According to a recent IDC study, the market for open-source software has been accelerated by both the slow economy and increased acceptance from enterprise customers.
According to a recent IDC study, the
market for open-source software has been accelerated by both the slow economy
and increased acceptance from enterprise customers.
The IDC study, "Worldwide Open
Source Software 2009-2013 Forecast," showed that worldwide revenue
from open-source software (OSS)
will grow at a 22.4 percent rate to reach $8.1 billion by 2013. This forecast
is considerably higher than 2008 for three reasons, IDC
said. One was that this study included more open-source projects than last
year's. Another reason was that open-source software has had a much higher
level of acceptance over the past 12 months than previously expected. And the
third reason was the economy. IDC said the
recession helped to spur the uptake and use of open-source software in the
closing months of 2008.
Regarding the greater acceptance of open source, IDC
said with large software vendors such as IBM,
Sun, Dell, Hewlett-Packard and Oracle making significant amounts of revenue
from their activities with and support of OSS,
more enterprise customers become more accepting of open-source
software. This has greatly aided mainstream adoption and acceptance of OSS.
"The open-source software market has seen a strong boost from the
current economic crisis," said Michael Fauscette, group vice president of
Software Business Solutions at IDC, in a
statement. "OSS is
increasingly a part of the enterprise software strategy of leading businesses
and is seeing mainstream adoption at a strong pace. As the overall software industry
continues to consolidate, it will be key for OSS
vendors to reach scale if they plan to continue as a stand-alone
business."
In addition, the IDC study indicated that
more vendors are beginning to leverage OSS
to enhance their competitive advantage and this should help to increase the
adoption of OSS and overall growth
for vendors. The study also showed that hybrid business models are increasing,
with closed-source vendors offering more OSS solutions, on-premises software
vendors offering SAAS (software-as-a-service), SAAS vendors offering on-premises
versions, and OSS vendors offering both open-source and proprietary solutions.
Darryl K. Taft covers the development tools and developer-related issues beat from his office in Baltimore. He has more than 10 years of experience in the business and is always looking for the next scoop. Taft is a member of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and was named 'one of the most active middleware reporters in the world' by The Middleware Co. He also has his own card in the 'Who's Who in Enterprise Java' deck.
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