Gartner: More than half of IT organizations deploy open-source software

Uh-oh, Microsoft, perhaps it's time for a new "Get the Facts" campaign. You told the world that open-source software really wasn't cheaper or as easy to manage as commercial products. Well, only about half of IT organizations believed you.

Today, Gartner released findings that more than one-half of IT organizations use open-source software, based on a survey of 547 IT organizations from 11 countries. To my surprise, the survey data isn't exactly fresh, having been conducted in July and August 2010. Well, it's not like most companies change platforms very often, so perhaps six months is fresh enough. Gartner refers to open-source software as OSS.

My, how times have changed. Less than 10 percent of IT organizations used open-source software five years ago. The number rose to 30 percent three-and-a-half years ago. Gartner noted a proportional drop in commercial software usage, which surely is no coincidence. Most organizations now use commercial and open-source software side by side, particularly for homegrown projects.

What Gartner didn't say but I will: This presents a problem for enterprise software vendors like Microsoft. The company pushes products like Office System and SharePoint Server as platforms around which IT can develop internal software. During Microsoft's fiscal 2011 second quarter, the Business division delivered handsome results, with revenue up 24 percent buoyed by strong Office 2010 sales. However, the division's non-annuity revenue grew by 40 percent compared to just 9 percent growth for annuity contracts. Businesses purchasing this way are least likely to upgrade to the next Office version or even the one after. The break-even point between a one-off sale and annuity license is 3.5 years. Presumably then, many IT organizations aren't planning on upgrading from Office 2010 any sooner than 3.5 years, and more likely longer. The buying behavior also suggests many IT organizations aren't accepting other so-called upgrade and other "Software Assurance" benefits. Organizations buying into the annuity contract program would have more incentive to use Microsoft platforms for internal software projects.

So what's the matter here? "Gaining a competitive advantage has emerged as a significant reason for adopting an OSS solution, suggesting that users are beginning to look at OSS differently -- if they can customize the code to make it unique to their company, they have created a competitive advantage," Laurie Wurster, a Gartner research director, said in a statement.

It's easy to dismiss the "over half" of businesses as one-off, here-and-there projects. That's not the case. Twenty-two percent of respondents have deployed open-source software to all departments. Forty-six percent of IT organizations use open-source for specific projects or select departments. That said, only about one-third of organizations have a formal open-source policy in place. Gartner didn't say, but I will: That's good for Microsoft, Oracle and other major commercial software vendors' with active and established marketing, sales and developer support services.

"As external service providers emerge to support commercial offerings, OSS is and will continue to be used in both non-mission-critical and mission-critical environments," Wurster said in the statement. "With greater in-depth understanding and access to the necessary skill sets, end-user organizations will continue to find new deployment of OSS. Although a search for reducing costs by adopting OSS continues to be a major driver, with this survey we see more respondents looking at OSS as having much-greater value than simply getting something for free."

What value do they get? Gartner identified the key categories where IT organizations use open-source software:

• Data management and integration
• Application development, integration, architecture, governance and/or overhaul
• Business process improvement or re-engineering
• Security, risk and/or compliance
• Data center modernization and consolidation
• Virtualization

"Based on these results, we see that OSS components and building blocks are utilized together with internally developed software to augment and enhance existing systems through integration and automation, as well as to improve business efficiencies and security," Bob Igou, a Gartner research director, said in a statement.