by Savio Rodrigues

Survey: Pure play OSS vendors to lag behind Platform vendors in 2012

analysis
Mar 25, 20082 mins

Today at OSBC, the results of the North Bridge Venture Partners' annual "Future of Open Source" survey were released. Try as I may, I could not find out who the respondents were (i.e. developers, CIOs, the Asay family, FSJ, etc) or what the sample size was. You can see a summary of key findings at the bottom of this page. Here are two findings not included in the key findings list. Head on over to chart 9/16 to

Today at OSBC, the results of the North Bridge Venture Partners’ annual “Future of Open Source” survey were released. Try as I may, I could not find out who the respondents were (i.e. developers, CIOs, the Asay family, FSJ, etc) or what the sample size was.

You can see a summary of key findings at the bottom of this page. Here are two findings not included in the key findings list.

Head on over to chart 9/16 to the question asking “Who will command the majority of commercial OS software revenue (non consulting) in 2012?” Yes, 15% of respondents went with pure play vendors like Red Hat. However, over 2x that figure went with platform vendors like IBM, Oracle, SAP (?) and Sun.

Even more interesting, chart 11/16 asked: “Can a startup software vendor realistically enter the (enterprise) market with a product/service that is NOT open source?” Nearly 80% of respondents disagreed with the statement. Now, if you’re a VC, and you see the type of money that closed-source vendors can generate vs. OSS counterparts, (i.e. vmware vs. Xensource) are you going to think twice about the “should this be open sourced or not” decision?

PS: I should state: “The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.”