Open-source uptake on the rise, according to Forrester
April 23, 2009 —
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From a list of 16 items asked of 2,000 software decision makers for 2009, the use of open-source software has risen to the top.
Those were the findings from Forrester Research’s April 7 report, “Open Source Software Goes Mainstream,” according to Forrester analyst Jeffrey Hammond.
These decision makers are looking for anything, especially in this economy, that can help them “go faster, cheaper, better,” Hammond said. “The mandate’s coming from higher up.”
Hammond said when software decision makers talk about their planning goals, items such as reducing cost, improving integration and staying innovative come up. “Only a few things,” including open source, “hit on all of these points,” he said.
“Open source is not as important as a planning goal, but it’s what can help [organizations] reach the goals that are important to them.”
Kim Weins, senior vice president of products and marketing at OpenLogic, which sells an open-source software provisioning platform, said adoption of open source has been happening, but that since the economic downturn, her company has seen a threefold increase in inquiries.
She related a story of a customer who needed to implement a piece of software, and after evaluating it and filling out the purchase order, was told by an executive to find an open-source alternative. Within a week, they had found the software, downloaded it, evaluated it and approved its use, saving the company US$1 million in the first year alone.
Beyond the economy, two factors seem to be driving open-source adoption, Hammond indicated. First, executives are seeing open source pop up widely; Facebook, Google and Yahoo all use open-source software, he said.
Second, companies are doing inventories of what developers have dragged in through the back door, and they are finding there is too much open source in their organization to stamp out. “Companies see they’re behind the curve and that open source can be strategic to them,” Hammond said.
Open source worth a lot
Meanwhile, a study done by Black Duck Software, which sells software that helps companies utilize open-source software, showed it would take $387 billion to recreate all the open-source code that exists now. That is based on an estimated 200,000 open-source projects and 4.9 billion lines of code, according to Peter Vescuso, Black Duck's executive vice president of marketing and business development.
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