Not a lot of organizations are choosing open source software for their enterprise intranet. It has been seen as risky. But open source is changing and evolving – for the better.
Goodwill stores is an exception and they highlight their experience in an excellent case study that talks about the pros and cons of their open source selection and implementation in Enterprise Open Source Magazine (see Bringing Thousands of Workers Together with an Open Source Intranet Solution).
"While the selection process was no different or faster compared to selecting a proprietary project, implementation was dramatically quicker. Because there is no licensing involved in open source solutions we simply went to the vendor's Web site, downloaded the software and dropped it into our data center. Within a couple of hours it was up and running, although it did require some significant integration to get the portal customized to our needs, and that work continues today. Even so, the first beta release of MyGoodwill was made just eight weeks after the software was initially downloaded, which is extremely fast for an enterprise application."
If it's a proven solution, I see open source as less risky then many propietary solutions. I'd like to see more examples and case studies.
http://intranetblog.blogware.com/blog/_archives/2007/1/12/2644865.html
