Companies will eye new products, delivery mechanisms and support options for open source products at an accelerated rate
Now that Linux has become a data center mainstay, companies in 2007 should be taking a closer look at open source applications and how they can meet traditional business needs, industry experts say.
Now that Linux has become a data center mainstay, companies in 2007 should be taking a closer look at open source applications and how they can meet traditional business needs, industry experts say.
“In 2007, the discussions of open source in the enterprise will focus far less on technological details and far more on alignment with business goals and benefits, and on integration with incumbent resources and skills,” says Michael Dortch, director of IT infrastructure management strategies at the Robert Frances Group. “Open source in 2007 will continue growing ever closer to enterprise IT and business mainstreams.”
Indeed, the last few months of 2006 – with Oracle announcing full support for Red Hat and Microsoft striking a deal with Novell – illustrate the changes underway in the open source world as acceptance grows and traditional, proprietary vendors jockey to get position in the developing market.
“Microsoft’s announcement and Oracle’s announcement were really a wake-up call, a big spotlight on ‘Guess what, open source is going to go beyond the Linux kernel,’” says Brian Stevens, CTO at Red Hat.
Traditional enterprise vendors such as HP, IBM and Sun, in addition to Microsoft and Oracle, are looking at ways to widen their embrace of open source. Sun, for example, released its Solaris operating system under its own open source license last year but is considering using the GNU General Public License Version 3 when it is finalized in 2007. Sun released Java under the GPL last November.
At the same time, smaller start-ups are getting a boost as venture capitalists continue to pour money into open source efforts. In addition, companies such as SpikeSource and OpenLogic, which sell and support integrated software stacks that include open source components, are getting more attention from enterprise users looking to fit open source into legacy environments.
The software-as-a-service model, which in general is getting more IT attention, may also play a part in making open source more accessible in 2007 by giving companies without deep resources an easy way to tap into the free software, analysts say.
“There are these indirect ways in which open source will become available to user organizations, which will remove one of the biggest inhibitors in bringing in open source: looking after its deployment,” says Nikos Drakos, research director at Gartner. “The possibility is to have it as a service, the SugarCRM model.”
IDC, in fact, expects open source services revenues — which include not only software-as-a-service and outsourcing but also consulting, implementation, support and training dollars — to nearly double between 2006 and 2010, growing from $2.6 million to $5.1 million.
With the market fast expanding, there will be more for companies to think about in 2007 when it comes to open source software, not only because of the growing number of players and support scenarios but also because of the growing number of viable projects.
No longer niche, open source is proving its worth in a variety of areas. Xen will be in both major Linux distributions, as well as in Solaris in 2007, giving the open source virtualization technology legitimacy.
Linux on the desktop is another area that should get more attention in 2007, especially with Ubuntu enhancing its popular desktop software for enterprise customers.
“The Ubuntu desktop, especially with the new eye candy, has taken a lot of people by surprise,” says Dave Jenkins, CTO at online outdoor sporting goods retailer Backcountry.com in Park City, Utah. “People will be taking a long hard look at Microsoft Vista, which raises the whole desktop question for IT managers, and Ubuntu may get a bit of a bump from that.”
As for support issues, there may be confusion in 2007 as some proprietary vendors acquire open source companies, while others make their proprietary software available as open source. Intalio, for example, which has released bits and pieces of its software to the open source community, says it plans to make its entire business process management suite open source early in 2007.
“Enterprises need to think about having an internal point person who is responsible for the support infrastructure for open source,” says Raven Zachary, senior analyst at The 451 Group. “I’m not advocating people should give up their support relationships with these vendors, but companies need to start thinking about having a greater level of ownership of the open source support problem.
“In 2007, I think we’ll start seeing companies hiring open source technologists a bit more than they used to, to be the liaison with these open source support providers,” he says. “So they can have more of a sense of internal ownership and internal control over their open source issues.”
