If you haven't got a programmers knowledge of IT and still need IT, you end up paying premium and buying from the safe big vendors. Unfortunately for the UK, that has lead to $4 billion in failed IT projects.
The UK has wasted over $4 billion on failed IT projects since 2000 precisely because only people with real programmer skill and experience can do the one thing that is the most difficult and critical tasks of all in IT: specify the requirements for a project.
I have several years of experience working with enterprise customers and I have never been on any successful project that didn't have anything but a really great requirement specification. Yet, I know theses are really hard to write. Part of the problem is that all abstractions leak to some degree as Joel Spolsky pointed out.
Buying form a major or minor vendor, closed or open source is more a question of how much you pay for success or failure. Success or failure depends on your requirements. If in doubt, buy consulting hours making that specification, it's the best money you will spend on that project.
Open source I tell my enterprise clients, are to be considered an insurance of support. If all else fails, if the company ends it product line, you still got the source.
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