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Yup. Buy, build, and borrow are pretty good categories. But sometimes you _think_ you're buying, but you really end up borrowing or even building. Other times, you can know and plan on "borrowing" or "building" even when you buy a proprietary vendor product. And as Ed mentions, another very important point -- it's also possible to succesfully plan on "buying" an open source product, when you've got a vendor contract from a reliable vendor for it. Jonathan Edward M. Corrado wrote: > Karen, > > I would argue that in the cases you described below, one is not simply > Buying. You are Buying+Building. Unfortunately sometimes decision > makers may not recognize this, or don't take it into account. I think > that is something that Jeremy hints at when he says Open Source can be > a buy. My take away in this regard is that there should be some > recognition in this document that most things will be a combination of > at least 2 of the 3 Bs. > > Edward > > > > On Fri, May 7, 2010 at 9:48 AM, Karen Coyle <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > >> Quoting "Frumkin, Jeremy" <[log in to unmask]>: >> >> >>> In general, a Buy approach is easiest to determine TCO, while a Build >>> approach is the most difficult. Generally, there are more unknowns with a >>> Build than there are with a Buy. The more unknowns, the greater risk of >>> inaccurate cost estimates. >>> >>> >> I know this is the common wisdom, but I've had experiences where Buy turned >> out to be much more expensive than expected. If the product is mature and >> stable and you expect to do almost no customizing, yes, then Buy is >> predictable. But if you're on the cutting edge, it's a new vendor offering, >> you expect to customize, then Buy can have all kinds of hidden costs. In the >> end, Buy can be more expensive than Build because you have to struggle with >> a product over which you have no control. >> >> When pitting Buy v. Borrow v. Build, functionality has to be taken into >> account. What do you want the software to do? How big is the market for your >> functionality? (that is, are vendors likely to step up to this plate?) Are >> vendors already offering this? >> >> kc >> >> -- >> Karen Coyle >> [log in to unmask] http://kcoyle.net >> ph: 1-510-540-7596 >> m: 1-510-435-8234 >> skype: kcoylenet >> >> > >