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Software as a service to impact on open source growth

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CIOL Bureau
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SAN FRANCISCO, USA: North Bridge Venture Partners has announced the results of its annual Future of Open Source Survey.

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Conducted in partnership with The 451 Group, the 2011 survey involved more than 20 industry collaborators and polled a wide variety of members of the open source community on the important issues, opportunities and expectations of the industry for 2011 and beyond.

Also read: Choosing the right cloud platform

The results of the survey, now in its fifth year, reveal that open source is now fully embraced by both the public and private sectors, and is being implemented across a wide variety of markets and applications such as social publishing and big data.

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Survey responses also show that the future is bright for open source. Emerging technology segments such as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), private cloud, public cloud, and mobile are driving growth in open source.

Also read: Open Source: Key enabler for saas development

Key findings:

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* Respondents have identified SaaS, cloud and mobile as the main areas that will have a dramatic impact on open source and that are driving growth.

* In 2010 there were 3,800 new open source based projects in mobile, with 94 percent targeting Android and Apple iOS, more than double the number in 2009.

* Their are now more than 470 open source projects targeting cloud computing.

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* For the first time, supporting the fact that open source has truly gone mainstream, end users accounted for 60 percent of the survey respondents and the quality of responses continues to increase, spreading across all levels of IT management from developers to a large number of C-level executives.

* 56 percent of respondents believe that more than half of software purchases made in the next five years will be open source.

* 95 percent of respondents noted that a turbulent economy continues to be “good” for OSS, though for the first year ever, lower cost has been overtaken by freedom from vendor lock-in as what makes OSS more attractive.

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When asked about revenue generating strategies likely to create value for vendors, 56 percent of the respondents said that an annual, repeatable support and service agreement was the most likely.

Michael Skok, general partner, North Bridge Venture Partners said, "The results of this year’s survey clearly demonstrate that open source has gone mainstream not just within the vendor community, but within customer organizations of all types and sizes."

“The Future of Open Source Survey provides critical insight into the wants and needs of end users that will help shape the evolution of vendor business strategies designed to meet the long-term needs of the industry, ” said Matt Aslett, senior analyst, enterprise software, The 451 Group.

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