At least one group, the Business Readiness Rating (BRR) program, says that the best way to do that is with a little social networking help from your friends, colleagues and even your competitors.

Created last August, the BRR Monday announced its latest move -- an effort to invite IT people from about 40 select large companies to participate in what is essentially a high-tech coffee klatch where open-source experiences and expertise can be shared. The goal is to help corporate users gain confidence and credibility with non-proprietary software in their operations.

The new "corporate use" branch of the BRR project was announced at the Linux/Open-Source on Wall Street Show and Conference in the Roosevelt Hotel here with plans to create a targeted online community and periodic get-togethers where open-source applications can be discussed.

The idea, said Murugan Pal, co-founder of the BRR and founder and chief technology officer of Redwood City, Calif.-based open-source infrastructure vendor SpikeSource Inc., is that by talking with peers at other companies, IT people can gain critical information that they could not easily find on even the best open-source products among the more than 100,000 open-source projects that are available.

"Here you are using open-source as an enabler to solve your business problems," he said.