"Houston, We Have Open Source"

Not to pimp any one company's products (and I have no connection at all with them), but here's a new study, The Growth of Open Source Software in Organizations, that surveyed a large number of organizations in the U.S. -- enterprises and public agencies -- on their use of open source software.

Key findings of the survey:

* A clear majority of U.S. companies and government institutions already use open source software, and bigger companies are even more likely to be open source users. All of the 156 companies surveyed with at least $50 million in annual revenue use open source.

* According to the survey, the main drivers for adoption of open source are: lower costs, faster deployment and better security.

* Key continuing barriers: lack of understanding among decision-makers about benefits of open source; legal/licensing issues; support after installation; and corporate policies that do not create incentives to lower costs of commercial software.

As I have been saying in all my presentations on our Roadmap, an important step in better managing ICT environments is to acknowledge the presence of open source already in your ecosystem.

It's like the first step in AA -- admission.

Or, put another way, "Houston, we have open source."

As this study shows, the vast majority of enterprises and governments already have open source in their ecosystem. From awareness comes wisdom.

Also, here's a new article on public sector use of open source from ComputerWorld Singapore (which includes a nice photo of my friend Tom Rabon from RedHat).