A survey conducted by research firm Gartner found out that more than 85 percent of firms have adopted open source software with the rest to follow suit by next year.
The report was conducted across end-user companies in Asia/Pacific, Europe and North American markets back in May and June, before the full force of the current economic turmoil was fully felt.
The analyst firm went on to say that businesses needed a policy to monitor and control the use of open-source software within the organisation, something that Glyn Moody from ComputerworldUK, acknowledged was classic FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) from Gartner.
Only three out of 10 companies in the survey said that they did have a formal policy for Open source software usage, which according to Gartner, should shield them from any intellectual property issues that could arise in the future.
Cost was considered as a major reason why companies flocked to open source, replacing proprietary software in the process, with a fair proportion being used for mission critical applications (e.g. the LAMP stack).
Open source also apparently reduced the cost of ownership as well as reducing the development of so-called cost-prohibitive factors and reducing the complexity of procurement procedures.
Plus plans to implement open source projects generally went faster partly because of more flexible licensing.
Gartner's report found out that Customer services tops open source in businesses, followed by integration, finance, and business analytics.
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