It’s good for a company to have the technology it needs, however, putting that tech to use is another matter. Few companies are staffed with enough tech wizards, and for technology to expand into the mainstream, developers must make it easy for non-tech businesses to integrate new innovations in open source software, according to Jono Bacon (pictured), founder of Jono Bacon Consulting.

“What we stand to see more and more of is the formalization of the software development lifecycle. It’s not merely just writing code anymore,” Bacon said. “It’s about automated testing and continuous delivery and deployment in all these different pieces.”

Bacon spoke with John Furrier (@furrier) and Stu Miniman (@stu), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the Open Source Summit in Los Angeles. They discussed how companies outside tech look at open source and managing big tech change-over projects. (* Disclosure below.)

Putting the open-source pieces together into a system

An important aspect of technology these days is how companies put its hardware and software components together. What options do they choose and how do they set it all up? Working standards for putting together systems are becoming more common in the industry, according to Bacon, who added that is important for these technologies as they broaden out into the wider business community.

Users must have confidence in their technology, and for those outside the tech world, open source is somewhat alien and they don’t know what a successful setup looks like, Bacon explained. For consumer technology, most people expect to see a finish line, not a broad and diverse community of developers. People who use open source for the first time tend to be a little confused, even when the installation goes well, he added.

“First of all, make sure everybody’s got the same sense of what the problem is that you want to solve,” Bacon said. Often, people think they’re working on the same problem, but they’re really on separate grades entirely. It’s vital, especially across departments, for everyone to know the key themes that will bring success.

There’s also a need to break broad strategies down into smaller pieces. Companies often get stuck in the options. While they’re aware of the choices, the whole is so big that it’s hard to bring into their organization, Bacon stated.

“To me, you need that combination of a permissive top-down approach and then you need to break the strategy and execution down into smaller, manageable pieces,” Bacon said.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of Open Source Summit 2017. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for Open Source Summit 2017. Neither The Linux Foundation nor Red Hat Inc. have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE