© 2004 Northrop Grumman Corp. All rights reserved. 1Open Source and Business Issues

Open Source and Business Issues:A Look into the Near Future

F-18C Weapons Separation

Space Maneuvering Vehicle

eGovOS Open Source in Government ConferenceMarch 16, 2004

Michael Fitzmaurice

Manager Open Source Solutions

michael.fitzmaurice@ngc.com

© 2004 Northrop Grumman Corp. All rights reserved. 2Open Source and Business Issues

Open Source in the Federal Government

Northrop Grumman Projects in the Government Weather Service ( AWIPS )

Problem: Performance problems during Severe Weather Solution: Replace Unix systems with Linux Servers

– Benefits to the government» Reduced cost, Lower TCO» Performance increase, Tech Refresh more frequent

DoD ( NSWC ) Problem: Needed faster turn around time for models and scalability Solution: Replaced 64 processor Unix system with Beowulf Cluster

– 10x price performance advantage over replaced system– Lower OM costs, Linearly Scalable

© 2004 Northrop Grumman Corp. All rights reserved. 3Open Source and Business Issues

Open Source in the Federal Government

Northrop Grumman Projects in the Government NASA ( Goddard Space Flight Center)

Problem: The Program was losing their Supercomputer Solution: Designed and delivered a Beowulf Cluster

– Modeling code was recompiled and fully operational in a few weeks– 20x price performance over replaced system– User has total control of system resources– Beowulf Cluster is fully scalable– Project so successful that it will be expanded 10x

© 2004 Northrop Grumman Corp. All rights reserved. 4Open Source and Business Issues

Future Growth Areas in the Government Beowulf Clusters in the Enterprise

Oracle 9i RAC ( Real Application Cluster ) Data Base Oracle 10g ( Oracle Grid ) Data Base IBM DB2 Data Base SAP Informix Data Base Sybase Data Base MYSQL Data Base Domino PostgreSQL Data Base

Open Source in the Federal Government

Future Growth

© 2004 Northrop Grumman Corp. All rights reserved. 5Open Source and Business Issues

Beowulf Clusters

What is a Beowulf Cluster COTS Hardware, Open Source OS, Network, Management

Software How to Learn more

Attend the Baltimore-Washington Beowulf Users Group meetings: Second Tuesday of the Month at 3:00 PM Northrop Grumman Information Technology

– McLean or Greenbelt http://www.bwbug.org http://www-sdd.fsl.noaa.gov/~fxa/publications/17th_IIPS_01/Davis-et-al.IIPS01.html

http://199.26.34.19/Images/brochures%20and%20cutsheets/AWIPS%20Datasheet.pdf

http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nssdc_news/jun03/bliss.html

© 2004 Northrop Grumman Corp. All rights reserved. 6Open Source and Business Issues

Cost (including cost control) and Business Risk Both barrier words begin with $

In the mainstream business world… Budgets are finite

Initiatives compete for limited dollars Solid business cases are essential Cost controls are demanded

Risks to business objectives are feared Early adapters tend to be much more risk tolerant Risk is part and parcel of technology evolution and shakeout Risk management is essential before emerging technologies can

capture a significant share of the market

These customers are not interested in the technology,They are interested in the business impact of the technology.

© 2004 Northrop Grumman Corp. All rights reserved. 7Open Source and Business Issues

Typical Business Questions:A Subset What are the initial and life-cycle costs?

What cost controls are in place? What is the business case?

What is the benefit, in future revenue or savings, for every dollar of cost?

How well thought out is the approach? Where has it been proven? What industry standard methods and disciplines are being applied?

What are the development and business risks? How is risk being managed?

How will change be managed? How will buy-in from all stakeholders be ensured?

The long range success of open source technology depends on strong program management – just like all technologies before it have.