth sailing and today JSL can
“most CIos do not have the experience or monitor all its important devices.
the people with the required skill sets to While savings in license costs are
get the best out of open source solutions” a big motivation, adoption of open
source without a proper roadmap can
lead to failure of using open source to
its full potential. “As a leading open
Manoj Chandiramani, President and CEO,
SAIMAA Global Solutions source monitoring platform, Nagios
provides the key business benefits of
30 i n f o r m a t i o n w e e k ja nua ry 2 0 1 1 www.informationweek.in

3. flexibility and innovation at fraction of “Usage of open source tools is a
costs. However, as with any other open
viable strategy to reduce software
source solution, one needs to have a
proper roadmap around what you want licensing costs”
to achieve out of the solution—both in
the short term and the long term. Most
organizations stop at just implementing
Noel Thomas, VP - IT & CISO, Integreon
its out-of-box capabilities,” says Nikhil
Kapoor, CTO, InfoAxon.
Kapoor advises CIOs to plan “Organizations must follow the Plan Do of open source solutions. With our
and invest for continuous upgrades, Check Act (PDCA) cycle. In fact, Plan experience, we can build and manage
resources and documentation. He also and Check in great detail before you the open source infrastructure and offer
believes that organizations need to start Do and Act,” cautions Dhir. it as a service,” says Chandiramani. The
identify and fill the functionality gaps in For CIOs who are just starting out firm has already signed three customers
open source solutions such as Nagios. to explore the open road, choosing for managing infrastructure using open
“Analysis and visualization gaps can non-critical applications may be a source solutions. As Chandiramani’s
be filled by integration of other open starting point. “Consider open source firm takes away the trouble of
source analysis software and reporting tools for your non-mission critical areas. installing, configuring and monitoring
frameworks. Similarly, open source After doing your research on available the infrastructure and provides it at
solutions can be integrated with SMS options, consider the impact - both a fraction of the costs of comparable
for rule-based alerts on mobile phones. direct and indirect – on the criticality of proprietary solutions provided by other
Further, integration with help desk or the area where you are deploying the vendors, his firm is seeing huge demand
bug tracking software can be done to tool,” opines Thomas of Integreon. from corporates who are keen to try
automatically create support tickets,” Like most areas, experience matters open source solutions.
explains Kapoor. in the open source arena too. Involving The open source community
The timing of selecting the open a system integrator that has good thrives on sharing of knowledge and
source project can also be crucial. For experience of deploying open source overcoming issues. Hence, organizations
example, Dhir decided to look at open solutions will help an organization must be open to share their experience
source projects during the recessionary deploy open source effectively. For – both good and bad with their peers.
period of 2009, when the whole example, SAIMAA Global Solutions Ajay Dhir, for example, shared his
organization was trying to reduce costs. offers CIOs the option to outsource the experiences with other CIOs, and
Organizations must also be ready to entire setup of building, operating and provided them with help from his team
face criticism and pressure. managing open source infrastructure. members.
To ensure success, organizations “Most CIOs do not have the “It is important to share your
must plan well – especially if they do experience or the people with the knowledge, learning and success with
not have the guiding hand of a vendor. required skill sets to get the best out others. The more you share, the more you
grow. After our case study was published
SOme uSeful Open SOurce infraStructure management tOOlS by InformationWeek and honored by CIO
Association of India, we got requests from
Open source tool Website
fellow CIOs for knowledge and experience
Nagios www.nagios.org sharing and we did so very openly. To
OpenNMS www.opennms.org our pleasant surprise, we saw these
ntop www.ntop.org companies doing the implementation
GroundWork Open Source www.groundworkopensource.com very fast and going the extra mile by
implementing additional features as well,”
Hyperic HQ www.hyperic.com
exclaims Dhir.
openQRM www.openqrm.com
While the road to adoption of open
Monit http://mmonit.com/monit/ source solutions will be not without
Munin http://munin-monitoring.org/ challenges, the cost benefits and the
Zabbix www.zabbix.com flexibility to customize are compelling
Zenoss http://www.zenoss.com/ benefits that a CIO cannot ignore today. n
Wireshark www.wireshark.org
Srikanth RP (srikanth.rp@ubm.com)
OSSIM www.ossim.net
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