www.wipro.com
Managing Skills Challenge in an
Open Source World
Prajod Vettiyattil
Software Architect
Wipro Limited
Table of Contents
03....................................................................................
The Rise of Open Source
04....................................................................................
The Talent Crunch
06....................................................................................
Insights from Experience
07....................................................................................
About the Author
07....................................................................................
About Wipro Ltd.
The Rise of Open Source
Open source, which in the past has been ignored as not
the paradigm. The Open-Source Era survey points to Qatar Airways as
being enterprise ready, is now gaining ground within
an example that typifies the situation. It quotes Shiji Thomas, the
organizations that are leveraging cloud technologies, Big
company’s vice president of IT, saying, “We evaluated open source for
Data, IoT and pursuing the development of new products
content management, but we have not adopted it primarily because of
and services. The demand for open source is significant and
the availability of skills.” Qatar Airways is not alone in facing this
is only likely to grow stronger. But as demand grows,
predicament. Of the respondents in the survey, 56% ranked it among
industries are starting to feel the skills supply pinch. Open
their top three challenges. The availability and development of open
source skills are not easily available to back enterprise
source skills is a major cause for concern. It calls for special attention.
plans of innovation, cost management and agility.
We believe the skills gap will remain a long-term challenge. Evidence
In early 2015, Oxford Economics and Wipro conducted a global survey
suggests that it will persist for decades. And as open source continues
of senior business and technology executives about their use of open
to dominate IT environments, it may hurt organizations even more
source software1 called The Open-Source Era. The results re-affirmed
unless they take corrective action.
what industries worldwide are witnessing: open source is being widely
used to power innovation with nearly half of the respondents saying
that they have been using it strategically for more than three years. The
survey conducted exclusively pointed out that “open source was
fulfilling the expectations defined for it nearly two decades ago by Eric
Raymond in his seminal essay – The Cathedral and the Bazaar.”
What are organizations going to do if they wish to use open source as
a cost cutting method? What can they do if they want to adopt it as a
platform for innovation and for applications that demonstrate better
performance and reliability, or for dealing with the hurdles of acquiring
proprietary software?
Positive as the news is, the survey also identified the availability of open
sources skills as a major barrier faced by organizations keen to embrace
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The Talent Crunch
Organizations must first understand that open source requires
developers lazy – if anything, the tools helped make them more
application developers to be much more hands on than they
productive. Over the last decade or so, it has become perfectly
currently are. Over the years, developers have become accustomed
acceptable for a developer to hone skills for a proprietary tool and
to the drag-and-drop features of proprietary shrink-wrapped
expect to remain relevant and in demand for the next 5 to 10 years.
development tools. This is not to say that these tools have made
VARIETY
Open source tools are inherently different. They are based on open standards, leaving developers
with a vast variety to choose from. Even at the lower level, open source tools such as Emacs (one
of the oldest text and code editors in use) are difficult to master. Once learnt, they can make
programmers extremely productive. Evaluating the various tools (for use) is itself a distinctive skill.
And often developers require being conversant with over half a dozen tools simultaneously. Finally,
open source tools tend to become quickly irrelevant. Within a year or two, an open source
developer may find that two of the six tools being used are obsolete, and need to be replaced by
two or three new ones.
FOCUS
The reality of the programming world must be taken into consideration. Most of the work that
programmers are involved in addresses maintaining systems (70% to 80%). A small percentage of
the overall software budget is spent on creating new systems. Maintenance doesn’t require deep
skill sets. That is an unavoidable professional hazard. Programmers have little control over it (See
Figure 1). As a consequence, skills development for creating new products has remained a relatively
neglected aspect of the profession.
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The right skills are essential to open source methods
What are the major challenges associated with this type of development framework?
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
63%
61%
47%
44%
44%
28%
13%
0%
Requires
rethinking
development
process
Requires
employees to
take on new
roles
Requires
Requires
new people
new skills
Requires
rethinking
development
culture
Timing
challenges
Management
challenges
Figure 1: The right skills are essential to open source methods
About 44% respondents said open source requires new skills while 47% said it required new people and 61% said it
required employees to take on new roles, according to the survey on Open Source Era 2.
TRAINING
These issues may not seem insurmountable – especially when the required open source team size for a
project is small, say in the region of 10 or 12. It is possible to arm a handful of resources with open source
capabilities. Soon enough, a few will move on to better opportunities. As interest in open source
continues to mount, these are becoming highly prized and in-demand skills. But, it is possible for most
organizations to retrain another couple of resources before small projects begin to experience a major
impact. The problem is with the larger requirements. When a project needs dozens of open source
resources, organizations must be prepared to continuously incubate fresh talent.
5
COST
The way open source is thought of within organizations also leads to an unusual situation. The most
common understanding of open source is “free.” The way open source is generally used,
organizations don’t pay for the software. They pay for support services3. However, as open source
goes mainstream, this will not remain the case. Development across 12 to 24 months will mean
incurring costs. Nothing will be “free” in the sense it has been over the approximately 40-year
history of open source. These costs will limit the size and capability of open source teams.
Organizations may, therefore, have access to limited skills, restricting the kind of development they
can bring in-house.
SOFTWARE LICENSING
With open source, software selection becomes more decentralized, and so the developer has to
know the types of software that are safe to use and understand the different open source software
licensing models. This is a completely new dimension for software developers who are used to
programming using commercial software.
Insights from Experience
Organizations need to ensure that practically every resource that is
Organizations can use this method to build an open source culture and
brought on board, irrespective of the area they will work in, is trained in
create highly skilled and reliable teams. However, they must also be
Java (or some relevant aspect of open source). Instead of putting
ready to consistently place challenging projects before such teams.
employees through a traditional classroom and training module, break
Without a diversity of exciting and stimulating projects, there is always
open source concepts into tiny assignments. The student (employee)
the risk of losing talent to competitors.
should then complete each assignment independently. In essence, the
student becomes a self-trainer who then trains his peers on that
concept. Those who go through such programs emerge more confident
about working in an open source development environment.
1
The Open Source Era, Oxford Economics for Wipro, April 2015, http://www.wipro.com/microsite/OpenSource/
2
Executives surveyed were from banking and financial services, insurance, retail, consumer goods, government, healthcare and life sciences
3
This is unlike traditional software where payment is made for a boxed product and for support services.
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About the Author
Prajod Vettiyattil is a Software Architect in Wipro’s open source practice. He is working on solutions using Big Data tools like Apache Spark, Kafka,
Hadoop, Mongo DB and Cassandra. He has worked with multiple customers creating scalable, high performance Java EE and Service Oriented
Architecture solutions. He is a frequent speaker at open source conferences. He also conducts training sessions on new technology and
open source.
About Wipro Ltd.
Wipro Ltd. (NYSE:WIT) is a leading Information Technology, Consulting and Business Process Services company that delivers solutions to enable
its clients do business better. Wipro delivers winning business outcomes through its deep industry experience and a 360 degree view of "Business
through Technology" – helping clients create successful and adaptive businesses. A company recognized globally for its comprehensive portfolio of
services, a practitioner's approach to delivering innovation, and an organization-wide commitment to sustainability, Wipro has a workforce of over
150,000, serving clients in 175+ cities across 6 continents.
For more information, please visit www.wipro.com
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