Open Source Market Steams Ahead

June 6, 2007: According to the analysts at IDC, the growth of the open source software market is accelerating with it worth US$1.8 billion in 2006, and expected to jump to US$5.8 billion in 2011.

IDC has found that the open source market is undergoing a hefty period of growth, with many businesses now coming to the realisation that they have more options than just proprietary software. Due to this, IDC foresees the market’s worth increasing at 26% per year for the next four years.

It also found that businesses are increasingly tuning in to software as a service and subscription-based models of payment, making it much easier for them to adapt to the overall open source mindset.

“We are in the early stages of the development and deployment of OSS," said Matt Lawton, program director of IDC's Open Source Software Business Models research program. “The market is still quite immature, especially now that we see active open-source projects in all layers of the software stack.”

Even if they aren’t plunging into the open source world, IDC notes that many are finding they can use open source software as a bargaining tool when speaking with vendors.

Either way a bit of healthy competition is a good thing, and with open source solutions gaining momentum by the day businesses are the ultimate winners.

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