Enterprises flocking to open source software

Over half of enterprises are planning to adopt open source software platforms as part of a strategy to gain a competitive advantage, research from Gartner has found.

The analyst firm said that 46 per cent of businesses use open source in specific departments and for specific projects, while 22 per cent have adopted open source consistently across all departments and 21 per cent are evaluating its advantages.

Just under a third of IT leaders questioned cited flexibility, increased innovation, shorter development times, faster procurement processes and gaining a competitive advantage as reasons for adopting open source.

"As external service providers emerge to support commercial offerings, open source is and will continue to be used in non-mission-critical and mission-critical environments," said Laurie Wurster, a research director at Gartner.

"Although a search for reducing costs by adopting open source continues to be a major driver, with this survey we see more respondents looking at open source as having much greater value than simply getting something for free."

Wurster added that greater in-depth understanding and access to the necessary skill sets will see enterprises continuing to fund new open source deployments.

Enterprise open source adoption is expected to hit 30 per cent within the next 18 months, according to Gartner, representing a three-fold increase in the past five years.

Gartner also found that the decrease in use of proprietary software over the same five-year period correlates with the rise in open source use.

However, internally developed software has also increased, suggesting that open source is used most often in conjunction with internally built software rather than as a complete replacement for proprietary software.