The Illusion of Open-Source Middleware
While our global leaders are virtually summitting about semiconductor shortages maybe they should consider an IT GTP Summit too. As IBM has pointed out, 85% of the Fortune 100 and 98% of the top 100 global banks use IBM MQ to move messages between applications, systems and services.
Frankly, it is the least discussed, yet most critical technology used worldwide. I would venture to say if the licenses for all the IBM MQ technology were to freeze tomorrow, the world’s economy would stop dead. Banks, brokerages, transportation, supply chain, retail, utilities, healthcare, and more use it to send data privately, securely, and assuredly from place to place.
So, while the CIOs of the world talk about mobile, and cloud, and storage (all important), realize that within those realms, transactions must go from point A to point B so that Corporations can receive important transactional information from inside and outside the organization. If the pipe the data travels through is broken, no data will get to the other end of the pipe.
As noted in a post I made previously on the Avada Software blog, I’ve noticed a movement to explore other models of enterprise messaging. A big push for this is always cost. Companies want to drop their license costs, of which MQ is one, on every server that transacts such business. But there are some huge trade-offs in those costs. In fact, when you examine the choice thoroughly, the apparent cost-benefit simply dissolves in the face of logic.
Security
Going to open source models however, is risky business. Open Source means it’s open for people to inspect, diagnose, review … HACK! I bet you all can remember back to some events just a few months ago (and still ongoing, actually) that underscored that fact.
One recent open source security risk analysis report showed that as open source prevalence increases, so do the vulnerabilities. “This year’s report shows a 9% increase in vulnerabilities from the previous year—the second-highest year-on-year increase in the report’s six-year history. This trend indicates that more and more software is at risk across every industry.” And worse: This year’s report shows an 11% increase in High-Risk vulnerabilities from the previous year.
The Illusion of Cost Savings
The costs of migration to open-source models, in almost ALL cases, are substantially greater than the cost savings of licenses alone. Picture an iceberg. The costs of open source are people, time, support and maintenance.
That is the part you don’t see under the water, the much larger part compared to the part you do see above the water: the cost of IBM/MQ licenses.
So, while executives look at bottom line costs of licenses, it is guaranteed that the manpower costs of migration
are at least 2 to 1 spread across a typical 3-year ROI timeframe. Yet, the result is less functionality and decreased assured delivery of those all-important transactions.
Feature Loss
Lastly, as a colleague had recently shown at an industry conference, ‘with those licenses comes superior features, functionality, and security’.
Competing models, especially open source, really can’t compare when it comes to API interface and administrative functionality to their transactional engines. Some are completely bereft in those areas. This makes finding and correcting issues slow, if not impossible, which is a giant problem for anyone in a standard MTTR SLA. Ensuring that SLA is met is essential for Enterprise businesses who would not appreciate the ramifications of having transportation customers waiting in lines, banking customers financial transfers not process properly, brokerage customers having unsettled trades, and business supply chains frozen.
Another example of feature loss is feature ‘compensation’. As compared to open source, many vendor products are mature and usually have structural components already built into the product; things like commit/rollback, a default repository for transaction in error, fine detail within transactional headers, and built-in metric aggregation. These features may need to be built or handled by each application leveraging the open-source products in comparison.
Not the place for IT leaders to ‘Cheap-out’.
In summary, not only the pipeline itself, but the tools and technology workers that keep these pipelines flowing are essential and important to not only their own corporations, but the global economy. Keeping the pipes clean, free from defect, well maintained, and flowing smoothly is an essential responsibility. It’s certainly not the place to “cheap-out.” Respect the pipes!
