"It has given us big leverage with vendors because they know we have the capability not to use their products," Brum says. "When someone like IBM finds out you're looking at open source they often will drop their prices."
That's not to say there won't be a place for both open source and proprietary software in enterprise portfolios. In a February report titled "Open Source Solutions Will Restructure the Software Industry," Gartner's Driver stresses that the open source movement won't destroy industry giants such as IBM and Microsoft.
"It will place increased pressure on traditional vendors to more-aggressively innovate, improve quality and drive higher value in their own products as they endeavor to counter this growing competitive threat," he writes.
All of which is good news for end users.
"There are a lot of market forces that are on the side of open source," Garden Grove's Proffitt says. "It's kind of a natural evolution of software, that a number of underlying components will be commoditized."
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