Europe leads in adoption of open source

Europe leads in adoption of open source

Survey concentrated on three key areas within open source software; awareness and adoption levels, benefits and barriers to adoption; and the evolution of open source Business Intelligence

Monday, September 29, 2008

Survey Highlights

* The figures show that Europe leads the way in its preference for open source platforms, particularly in the deployment of new applications, and replacement of outdated systems, with France and Germany at the forefront.

* When French respondents were asked about the extent to which open source software (OSS) is considered when procuring software, close to two-thirds (61.6 percent) stated that it is either the preferred option, or explicitly considered as an option when procuring software. This is a significant statistic, exceeded only by Germany (63.6 percent).

* The findings tally with those of analysts including Forrester, which reported earlier this year that Europe is leading in the adoption of enterprise open source. This years Actuate Annual Open Source Survey confirms that just over half (51 percent) of German respondents are actively using OSS, 43 percent for the UK, 42 percent for France and 40 percent for North America.

* Digging deeper into organisations’ approaches to OSS, Actuate found, in the UK, that the proportion of respondents believing that the benefits of Open Source software outweigh the inhibitors has increased this year to 54.0 percent (from 45.3 percent in 2007). This figure rises to 65.4 percent in France, North America 53.5 percent and Germany 48.6 percent.

* Persisting barriers to adoption include a lack of in-house skills to implement OSS (cited by 58.2 percent) – overtaking perceived issues with the availability of long-term support. This suggests not only that more organisations have progressed further with their investigations into the value of open source, to have come to this conclusion, but also that the skills are harder to find because of the greater adoption of OSS across
businesses generally.

"The findings confirm that open source is not a passing fad, but is being broadly recognised and embraced as offering organisations sustained competitive advantage. What’s more, Europe is leading the way, spearheaded by the substantial markets of Germany and France,” said Nobby Akiha, SVP of Marketing, Actuate.

©CIOL Bureau

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