The vast majority of respondents to this year’s Future of Open Source Survey say they are using open-source technology primarily to avoid vendor lock-in. In fact, 95 percent of respondents cite this as the cause. In previous years, the chief driver of open-source adoption was lowered software costs.
North Bridge Venture Partners announced the results of its fifth annual Future of Open Source Survey at the Open Source Business Conference in San Francisco on May 16, 2011. More than 450 respondents took part in the 2011 survey, which included both vendors and IT managers, ranging from developers to executives.
While reducing software costs is still important, ranking second in importance, organizations are turning to open source to help them avoid vendor lock-in not only from traditional software vendors but also from proprietary cloud providers. Public sector adoption and increased experience using open-source software are also cited as drivers for adoption.
About 25 percent of respondents say that more than three-quarters of their organization’s deployed software is open source. More than half (56 percent) of respondents expect that open source will account for more than 50 percent of the software they will buy over the next five years.
There are still some barriers to open-source adoption; 42 percent of respondents are concerned about the lack of internal skills; and 41 percent cite unfamiliarity with open source.
For more, read the eWeek article Open Source Software Going Mainstream in Enterprises: Survey.
