{"id":1828,"date":"2009-09-30T11:28:26","date_gmt":"2009-09-30T10:28:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/1828-uk-lagging-europe-in-open-source-adoption.html"},"modified":"2009-09-30T11:28:26","modified_gmt":"2009-09-30T10:28:26","slug":"uk-lagging-europe-in-open-source-adoption","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/1828-uk-lagging-europe-in-open-source-adoption.html","title":{"rendered":"UK lagging rest of Europe in open source adoption"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sun conducted a survey of small and medium-sized businesses (up to 500 employees) to discover their usage and intentions towards open source software and MySQL in particular. I was interested to see the report, particularly after attending an open source round table<\/a> last week about open source software in government.<\/p>\n

The researchers interviewed around 100 people in each of 7 European countries, targetting the \u201cCIO or IT-Manager\u201d. The results were surprising to me. Only 34% of UK (or England; the report uses both terms and does not seem to understand the difference) businesses claim to use open source software, versus 72% in France and 69% in Germany. The only country with lower usage is Sweden on 33%.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m sceptical. It seems to me that you have to make some effort to use no open source software anywhere in your business. A web site with PHP and MySQL. Someone editing audio with Audacity<\/a>, or  using Firefox<\/a> to browse the web, or Filezilla<\/a> to upload files. Still, let\u2019s take the report at face value for the moment.<\/p>\n

Another question is more interesting, asking what percentage of a business\u2019s IT infrastructure is open source. <\/p>\n

Even in Germany, the biggest user, only 2% claimed to be completely open source. 72% were less than half open source, and 31% did not use it at all.<\/p>\n

In the UK, none were completely open source, 84% less than half, and 66% have no perceived usage.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a good result though: among UK companies that do use open source, 65% use it for critical projects. This figure is actually above the European average.<\/p>\n

Another striking figure: the biggest driver for open source adoption is to save money (61% in the UK, 66% in Germany). Next comes freedom from lock-in (34% in the UK, 53% in Germany), and after that flexibility (20% in the UK, 34% in Germany). Multi-selection must have been possible as figures add to more than 100%.<\/p>\n

This last one gives me pause for thought. Most IT companies claim to save you money; it\u2019s part of the standard sales pitch. Open source software generally does though, partly because the whole concept is a form of commoditization, or pooling of resources for mutual benefit. Is it inevitable that if if open source continues to increase its usage share (as most indicators suggest), that overall revenue in the IT industry will diminish? <\/p>\n

You can pose the same question substituting \u201ccloud computing\u201d for \u201copen source\u201d; both together could have a substantial impact.<\/p>\n

Technorati Tags: open source<\/a>,sun<\/a>,mysql<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sun conducted a survey of small and medium-sized businesses (up to 500 employees) to discover their usage and intentions towards open source software and MySQL in particular. I was interested to see the report, particularly after attending an open source round table last week about open source software in government. The researchers interviewed around 100 … Continue reading UK lagging rest of Europe in open source adoption<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62,85],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1828","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-open-source","category-sun"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1828","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1828"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1828\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}