What are the biggest risks to your business ? Things you can't control. External influences. Like: tax rates, the Press, IT Suppliers.
Closed-Source IT suppliers tie you in to their product as closely as possible by keeping all the technical details of their product from you. You end up with your hard-fought-for company data, which you paid for to be gathered, stored in proprietary formats that can only be read by your Supplier's proprietary software.
If your proprietary software supplier goes out of business, or you fall out with them, the risk to your business is increased because the data your company depends upon is stored in their proprietary format.
You're not in control of your own data, nor your own business infrastructure.
Reduce your risk and reduce external influences on your business by using Open Source Software. By having all the technical details (the source code) of your software available, you have ownership of your own data.
Fall out with your current IT supplier ? Get another one - the new supplier will be able to support your software because they have access to the source code.
Reduced Risk: should your current supplier of software go out of business, because you have the source code to the application upon which your business depends, the loss of a supplier should not affect your business.
