Business Innovation Homepage > Business Agility

Open source is no longer just about Linux and a handful of other popular platforms. As many IT executives are finding out, innovative open source products are emerging for virtually every type of software application—in support of a variety of business processes. Technology chiefs are also discovering that implementing open source in the enterprise can be tricky.

With the right approach and proper governance, an open source implementation can lead to significant cost savings and improved processes. Without adequate planning and controls, the consequences can be failed applications and unhappy end users and customers.

Open source software and related services continue to grow in importance within organizations, according to a report published in April by research firm IDC. A survey of 518 IT and line-of-business executives IDC conducted in December 2007 shows that almost 60% of the respondents said their company's spending on open source increased in 2007, in terms of relative percentage of IT spending.

Quality assurance, testing and certification of open source systems were rated as the fastest-growing services by survey respondents, who estimated their organizations’ spending on such services would increase 150% between 2007 and 2008. Cost savings remains the number one reason organizations adopt open source software, IDC says.

The firm’s research shows that the most common deployments of open source software occur within the application development and deployment software—or middleware—layer of the software stack, says Matt Lawton, p rogram director, Open Source Software Business Strategies, at IDC. Examples of these platforms include PHP, Perl, Red Hat, JBoss, Apache Tomcat, Apache HTTP Server and MySQL.

“The next most common layer for [open source] deployment is the system infrastructure layer, where various distributions of Linux are quite popular,” Lawton says. The application layer is an emerging area for open source software deployment, he says.

Among the more popular or fast-growing applications are Mozilla Firefox, a Web browser from the Mozilla Application Suite; OpenOffice.org, a cross-platform office application suite available for multiple operating systems; SugarCRM, a customer resource management (CRM) application; JasperReports, a Java reporting tool for developers; and Alfresco, an enterprise content management application including Web content management and document management software.

IDC research shows that the key drivers of open source software adoption among businesses are the lower initial cost, the total cost of ownership, product functionality, product performance and product quality.

“Things that are exclusive to [open source software] like the ability to read or modify the source code and the ability to redistribute the executable code are more important to ISVs and other IT solution providers than they are to end users,” Lawton says.

Organizations that implement open source are likely to encounter challenges, especially if they’re accustomed to acquiring all their software from developers of commercial packaged products. Procuring free software from development communities will involve some culture change, and IT needs to educate people in procurement, legal and other departments about open source.

IDC’s survey identified two key inhibitors to the adoption of open source: the risk of copyright or patent infringement, and the lack of availability of support.

“The second issue is the bigger issue in my opinion, but we are seeing signs of software and service providers stepping up to the challenge of providing comprehensive services” for open source, Lawton says.

Click here for more Business Agility articles