The importance of a sound open source supply chain management strategy

As part of an open source software strategy, organizations are increasingly hosting curated OSS package management and artifact repositories internally to mitigate risk and reduce developer friction.

For modern digital enterprises, application development is very different from traditional methods.

Applications are no longer developed from scratch but use a hybrid development approach that includes third-party and open source software (OSS) components integrated with natively developed business logic. Increasingly, application development is taking advantage of OSS components to improve development velocity and leverage the innovation available within the larger OSS community.

While OSS has a reputation for being "free," organizations need to understand and plan for several hidden costs ahead of using open source software for application development.

In this spotlight paper by IDC, Jim Mercer, the research director of devops and devsecops, discusses how using a curated internal repository of open source software can improve efficiency and reduce security risks.