[H-GEN] [Fwd: INFO: Confidence in Open Source Growing]

[Arjen Lentz]

[ Humbug *General* list - semi-serious discussions about Humbug and     ]
[ Unix-related topics. Posts from non-subscribed addresses will vanish. ]

Hi all,

Quite an interesting survey...

Regards,
Arjen.


-----Forwarded Message-----

http://www2.cio.com/research/surveyreport.cfm?id=51

Confidence in Open Source Growing  

Jan 07, 2003

By Lorraine Cosgrove Ware

Executive Summary

According to our November, 2002 survey of 375 IT professionals, the 
IT community is growing more comfortable with the open-source 
development model, reporting that open source will dominate as their 
Web server application platform and server operating system in five 
years. The majority (64%) of companies surveyed are using open 
source, most frequently as a server operating system and for Web 
development. 

CIOs say the greatest benefits from using open source are lower total 
cost of ownership, lower capital investment and greater reliability 
and uptime compared to their existing systems. IT executives report 
that open source provides greater flexibility, control and faster, 
cheaper application development. All things equal, the majority of IT 
executives surveyed said they would choose open source for a new 
implementation over a proprietary vendor solution. 

CIO Research Predictions 

Adoption of open source into the enterprise is gaining momentum and 
will continue at a slow and steady pace. Users are beginning to view 
many software applications as commodity products with little 
differentiation between vendor offerings. Open source provides 
organizations with another compelling choice that offers the 
flexibility, quality and reliability necessary to implement many 
functional applications to run a business. Faced with budget 
constraints, open source allows CIOs to get started on IT initiatives 
that cannot wait for funding before being deployed. 

Key Findings 

Increasing comfort level

More than half (62%) of survey respondents said they would be more 
inclined to select an open-source solution versus a proprietary 
solution, all things being equal including capital investment, 
administration and maintenance costs, performance. Many of the survey 
respondents cited lower long-term costs, flexibility, easier 
customization and no ties to one vendor as reasons for selecting open 
source over a proprietary solution. 

The open-source development process, where volunteer developers 
contribute code over the Internet, does not appear to be a concern 
for the majority of IT executives in our survey. When asked how 
comfortable their organization was with the open-source development 
process compared to the traditional proprietary development process 
(full-time, paid developers and code managed and organized 
centrally), 27% said they were more comfortable with open source and 
36% said they had the same level of comfort as with the proprietary 
process. Just over one third (36%) said their organization was less 
comfortable with the open-source development process than with the 
proprietary process. 

Sources for code

Close to half (42%) of CIOs surveyed said that focused open-source 
vendors like RedHat were the primary provider of open source code and 
14% listed Web open-source development portals as the main source. 
Only 10% listed larger hardware and software vendors like IBM and Sun 
as their source for open-source code. 

Uses of open source

IT executives in our survey reported that they are most frequently 
using open source as a server operating system (53%), for Web 
development (35%), security (29%), database (29%)and client operating 
systems (29%). 

The future of software 

Application and operating system software, particularly e-mail, Web 
server, and server operating systems, are inching toward commodity 
markets where users will see little differentiation between 
offerings. When asked which systems or applications were commodities 
currently, meaning that there is little distinction between vendor 
offerings, respondents listed e-mail applications (52%), Web server 
applications (51%), server operating systems (41%) and database 
applications (27%) most frequently. 

Open source will continue to make inroads into the enterprise. Survey 
respondents reported that in five years, open source will be the 
their organizations predominant type of software for Web server 
applications (58%), server operating systems (54%), e-mail 
applications (39%) and database applications (33%). 

Methodology

CIOs survey on open source was administered online from November 1 
through November 30, 2002. Visitors to CIO.com and readers of the CIO 
Insider electronic newsletter were invited to take the survey. 
Results shown here are based on the responses of 375 IT 
professionals. (Not all respondents answered all questions.) 

Survey respondents represented a range of industries including 
computer-related (22%), manufacturing (14%), government (10%) and 
finance/banking/accounting (7%). 

In terms of title, 45% of the survey respondents were CIOs, CTOs or 
vice presidents in charge of IT. Others were directors or managers of 
IT (41%), and IT staff or consultants (14%). 

Close to half (46%) of the survey base worked at companies with fewer 
than 500 employees. Twenty-four percent were from companies with 500 
to 2,500 employees; 29% worked in companies with more than 2,500 
employees. 

When asked about company revenue, 57% reported annual company revenue 
of less than $100 million, and 23% reported revenue between $100 
million and $999.9 million. The remaining 21% reported company 
revenue greater than $1 billion. 

Fifty-seven percent of survey respondents listed Microsoft Windows or 
NT as their primary server computing platform and 20% listed Unix. 
Nine percent said that Linux was their primary server computing 
platform and 15% listed mainframe, minicomputer, Macintosh or other. 

-----end of forwarded msg-----


-- 
Purchase Training, Support, Licenses @ https://order.mysql.com/?marl
Brisbane  24-28 Feb 2003: MySQL/PHP, see www.mysql.com/training
Melbourne 24-28 Mar 2003: Using & Managing MySQL
   __  ___     ___ ____  __
  /  |/  /_ __/ __/ __ \/ /    Mr. Arjen G. Lentz <arjen at mysql.com>
 / /|_/ / // /\ \/ /_/ / /__   MySQL AB, Technical Writer, Trainer
/_/  /_/\_, /___/\___\_\___/   Brisbane, QLD Australia
       <___/   www.mysql.com

--
* This is list (humbug) general handled by majordomo at lists.humbug.org.au .
* Postings to this list are only accepted from subscribed addresses of
* lists 'general' or 'general-post'.  See http://www.humbug.org.au/