For companies willing to make the necessary investments in people and processes, open-source e-commerce can pave the way to a more productive and future-ready business model. But first, what is “open-source software”? The term open-source refers to something that people can modify and share because its design is publicly accessible. Open-source projects, products, or initiatives embrace and celebrate principles of open exchange, collaborative participation, rapid prototyping, transparency, meritocracy, and community-oriented development. When it applies to software, it refers to software with source code that anyone can inspect, modify, and enhance.
This model is the opposite of “proprietary” or “closed source” software – the type that only the original authors can legally copy, inspect, and alter. And that’s good news for any business that uses the internet and can benefit from incorporating open-source software into its business processes. It’s particularly good news for businesses that are active in the e-commerce arena – which today is nearly every single enterprise trying to maintain a strong market position in an increasingly digital world.
Open-source software has evolved to the point where it can provide a broad range of benefits to e-commerce, such as speed, low cost of ownership, and flexibility, to name just a few. While companies are often concerned about finding talent that can work within OSS technologies, the ability to tap into larger global communities of collaborators allows for much smaller in-house software development teams. These specialists are finding that a popular OSS design choice is to adopt JavaScript as a programming language across both the front end and back end of e-commerce applications. Since the JavaScript OSS ecosystem is increasingly popular, robust, and high quality, this use alone can allow for increased development speed, simplification of recruitment and access to top talent. In fact, according to Developer Economics, 12.4 million software developers were using JavaScript in 2020, making it the most popular programming language across the globe.
Let’s factor in that OSS is no less secure than proprietary software – and in fact, some companies using OSS have increased control in how they address security issues, due to access to the open-source community and the thousands of experts who address bug issues – and one thing becomes clear. Companies that have decided to invest in OSS can really deliver on their e-commerce strategies. And these same companies can truly maximize this process by partnering with one of the leading BPO outsourcing companies. Anexa is an award-winning outsourcing pioneer that has set the gold standard in customer service and CX, along with key non-core processes that can drain a company’s focus and efficiency. As an accredited industry leader, Anexa can pick up the virtual pieces and manage as much, or as little of your business activities as you need, while you’re figuring out how to recreate and re-establish your critical e-commerce business practices in a post-pandemic world.
Want to learn more? We’re Anexa – reach out today.