Germany Top Dog For Open Source Adoption

By Greg McNevin

June 21, 2007: According to a new survey of IT procurement officers, German companies models of open source adoption, with more that 59 percent of companies currently using open source software.

This makes Germany a world leader in the use of open source software, with the United Kingdom and North America lagging well behind with 48 and 38 percent respectively.

Conducted by the business intelligence and performance management specialist Actuate, the study canvassed over 600 senior business and IT professionals from the three countries, and found that 80 percent of those surveyed cited no licensing fees as the main benefit of open source.

Respondents claimed that open source was more flexible as it offers access to the source code, it offers greater accountability via its open platform and it stops them from being locked in to proprietary software such as Microsoft’s offerings.

Long-term support and lack of familiarity are still notable drawbacks, however, according to 60 percent of those surveyed the benefits outweigh these concerns.

The survey also found that 23.6 percent of respondents are currently using open source business intelligence, while 31.2 percent are likely or very likely to consider using open source business intelligence solutions in the future.

“These survey results show that Open Source software is moving into the mainstream and that Open Source is rising in influence,” said Mark Madsen, president of Third Nature and faculty at The Data Warehousing Institute (TDWI). “One surprising note is that one-third of the organizations surveyed are now likely to consider Open Source business intelligence in their evaluations. This is a huge shift from just a few years ago.”

A healthy 70 percent also believe open source software should be used when new software is deployed.

“This year’s survey has yielded a tremendous response with more than 600 senior business and IT professionals taking the time to give us a unique snapshot of their views and insights into Open Source software adoption trends, especially in the BI market,” said Nobby Akiha, senior vice president of Marketing at Actuate.

“The survey results illustrate that there is increased demand for Open Source. The results also help us set our strategic direction to meet the demands of our customers and to assist organizations with their current business challenges.”

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