Should you buy software to do a specific job or write it yourself in-house or even use an open source solution?

This is always a question that is bounced around companies, especially software companies that have the resources to be able to do something themselves. However nowadays the answer is not always as straight forward as you think.

A few years ago most of the time you would build the applications from the ground up in-house and that would be it. However in recent years with the advent of more and more stable open source solutions this is a question that has to be seriously thought through. There are many solutions out there, which can help you get of the ground with you applications and mean that you can focus on delivering value to your product rather than doing the basic things such as registrations, sign in etc.

Take for example something like Drupal. Here is a system that provides many of the fundamental foundations for many systems. It is modular in design which means that it can be extended beyond the standard capabilities. What this means is that a system can now be put together for a much lower cost with the basically functionality in place and then allow you to focus on the core things that will make you money. A couple of years ago I created another business, www.skibits.co.uk, and built the whole website myself. However updating it was time consuming and the maintenance was very high. I soon switched to using Drupal and some of the standard modules, which then allowed me to focus more on adding true value to the site rather than focusing on the standard functionality that would not provide a return.

There are still times when building in-house is the most suitable solutions, but it is still something that has to be carefully thought through in detail because savings can be made.

Here I have used Drupal as an example but there are many different solutions out there which fall into the same category. Purchasing a solution can also save you a huge amount of money in the long term. You just need to weigh up the pros and cons first.

Over the last couple of weeks I have spoken to several people about this topic and it is still amazing how some of then do not think things through properly and make the wrong choices. Quite often they will talk about who owns the IP of the software, but again you have to be careful as exactly what you are talking about. Creating a registration and sign in process and owning that is not going to make you rich but adding value to another part of the system may do so.