Kaplan: Guiding open source in IT

Jon Williams, CTO at Kaplan Test Prep & Admissions, gave today’s opening keynote at the OSBC conference in San Francisco. But this was not the usual boring vendor keynote seen at many conferences; this presentation was absolutely on target for the audience. And more importantly, Jon’s story is a good example of what’s happening increasingly across the industry: open source is being used for strategic as well as tactical applications.

For those not familiar with Kaplan, it’s a $2 billion subsidiary of the Washington Post. Unlike many of the dinosaurs in print and media who doubled down by buying out declining newspaper businesses, the Post started diversivying their business some years back and by investing in new technology opportunities. (Fortune ran a great article about the Post’s strategy last year.)

One of the key observations Williams made was that Kaplan’s use of open source software is not because it’s free, but because it works. And they use a lot of open source at Kaplan. They’re running Linux, Apache, MySQL, Struts, JBoss, Alfresco and other open source software in development and production. Williams said that what they like about open source is it’s easy to customize and easy to get going. And its helped Kaplan evolve from a strong “build” bias on the build vs. buy axis to one that is more effective for their organization. (And surely more cost effective.)

When Williams joined in 2004, Kaplan was large a Java / Microsoft shop and one with a history of bad vendor relationships. It was a conscious decision to start to implement more open source software. He hired a chief architect with OSS experience and started identifying where open source was already in use in the organization. And then they made it a mandate that OSS must be an option at every major technology refresh. The savvier teams knew that they would have to have evaluated their open source options and so many started getting ahead of the game and doing the research in advance.

Williams also looked for a big win inside the company and used the Alfresco content management system for a major launch of their award winning ecommerce web site, engaging Rivet Logic as a partner in the implementation. That project had a lot of visibility at the exec level and turned out to be a big success.

Not only has Kaplan been successful implementing open source, but its also become a key factor in retaining and motivating their technical staff. As Williams put it “Developers crave new technologies.” While there were some skeptics in his group, he was able to win them over, showing how open source software had the level of scalability and security they needed. Williams also acknowledged that the relationship with open source vendors is different from that with closed source software vendors. “It’s all based on trust,” Williams said. “The vendors stand behind the product, and there’s no spin.”

As the head of the New York CTO Club, Williams appreciates that there’s less lock-in with open source. But he also said he likes to have one-year renewable deals because he thinks that choice reinforces the two-way street relationship that he has with his vendors.

There’s more to the story than I’ve covered here, but it was the kind of insightful presentation that shows how a carefully considered technology strategy has many benefits that extend beyond just the technology. I also think Williams’ story about how open source is changing the nature of the IT vendor relationship is spot on. Perhaps this is a tipping point for open source coming of age in IT. Let me know what you think.

You can read more about Jon’s use of open source in his InfoWorld blog New York CTO. Good on ya’ Jon!