Forrester: Open source is everywhere, and increasingly used for mission-critical applications

Forrester just issued an insightful report on the increasing adoption of open source in the enterprise. The verdict? Open source is everywhere, and taking an ever-increasing piece of the enterprise pie:

Forrester has observed a pattern: Once companies start using open source software, usage expands from simple applications (e.g., file and print serving and email) to mission-critical application areas including customer-facing applications. Data from the survey on which this report is based indicates that a large majority of companies that considered open source ended up adopting it, and more than half have adopted it for mission-critical applications. Each industry has its own definition of mission-critical, of course, but the key point is that enterprises feel confident enough in the quality and security of the technology to use open source in areas that affect revenue and customers.

So, why do enterprises buy into open source in copious amounts? Several reasons:

Interestingly, but not surprisingly, few enterprises actually want to collaborate with the open source communities – corporate or otherwise – that they’re buying into. Nearly 66% just want the code. I would guess that the number of enterprises working within communities will increase over time, but not by much. In my experience, even companies that collaborate with open source projects tend to do it on a walled garden/private approach. In the commercial open source world, for example, they may well want to work with a company’s developers to modify the source code, but they don’t want to give it back (for various reasons).

Also interesting in this is that roughly half the users couldn’t care less about viewing source code. Still, the fact that they don’t view the source code doesn’t mean that they don’t benefit from its availability. As I’ve written before, enterprises derive benefits from source code availability even if they don’t exercise the choice to view/modify it.

Surprisingly, the biggest inhibitor to open source adoption seems to continue to be a lack of support/services. I’ve got to believe that this concern stems more from ignorance than reality, as any moderately used open source project now has at least one credible source of support for it, but, regardless, the concern is still there:

Companies currently using open source software still have concerns. Their leading concern is the availability of service and support for the open source software that they are using. Almost 75% of the respondents selected this as an ongoing concern. While many popular packages, such as Linux, JBoss, and others have support services readily available from commercial open source companies, there are hundreds of open source projects for which the source of support is unclear or for which support is provided by suppliers previously unknown to the customer. The desire to engage a trusted supplier for services came through clearly in our follow-up interviews as well.

What kind of services do they want from these trusted suppliers?

Unfortunately for the smaller providers, most of these require a big company presence. This is not as much of an issue for company-led open source projects – they have the same constraints as any startup, but no more so (and arguably fewer). But for commnity-led projects, big system integrators play a crucial role in their adoption: Unisys, Accenture, SAIC, and other large SIs are driving this kind of open source into the enterprise. It’s not that they do better work than their smaller counterparts – in my experience, a well-focused, small SI often does superior work – but that they have the necessary credibility with their Fortune 1000 counterparts.

Lastly, after nearly 10 years in the open source business world, it’s amazing to see how far enterprises have come in terms of mission-critical open source usage. More than half of the enterprises Forrester surveyed are using open source in mission-critical applications. The number would have been a rounding error even three years ago. Open source is exploding.

As for where it’s being used most, that’s interesting, too:

Among those that are using open source software, 82% were using it for non-mission-critical applications. This is a catch-all term that is hard to define. More important is the 79% of respondents who responded that they were using open source for application infrastructure. This includes everything from Web servers to application servers and databases.

When you consider that a majority of those surveyed indicatd that “open source was playing a role in helping to lower their companies’ overall operating costs,” and that it “played an important role in improving the quality of their…products and business processes,” you start to see the appeal of open source.

Yes, proprietary vendors will continue to sell software. But, if open source businesses are growing at 100% – 500% (or more) per year, and proprietary vendors are growing at a much, much slower rate of growth (and they are), perhaps open source will overtake the proprietary vendors? Maybe in 10 years’ time? Or 20? I’m not sure, but I know that I’d rather work for a company that provides the benefits above at a superior cost/value (also noted above) than to work for the alternative.

Wouldn’t you?

And if you’re an enterprise looking at the numbers/data in Forrester’s report, you’ve got to strongly question why you continue to squander your resources on software licenses when you could instead invest in software communities and services. The grass really is greener on the open source side of the fence. 🙂