Winning the Enterprise

Laurie Wurster’s blog posting on Harvard Business Review, titled “Open Source Software Hits a Strategic Tipping Point”, presents the latest data to emerge from open source research at Gartner. The data collected from 547 IT leaders in 11 countries shows the following about open source usage in the enterprise: • 46.3% using open source for projects in some departments in the company • 22.3% using open source consistently in ALL departments • 11.0% using open source to gain a competitive advantage in the marketplace If you are interested in more of the details on this data I suggest you click over the to blog post to learn more and also see a great diagram showing the data results in a pie chart. My post today is just some thoughts on the data results listed by Laurie that I have copied above. In general, the data listed above is great news for open source as enterprise acceptance is moving from the trial stage to production. Only solid technology that not only solves a customer’s problem but also works can see adoption levels in the mid 40 percent. In fact, I would argue that the 46.3% figure is artificially low as most enterprise organizations are such a heterogeneous collection of technology that few people within an IT department are even aware of all the solutions. Most people tend to know just the significant products within their enterprise and having almost half of the respondents say yes shows that open source is a player and is delivering critical business solutions. I am also intrigued by the 11.0% of the respondents who feel that open source gives them a competitive advantage. Not only are they selecting open source for its technology capabilities, but they are also leveraging the full range of benefits from cost, accessibility, rapid development, source code, community, etc to drive their business into a leadership position. As these early adopters become significant players in their respective industries there will be competitive pressure for other companies to imitate and copy the emerging market leaders. This will lead to even more open source adoption within the industry and from other markets who study how companies use technology to gain market-share. It seems to me that open source software is no longer an interesting technology alternative for IT departments to try out and consider; it is now a significant source of market disruption and innovation. Open source is now an equal player in the market and I anticipate even higher usage rates in future Gartner studies.