The Open Source Business Conference (OSBC) is in full swing in San Francisco this week, and, in conjunction with it, Black Duck Software and North Bridge Venture Partners are out with the results of their 2012 Future of Open Source Survey. These annual surveys have a good record of picking key open source trends and providing good forecasts. For example, the same survey has made accurate predictions about the cloud computing and mobile technology scenes in recent years, as well as the rise of open source Business Intelligence software. Here are some of the findings from the 2012 survey.
There were 740 respondents for this year's survey, and non-vendors made up 59 percent of respondents. Among respondents, 62 percent said that open source applications and platforms represented more than half of their software deployments. When asked what makes open source attractive, respondents said "freedom from vendor lock-in," "lower costs," and "quality," were paramount.
As in previous versions of this survey, though, there were some familiar complaints. When asked about the biggest barriers to open source adoption, respondents said "unfamiliarity with solutions," "lack of internal technical skills," and "lack of formal support" were key barriers. Support issues have arisen in numerous annual versions of this survey.
In the past, the Future of Open Source Survey has made accurate predictions about industries that are going to be profoundly affected by open source.
In this year's survey, the following industries were cited from that perspective:
Data management 44%
Health/Medical/Life Sciences 23%
Financial Services 12%
When choosing open source projects to deploy, survery respondents rated "Project Maturity" as a paramount factor. Respondents also provided their short lists of "hot" open source companies. Red Hat topped these lists, with Acquia, Canonical and SugarCRM ranking highly as well.
No comments:
Post a Comment