With open source technology gaining momentum in today’s global market, its software is becoming an essential and affordable option for startups, SMEs, and MNCs alike as they build towards future-proof business operations in the next decade. Several Fortune 500 brands, including Lenovo, Bosch, and Office Depot, have already adjusted their business operations to utilise ground-breaking innovation of open source software for a more simplified, modernised, and accelerated digital transformation and business growth. By implementing new software and processes companies can evolve with the times and consumer and digital trends and move beyond localised innovation, leaving the chains of their old IT experiences and computing behind for a more resilient, globalised future.

In the past year, amidst the pandemic, those startups and corporations that were agile and open to innovation were more likely to survive and thrive while numerous others had to shut down—a testament to the ever-changing demands of industry and the shift to digital mediums. Open source technology solutions offer several ways for businesses to build a robust system that keeps them ahead of the competition and adaptable for future trends. Here is how:

Building a collaborative and innovative ecosystem

According to Forbes’ research, 66% of executives say open source technologies will be critical to their tech initiatives over the next five years. Open-source software helps foster a community of collaboration and innovation through its freedom to give customers the ability to share and tackle challenges everywhere by avoiding vendor lock-in and other costs. Businesses can find more control and stability in open source technology through its power to optimise existing IT environments, modernise computing for data and applications, and accelerate business evolution with greater ease. There are also benefits in scalability, with Indonesia’s financial sector being a prime example. The country uses open source innovation for agile development to deploy and scale-up the rollout of flexible financial services through its government, according to reports from GovInsider.

We explore the potential of open-source in Southeast Asia

One such brand creating their own ecosystem is SUSE, a global leader in open source innovation; and, with its acquisition of Rancher, a Kubernetes management platform, has made it one of the top open-source innovators. With Rancher, SUSE can bring innovation, stability, and agility to data centres, the cloud, the edge, and beyond. The Kubernetes management system offers businesses the ability to build efficiently with the advantages of secure architecture, community and application support, deployment, and much more. Companies can modernise application deployment with scalability and strengthen their infrastructures to accomplish their digital transformation goals and cloud-native journeys. 

Managing data for business growth and better engagement

With the increase of data imminent, and data centre markets in the ASEAN region likely to grow at a CAGR of around 6% between 2019 and 2025, an efficient management system is critical for processing. Open-source innovation helps speed up data distribution and analysis through its worldwide accessibility and simplified processing. 

For companies like ZAMG, this solution is essential to their progression because they analyse and deliver data to several customer services and processes. Before the onboarding of SUSE, the company struggled with processing the massive amounts of data it acquired daily globally and needed fast and safe delivery of this information. Here is where SUSE stepped in to solve their issues. 

Their main challenges lay in providing accurate micro forecasts and relaying them to several parts of the world within a short period. With SUSE’s open-source software, they could process this data with quicker accuracy to improve and speed up the distribution of their overall forecasts. Because SUSE’s software brought simplification, ZAMG can now analyse 100,000 data sets per minute to distribute weather data to several different platforms globally. With the objective to install thousands of new sensors, open-source innovation has also led the company to be more ambitious with its targeting for the future.

Cloud computing on the rise

As cloud computing continues to rise, around the world, many are realising its long-term benefits. It impacts everyday life activities and business goals in line with the developments of an increasingly globalised world. Underneath cloud computing is open source software, which runs to ensure a smooth and efficient process. Cloud data centres will probably be processing workloads of around 94% by the end of 2021, a massive increase from 2018 when only 45% were processed this way. The Southeast Asian market for cloud computing should reach over $40 billion USD within the next four years as more SMEs move to processing and storing their data in the cloud. 

Fujitsu uses SUSE technology to enhance its cloud computing process. Thanks to this technology, the company’s information and computing resources have become more accessible to its stakeholders, creating an outlet for technology and cloud adoption democratisation. 

For SVP, their cloud ecosystem relies heavily on open source innovation. With automation growing in factories, SVP uses SUSE to exchange real-time information on factory hardware by leveraging Kubernetes. The use of this system has been essential to improving its customer experience and productivity. 

Open-source innovation allows companies in any stage to collaborate affordably and progress their operations to meet the demands of an ever-evolving industry and the global economic climate. For companies looking for a competitive edge, this form of technology brings the accessibility and freedom to innovate with ease from anywhere and transform existing operations for a future-proof digital experience. It provides solutions for today’s market and the ability to evolve strategies when the time comes.

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