Expand business innovation with an open source strategy

If your business plans to adopt open source software or components, it is essential to have an open source strategy. Having a formal approach that’s written down provides the guidelines that can boost efficiency and minimize risks. This official “blueprint” can be circulated throughout the entire company—including executives and developers—so you can generate excitement and buy-in on your plans.

The original concept of open source systems was introduced in 1991 when Linux launched the world’s first free operating system. Since then, open source software and strategies have continued to grow. Open source and open source systems are the most common aspects of the open design movement, which involves the creation of hardware and software products rooted in publicly shared coding. 

Why is everyone adopting open source and open source strategy? The biggest reason is that the world has moved to a digital-first model, driving the need to innovate faster and meet more diverse requirements, all while being secure, reliable, and future-ready. As a result, the use of open source software is continuing to expand as a means to application innovation. Through APIs and publicly available source code, developers can explore new possibilities not only in software, but also core technologies like network and cloud connectivity. 

Now, open source innovation finds itself both in the core software and the technology it supports. Because of its increasing prevalence, the open source movement and the benefits it provides can’t be ignored by businesses. But that also means that while there are increased opportunities, it’s a very complex landscape. 

Before we move deeper into why an open source strategy is critical for your business and how it’s being used for network innovation, let’s talk about what an open source strategy looks like.

An open source strategy is your foundation for open source software policies in your business. The strategy itself is created as a high-level document that solidifies your plans for creating, managing, and using open source software in a way that advances your business goals. It can be used to help align decision makers and get buy-in from your leaders, which can help to ensure better decision making.

Your open source strategy document might include:

As for cybersecurity concerns, for example, your IT team should create and maintain a Software Bill of Materials (SBOM). An SBOM is a detailed record of all software components, libraries, and dependencies. It’s important for tracking the origin of software components and managing potential security risks.

Despite the importance of having an open source strategy, many organizations fail to have this foundation. Fortunately, many are realizing that to fully reap the benefits of open source (like total cost of ownership, agility, and software innovation), a strategy has to be in place first.

All business segments are prioritizing open source strategies. According to the 2024 State of Open Source Report, “early stage startups have more Innersource projects and OSPOs (Open Source Program Offices) than medium or large organizations.”¹ Innersource projects are software development strategies that apply open source practices to proprietary code for more effective collaboration. Enterprise open source adoption is also on the rise and is expected to climb.

Organizations are turning to open source for a variety of reasons. Not only can it stimulate innovation, but it can help your organization reduce costs. What makes open source software more affordable than closed, proprietary software? In many cases, open source software is available at no cost or reduced cost for the license. Keep in mind, free software can be open source, but open source may not be completely free. That’s determined by the license.

Because open source applications are cloud-based and users can work with developers to build custom components and solutions, it can lower the total cost of ownership and speed up software development. Organizations are also turning to open source software to reduce dependency on any one particular vendor (“vendor lock-in”), which obligates a customer to use a vendor to get their return on investment.

Finally, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) applications, which are trained on enormous amounts of data, are driving the use of open source adoption.

Given the meteoric rise of OpenAI, an effective open source strategy needs to address that, too.

AI uses more and more open source code every day. In 2023, Synopsis examined 1,067 commercial codebases across 17 industries and found that 77% of the code was open source.² Everyone from startups to large corporations such as Meta are including open source AI in their business strategies. Specifically, large language models (LLMs) can provide benefits with little investment.

Your strategy will need to address the benefits and risks of OpenAI. Some of the advantages are greater customizability, innovation, transparency, and potential cost savings. As for challenges, open source AI often requires more time. Developers need to debug and search for answers on online forums and deal with tools that aren’t always user friendly. Open source AI solutions can also lack quality assurance and testing, which can lead to bugs or instability. Organizations need to ensure that their open source repository has the appropriate licenses and that their open source models have the right legal frameworks in place.

By having an open source strategy, businesses can leverage the benefits of adopting open source software to take advantage of competitive opportunities along the way. An open source strategy can help a company drive cost savings, help you create something unique, and bring products to market faster.

Here are some of the benefits of having an open source strategy.

Agility and flexibility

An open source strategy can enable you to increase efficiency and reduce risks by making sure the right open source software is chosen to benefit your business. It can help developers quickly make changes to software to keep the business competitive and avoids vendor lock-in, which ultimately can reduce costs.

