Cost Justification Required

When I book arrangements through my company’s travel software, it has a bunch of rules embedded to help me make the best spending decisions that I can. If I book a hotel that is out of policy - for example it’s not a preferred provider, I must justify this decision by entering something like “hotel is where the event is taking place” – and that’s usually it. I am sure everyone is familiar with this kind of cost justification whether automated or in the form of some additional information submitted with a purchase order. In these days of ever-tighter monitoring of costs this is becoming a way of life.

I had an amusing thought about cost justifications - as open source content and software continues to be pulled into the fabric of enterprises at all layers, I wonder if will we reach the day when a department must provide a “cost justification” because they are using commercial software when an open source alternative exists? Will we see a day when such a rule is coded into the automated approval process for purchase orders? Imagine it.

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FUTURECORP: Cost Justification (from the office of the CFO)

Software Purchase Request – Justification Required
>>> You are requesting software priced at $500,000.00 when an open source alternative exists with no licensing costs. <<<

Please provide justification for this choice.

Request: Application Server

Purpose: Host dynamic web applications

Standard Features:
- J2EE compliant Application Server (Servlet, JSP, EJB3, JMS, JMX, web-services)
- High availability (clustering)
- Administration Console

Additional Features:
- Portal software
- Database Support

If your request requires commercial licenses, please list the additional features that make this expenditure necessary:

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Oh I know the world is not that simple, but there are certainly indications that organizations are building evaluation of open source software into their acquisition processes. Consider this memo from the Navy dated July, 2007:

“This memorandum provides guidance for all Navy and Marine Corps commands regarding the use of Open Source Software (OSS). The objective of the Department of Defense (DoD) goal of achieving an interoperable net-centric environment is to improve the war fighter's effectiveness through seamless access to critical information. A key piece in supporting the DoD goal is the ability to utilize OSS as part of the Department of the Navy’s (DON) Information Technology (IT) portfolio.”

As confidence in open source increases and there is assessment criteria based on core features, it’s not really too hard to imagine the spirit of this “cost justification” becoming reality.