I recently read the results of a survey by Computer Weekly and ResearchNow Business. The Computer Weekly IT Panel was launched in April 2009 and comprises almost 4,000 IT professionals working in a range of organization types, size, and business sectors.

These results confirm the growing adoption of open source technologies, and attribute it to the weak economic environment. To the question: In light of the economy, how likely is it that your business will use open source software in the future? only 29% of companies replied that they do not intend to use such technology. 26% already use open source, and 45% are thinking about using open source either throughout the company, or for a smaller project. The study determined that the “use of open source software appeared to be more common among smaller organizations, i.e., those with fewer than 50 employees and less than £10 million in revenue.”

While this is nice to hear, it only reflects part of the truth. Certainly, facing a slowing global economy, open source remains an essential alternative for companies seeking to reduce their costs. However, this is only one of the benefits – albeit the most common – attributable to open source.

Let’s look at some others, in no particular order:

• Open source also gives control of the code to users and thus scalability.
• Open source offers opportunities for customization that only an army of consultants could provide for a proprietary solution (and I’m not talking about the cost of implementation).
• Open source standards-based technology facilitates the integration of other tools – open source or proprietary – and blends seamlessly into a company’s IT system.
• Open source offers performance similar, or superior, to traditional solutions.
• Open source is generally based on a community that participates in development and is involved in product improvement. The community also contributes to knowledge transfer via forums, wikis, or online courses.
• Open source provides user-friendly features, designed for the majority of users.

Quite a lot, but this isn’t an exhaustive list. I haven’t mentioned reliability or security. And we have nothing to be ashamed of in these areas.

So, of course open source can help reduce business costs, but if you only think about it on that level, I don’t think many companies will rush to purchase.

Bertrand