If you do not understand what proprietary technology is, it is important for you to read this article.

First, lets start with a simple definition courtesy of Wikipedia: The word "proprietary" indicates that a party, or proprietor, exercises private ownership, control or use over an item of property, usually to the exclusion of other parties.

I founded a company a few years ago that developed a flash content management system. It was costly to support, and open source technologies far outpaced our development. Instead of integrating the tool and releasing it to the open source community, it was coveted. The experience of support, development, flexibility and security was enough to turn me away from that method of thinking. Keeping technology within the confines of a small business ties the client to a system of thinking that is not in their best interest or the end user's.

Irving Wladawsky-Berger, Chairman Emeritus, IBM Academy of Technology and Visiting Professor of Engineering Systems, MIT said in an interview, "In the old days, maybe 10 years ago, a business thought everything they did had to be proprietary and intellectual property (IP) had to be protected against all comers," Now, though, "if you really want to tap into the energy of communities out there, you need to balance your proprietary approach to IP with a much more open, collaborative approach."

Whether you are in a banking environment or a small to large business, we leverage far to much proprietary technology as it is. Think about the core system you survive off of or your online banking system. Government's and companies worldwide who tittered on the brink of darkness wondering if our Blackberry's were still going to operate. Desktops, databases, servers and the list goes on.

Going the proprietary route locks buyers into a single vendor, which is too risky for most CIOs given the topsy-turvy nature of the technology business.

We have to find a way to mitigate the enormous risks of investing into a technology that leverages secrets that you will never own. On Matt Asay's Cnet blog he says it well, “In the proprietary world, the customers buy on hype and then, hundreds of thousands of dollars (or millions) into the snafu, they ring support to try to make the disaster less painful.”
But, leveraging a balance in open source is not only due to product ownership and standards, but, on the cost benefit as well.

It may be surprising to note that the debate among corporate IT buyers: industry standards or proprietary technology, that standards have won.

We cannot over look the compliance and regulation overload for many businesses that stretch IT budgets. Nor can we forget the marketers who are straddling a generational divide between the traditional customer and the disparately desired new customer who makes their decisions largely based on technological savveyness. Your departments budget is maxed too.
It is my belief from experience on both sides, that mitigating risk and having ownership over the technology you purchase is important.We do not have the time to keep building houses of technology. We need to build a house and maintain it, extend it and benefit from it for longer periods of time. We cannot as stewards to our organizations buy a new iPod every other month when a new one comes out.

Sun Microsystems President Jonathan Schwartz described what he called the "participation age" based on open-source software and its ability to draw new programmers and new economies into the computing realm and that is the philosophy that drives the products and services of theWEBcentric.

And what about support. We leverage open source projects that are not only built off of standards but are some of the most widely supported on the internet. How can a small business today compete with hundreds and thousands of developers from the global community working toward a single goal? How can a business, small or large, compete with the support that there is to be found in these communities? How can they compete on price? The answer: they cannot.

And when someone asks about the security, many companies site the decision to select open source as better then their proprietary counter parts. In fact, according to IDC's latest study on open source trends and challenges, security was the top reason for deploying open source technology, followed by budget constraints and the availability of better management tools and utilities. "The results indicate that organizations perceived open source technology as providing better security compared to proprietary products," said Prianka Srinivasan, a market analyst for IDC Asia-Pacific.

In March, the Navy announced that it will only acquire systems based on open technologies and standards. Vice Adm. Mark Edwards, deputy chief of naval operations for communications said, “The days of proprietary technology must come to an end. We will no longer accept systems that couple hardware, software and data. Edwards went on to say, “By using an open network architecture, the Navy could rapidly upgrade its capabilities and handle increases for demand.”

Marketing and IT folks have a lot to ponder in the decision between proprietary and open source approaches. But, with the cost, security, standards based development, support, and the vetted nature of the technology the choice seems clear. The deputy chief of naval operations for communications said it best, “The failure to lead in technology could have dire consequences,” that is a statement that applies to all of our businesses.