White Paper – Open Source Enhances MSP Offerings

Introduction

The tremendous increase in popularity of open source applications presents a strong challenge to traditional proprietary hardware and software solutions. This trend toward embracing open source technology is a major driver in enabling networks infrastructure and enterprise applications to evolve. IT managers, service providers and business decision makers need to understand what open source applications are and what the implications are for their organization. This is especially true for Managed Service Providers where customer satisfaction, budget realities, and service/maintenance issues make the right decision an imperative. In particular, this white paper focuses on the value of OSS when used in Multi-Service Business Gateway (MSBG) devices. MSBGs are a key piece of equipment for MSPs as this equipment provides the MSPs the connection and demarcation point to the customer premise.

Open Source Technology Background

Open Source Software is based on the GNU Public License that provides customers with the assurance that the source for their platform will always be freely available. This ensures that the customer cannot be locked-in to one platform, or driven to a particular architecture by closed binary dependencies.

A few common acronyms are:

OSS refers to software programs that are distributed with the source code. The open source license allows users the freedom to use the program for any purpose, to study and modify the program, and to freely redistribute copies of the original or modified program.

Open source software is constructed using the same proven methodologies and practices used to construct proprietary software. However some interesting differences result from the rights conferred by the GPL License:  The software evolves more rapidly and organically. Many individuals and teams produce advances beyond the capacity of a single organization. The improvements are managed into releases by a core team much like the proprietary alternative.

These factors combine to provide a value set that is unique in the marketplace: the value of the integrated platform; the price, value, and choice equation; the platform transparency and openness ensured by the GPL and the value that comes from partnering with key industry leaders and developers to bring open platforms to the telecommunications market.

MSP Keys to Success

Let’s take a step back to review some key drives for being a successful MSP:

• Being able to offer business customers a full suite of turnkey services,
• High reliability, responsiveness, with the ability for monitoring and statistics,
• Value in terms of total cost of ownership,
• Roadmap to migrate easily and affordably to new services to meet the end user’s evolving business needs

MSBG devices, which are deployed at the customer premise, are a key piece in enabling all of the above. Since this equipment resides at the customer premise and is often used as the gateway between the LAN equipment and the Internet “cloud”, its performance has a direct effect on the end user experience and in the way the MSP manages the services provided. According to a recent In-Stat report, the MSBG market will grow from $1.2 billion in 2008 to $2.6 billion in 2011.

OSS provides advantages when used in a MSBG

MSBGs support many applications, either when used as a client device or when the application resides on it. This requires that it can support many software modules. The flexible architecture of OSS, with modular, interoperable software components, enables multiple OSS applications to share a common hardware platform. For MSPs, applications may include security, spam and virus protection, data traffic management (routing), IP PBX, SIP trunking, session border control, policy administration, email server, firewall, etc. The average server utilization in an enterprise environment ranges from 5 to 40 percent, leaving at least 60 percent of the available capacity unused. With virtualization, it is possible to consolidate workloads running on multiple physical servers onto a single physical server and harness unused computing power. As a result, CPU utilization and hardware efficiency increases.

As opposed to proprietary solutions that typically use proprietary hardware, OSS is designed to run on commercial off-the-shelf-based (COTS) computing platforms. These COTS hardware tend to be less expensive and are not manufacturer specific. This allows the OSS to reside on various platforms to match the customer’s needs. Features such as memory size, WAN/PSTN interface, and storage space are easily modified as needed and do not automatically require a forklift of equipment that would result in the MSP with stranded, unused equipment.

In proprietary solutions, MSPs can quickly end up with multiple network appliances from multiple vendors, each providing a single service, which takes up valuable floor space at the customer’s facility. Space limitations, power, noise, cooling, and installation time often become issues.

The integration of multiple networking functions in the same hardware platform simplifies the definition of the service provider demarcation point, and helps enterprises manage their network infrastructure using fewer vendors. Network administration is simplified since a single management system is used to provision, monitor and maintain multiple services. This also eliminates the "finger pointing" that occurs with multiple stacked elements from different vendors where the point of demarcation is unclear.

OSS offers a huge advantage when considering how quickly networks evolve and the customer’s needs change. MSPs with proprietary solutions are at the mercy of the vendor for the development of software updates and bug fixes etc. The OSS development community is very large and active, continually releasing updates and improvements for popular open source software. The quality of the final code is enhanced because the code is exposed to the world. In proprietary packages, shortcuts and poor programming are more easily overlooked, because only a select few can view the code. Like peer-reviewed papers, open source code is subject to much scrutiny and thus results in high quality code. 

Lastly, and not least important, is that using OSS in a MSBG reduces the MSP’s Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). Initial capital equipment costs are minimized due to many MSBGs using COTS hardware platforms. If the hardware platform at the customer premise has sufficient capacity to support new services, truck rolls are minimized, and new equipment need not be purchased. Offering additional services to an end user may only require setting a remote software switch and download. OSS updates tend to be provided free of charge. The time to manage one piece of equipment is less than managing multiple network appliances from different vendors.

Conclusion

For MSPs, or those considering becoming MSPs, the choice of customer premise equipment is one of the most important. MSBGs provide and contain many applications, features and functions for providing managed services to businesses. MSBGs, some using proprietary software/hardware and others using generic hardware with open source software, are now available in the market to address this part of the network. While MSP care about features and functions that meet the end user’s needs, it is also valuable to understand what is “under the hood” in deciding which type of MSBG to choose for the long term. As covered in this paper, for a variety of reasons, MSBG devices utilizing opens source architecture provides the optimum platform for the MSP to offer business customers the best services and value.