Open source strategy in product development

The open source community moves quickly and is well-positioned to innovate, which is great for product development. When well-executed, open source can lead to cheaper, feature-rich, and higher-quality products.

Open source strategy in business operations

An open source strategy can greatly benefit business operations. By using open source, companies can reduce expenses and gain the flexibility to create customized solutions. Ultimately, open source can drive innovation and collaboration within your organization.

But with all these benefits, an open source strategy can also present hurdles to overcome.

Every open source strategy should include information on how to mitigate open source risks. Businesses that rely on open source software report a number of challenges. One of the biggest revolves around having sufficient, upper-tier technical support. Within this challenge is security—maintaining security policies and compliance. It’s also difficult to maintain end-of-life versions of open source software. Other pain points include a lack of technical support and a shortage of open source skills, experience, and proficiency. Installations, upgrades, and configurations can also create stumbling blocks.

Open source strategy management

The “who” of managing your strategy is important. Will the software be self-supported or will you rely on trusted vendors? Having in-house developers with the right skill sets is imperative to the success of any open source strategy. They need to be equipped to manage security, updates, governance, and other requirements. Without in-house developers or the right vendor partner, your strategy could be jeopardized.

Security vulnerabilities

One of the main risks associated with open source libraries is vulnerabilities in the code. These can happen due to poor coding practices or lack of testing. Malicious actors can exploit code vulnerabilities, disrupt operations, or launch cyberattacks if an effective cybersecurity strategy isn’t in place. The right security protocols need to be in place to minimize these risks. It’s important to make defense in depth—layers of security that strengthen your protections—a high priority.

Open source security tools can be part of your layered defense strategy. They can scan for vulnerabilities and secure firewalls. Some of the most common ones are Nmap, OWASP Dependency-Track, PfSense, and Dependabot (for developers working with GitHub).

Let’s take a look at a use case that ties the open source strategy together.

An open source strategy for networking software refers to a network-related program whose source code is made available for use or modification by users or other developers. It’s used to increase the flexibility, automation, and reliability of network devices.

How AT&T uses an open source strategy to evolve our network

For decades, the AT&T network has been based on hardware that is often proprietary, locking us into vendors and technologies—just as many of you have structured your business. However, over the past 10 years, we’ve been transforming our network hardware into cloud-based software and making it accessible remotely. This enables us to be agile in securely upgrading and reconfiguring our network at internet speed.

Moving control of the network from hardware to software has meant we needed to look beyond the conventional way of using proprietary, “locked-in” equipment from a single vendor, to instead using decoupled, “open” components that can be stacked into one switching-and-routing platform. To accomplish this, AT&T needed to develop a rock-solid strategy to shift our network from being closed source to an open architecture to improve our network for the benefits of our customers.

As of today, we’ve migrated more than half of all our production traffic to our Next-Gen Core routers. Those routers are a model of multi-vendor open architecture. The idea is to illustrate what open architecture looks like for us: not vendor locked-in but open for innovation beyond traditional means.

Our transition to open architecture is fostering collaboration opportunities, speeding innovation, and creating better experiences for customers.

An open source strategy is a blueprint for how you’re going to use open source software and components. It encourages everyone in your company—from CEOs and engineers to developers and legal experts—to work in lockstep toward shared goals.

A great open source strategy document should include a list of software components, business objectives, key performance indicators, guidelines on how to mitigate risks, and notes on how it can create cost savings. The benefits of implementing such a strategy are potentially vast. You can look forward to innovation with high quality code and feature-rich products, a faster time to market, avoiding vendor lock-in, and mitigating risk. Finally, you can improve scalability and reduce your total cost of ownership.

Learn more about AT&T Business solutions at business.att.com. To connect with an expert who knows business, contact your AT&T Business representative.

See how ultra-fast, reliable fiber and 5G connectivity protected by built-in security give you a new level of confidence in the possibilities of your network. Let our experts work with you to solve your challenges and accelerate outcomes. Your business deserves the AT&T Business difference—a new standard for networking.

¹ OpenLogic, 2024 State of Open Source Report (Minneapolis, MN: 2024), page 30. https://www.openlogic.com/success/resources/state-of-open-source-report

² Synopsys® Software Integrity Group, 2024 Open Source Security and Risk Analysis Report (Sunnyvale, CA: 2024), page 4. https://www.synopsys.com/software-integrity/resources/analyst-reports/open-source-security-risk-analysis.html