If there is anything we learned last year in healthcare, it's that doing more with less can really jeopardize our organizations. Whether it's a matter of finance or function, medical IT organizations struggle to put the right software strategies into place. Next week, thousands will embark on the HIMSS conference in Atlanta to evaluate new solutions for their 2010 refresh or upgrade initiatives.
Coming out of a difficult year, organizations will need:
- To be far more innovative, yet secure and private;
- To be nimble and responsive as software problems and opportunities arise;
- Data to be more visible, accessible and validated;
- Quicker deployments with little downtime.
If peers are helping peers meet the critical and sensitive needs of their organizations--say, for example at HIMSS--why wouldn't it be the same for our software development? Open source may be a deviation from conventional thought, but today it is playing an active role in meeting these requirements.
I am confident that in the future, the ability to present technology and products in an authentic manner will go a long way to improve the success of commercial, academic and research ventures. Those organizations and communities that can speak clearly, honestly and openly about their products will be sought after, since finding an oasis of authenticity in a desert of hype will be increasingly valued as the attention seekers of the world continue to do their thing.
Open source creates an agile, high-quality software process and can be everyone's secret weapon. While there are a lot of individuals and organizations producing outstanding algorithms and systems, it is all too often that we find external code is not cross-platform, breaks easily, and is inflexible and unstable in response to new data, parameter settings and computing platforms.
Open-source companies have a better collaborative software process that helps identify and fix these code problems faster. Thus, OS toolkits and applications are known for their stability, robustness and flexibility, which is why thousands of users and customers build their own applications based on open-source languages.
Agile, quality-software processes are critical to scientific computing. Technology is moving so rapidly that users and developers need to be able to respond to new developments, refactor code and fix software issues to keep up with relentless technological change. At the same time, they have to have confidence that the technology they are developing is of high quality. Waiting for a proprietary code base to respond to change and correct issues is not tenable for most organizations.
I think we can all agree that the technological world is getting bigger, data are getting way bigger, systems are becoming more complex, research teams are growing in size and scope and technical solutions require integrating multiple technologies. As a result, keeping up with current technology is becoming more difficult, and even the biggest organizations are challenged by the need to maintain staff and resources. As many have argued before me, open-source software processes scale better than proprietary models.
I hope that when you embark on HIMSS next week, you'll consider this food for thought and rethink your software infrastructure.
Will Schroeder is CEO of Kitware, an open-source software developer in Clifton Park, N.Y.