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« Real-Time Data Availability? Why Not 'Good Enough' Availability? | Main | World's Biggest Time Waster: Reconciliation » October 26, 2007Survey Finds Open Source Wide, Not Deep, at Data Sites
I recently analyzed and wrote up a survey for the Independent Oracle Users Group which sought to drill down on the prevalence of open-source solutions within data management environments. The survey was sponsored by MySQL and administered by Unisphere Research. MySQL was not seeking data on whether their open source database was displacing Oracle; rather, it wanted to get a lay of the land for open source adoption across other parts of the technology stack. A total of 226 companies participated in the survey. Since this survey was conducted among members of the Oracle user group, it involved companies that are typically on the larger side -- in fact, 28% reported that they represented operations of $1 billion or more a year. What we found was that open source is prevalent at many levels of the enterprise, and most organizations intend to increase their use of open source over the coming year. However, adoption does not run deep. The survey found that Web servers, operating systems, application servers and databases are the four most common open sources technologies in use. However, when it comes to support of mission-critical enterprise applications, the reach of open source into the enterprise is wide but not deep. In a majority of cases (52%), fewer than 10% of enterprise application portfolios touch open source systems. Only about 13% of the survey respondents said that a majority of their mission-critical applications are tied into open source systems, up from nine percent in a similar survey conducted last year. Beyond the "utility" parts of the stack that help run IT systems and operations, there is a sizable minority of companies that are also using open-source enterprise applications. For example, 27% said they were running open-source CRM applications, and another 19% were using open-source-based content management software. Another 15% reported they use open-source-based business intelligence software, and another 15% use open-source ERP. Why do these companies like open source? Cost savings is the number one driver. Freedom from vendor lock-in came in second. The leading limitation of open source? Respondents across the board felt that enterprise support was not as robust as what is associated with commercial software. Open source adoption should keep growing over the coming year. A majority of respondents, 52 percent, said their use of open source software will increase over the coming year, versus only two percent that foresee decreased usage. Thirty-seven percent said their current levels of adoption will remain the same. Posted by joemckendrick in Data Management | Digg This | Add to del.icio.us Trackback Pings TrackBack URL for this entry: |
