In March, Forrester Consulting released a report entitled “Open Source Software’s Expanding Role in the Enterprise.” You can find it here.
The report is very interesting in my opinion, though it is skewed by the criteria used to include companies in the research. According to the report, “only companies that indicated that they had at least evaluated open source software were included.” While a skewed sample of this type yields richer information about the nature of open source adoption in enterprises, it does not yield a true percentage of companies over all that are using open source software.
One of the things I found fascinating about the report is that it is a write-up on research into the attitudes and behaviors of companies. It is a measurement of perception, and behavior based on that perception; it is not a write up on the objective benefits (however you would figure that) of using or not using open source. After all, when it comes to adoption, perception is reality. The report points that out. The report implies that two of the areas where perception may not line up with objective reality are quality and security.
When asked what led enterprises to adopt open source systems, there was high importance placed on supporting open standards, and the ability to use the software without restrictions. Of a slightly lower importance were not being locked into one vendor, and the fact that there is no license fee for open source. Perhaps surprisingly, access to the source and the right to distribute derivative works were not considered important by most respondents.
The highest scoring barrier to adoption is the availability of service and support. There are many open source systems that have well defined support infrastructures, provided either by the software community/company, or by third party companies, but there are many more where there is no clear mechanism for support. The other concerns felt by over 50% of the respondents were software security (this concern is ubiquitous I think, regardless of delivery model), lack of internal skills, and product immaturity.
Something that surprised me is that just over 50% of the respondents that use open source software use it in mission-critical applications. It speaks to the growing acceptance of open source software as enterprise-grade systems. In the final analysis, it seems clear that open source software is making real inroads into the enterprise IT infrastructure. As a development paradigm, it has come of age.
