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An organization's choice of either an open source or proprietary intranet software solution must be based on its own specific needs and resources -- not on what others are doing or saying. What worked for one company might not necessarily work for yours -- IT infrastructures are different, employees' technical skill levels are different, and budgets are different. You should never base your decision on the success or failure of another company's experiences.

In Part 1 and Part 2 of this series, I outlined the advantages of each solution. In this third and final part, I'll provide some hints and tips to help you make your own decision.

Consider a DIY open source solution if ...

1. You can't afford commercial intranet suites that are often sold at huge markups. Open source intranet software, user documentation, and community-based technical support are all provided free of charge.

2. Your company has very unique and business-specific requirements that can't be readily fulfilled with packaged, off-the-shelf software that usually only contains the most common and widely used features.

3. You have (preferably long-term) technical expertise -- either in-house or on contract -- in all the technologies used in your chosen open source solution stack.

4. Many of the technologies in your chosen open source solution stack are already in place in a production environment (or can be easily integrated into your production environment).

5. You want total freedom and control over every aspect of intranet development, end product use, and system ownership without being held within the confines and rules of a proprietary software's capabilities and terms of use.

6. You want to free yourself from vendor dependency and want to avoid tying yourself into any one particular software vendor's proprietary technologies.

7. You want to avoid constrictive, and often costly, commercial licensing agreements -- and possibly software bloat (ie, you'll end up paying for features you don't even need or want).

8. You want to control your own software upgrade cycle rather than have to wait for new releases -- that may or may not come -- from a proprietary software vendor.

9. You want to minimize total cost of ownership by avoiding the rolling costs often associated with proprietary, commercial software.

10. You want to avoid expensive technical support contracts or pay-per-call charges.

1. You have little-to-no technical expertise or software development experience to take on a DIY intranet solution stack.

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