IT departments face various challenges such as cost reduction, regulatory compliance, competitiveness of internal IT compared to outsourced services and application and infrastructure modernization. Management also demands demands that IT processes come under better control, end users become more demanding and shorter innovation cycles lead to higher requirements in terms of flexibility and responsiveness.
Organizations answer to this challenges by adapting industry best practices. Initiatives usually depend on operational needs, strategic allignement, access to know-how and tools available in the marketplace. If an organization is following the common and popular ITIL standards or deploy other framwork such as COBIT, the objectives usually remain the same: Maximizing the benefits derived through the use of information technology and developing appropriate IT governance and control in a company.
Most companies nowadays have embraced the benefits of using Open Source Software / Free Software (OSS/FS) like lower costs of ownership (TCO), scalability, control and flexibility advantages, no license management costs and lower upgrade/maintenance costs - just to name a few of them. OSS/FS protects its users from the risks and disadvantages of single source solutions. Most importantly as a uer you don't need to rely on the vendor's agenda and instead of having a single point of reference, a network of internal and external IT service providers is at your disposal.