I've spent quite a bit of time talking about the impact of the financial crisis on the software industry, no surprise, it's a top of mind topic. If you've read my post on the crisis and my take on the growth of SaaS because of the economic factors you'll know that although times are indeed bad for the industry there are some bright spots. In these conversations open source software (OSS) often comes up. The question of course, is will OSS benefit in a similar way to SaaS, with the crisis driving more mainstream adoption? It's a great question and one that I've thought about quite a bit. On one had it seems simple, why wouldn't customers seek out more economical ways of consuming technology? But...on the other, when it comes to OSS the answers have never been simple.
IDC recently conducted an extensive end user survey on OSS adoption. The survey findings are extensive and can be found in two parts, part 1 already published as IDC Doc# 215033 and part 2 coming out next week as IDC Doc #215185. I won't rehash those findings, which compare a similar survey conducted in 2007 to the post 2008 crisis events of Sept results, but there are a few data points that are worth considering related to the current topic. The first interesting data points, the key inhibitors to adoption in the 2007 survey, availability of support and the risk of copyright / patent infringement have completely reversed perception and are considered drivers of adoption in the 2008 survey (I'd say good job OSS vendors for turning these two around!!). In the 2008 survey over 50% of the respondents allocated 10-24% of budget in 2008 (in 2007 over 50% were less than 10%). I can go on here, but you get the idea. End users seem to be much more open to using OSS, although the greatest growth is in the system infrastructure software and applications (away from app development and deployment OSS). SO, the conclusion, well, I guess we'll have to see what next year brings, but in my opinion, if the OSS vendors can continue to turn perceptions in a positive way, 2009 could be a significant turning point for OSS adoption. I also believe that if the current growth of business process outsourcing (BPO) continues, a secondary OSS market could catch fire as BPO providers look for the lowest cost alternatives in an increasingly competitive market driven by extremely cost conscious customers.
