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Open Source Skills Opening Doors |
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The use of open source software is undergoing explosive growth and that is driving demand for IT professionals with open source skills in the enterprise, according to a new report.
The report published by O’Reilly Radar, titled Open Source in the Enterprise, finds that with IT budgets under the microscope at many companies, the economics of open source software are proving harder to resist.
“Enterprise IT organizations are experiencing significant stress,” writes the report’s author Bernard Golden. “Many are faced with dictates from their parent companies to reduce overall IT spending by 3-5% every year, combined with inflation, that means that in real terms, IT is living on 7-8% less budget each year.”
The end result is that despite reluctance to use open source software, because of concerns over security, reliability and support, more companies are being driven to investigate where and how it can be used.
Golden admits it is difficult to get an exact handle on how many organizations are using open source software. A traditional method of measuring use – vendor reports – is obviously missing. Open source downloads, however, paint a pretty convincing picture.
Downloads from SourceForge (www.sourceforge.net), one of the largest Internet repositories for open source software, are growing at a compound rate of 55%. The number of projects hosted by the site has grown from around 12,500 in 2000 to nearly 200,000 at the end of 2007. Similarly, downloads have rocketed more than 7,000% in the same time frame to just under 800 million. The site is on track to top 1 billion this year.
As Golden states, many enterprises are uncomfortable with software that does not come wrapped with sales and support contracts. So why is he confident enterprises are adopting open source? By following the job trail.
The O’Reilly Research Group analyzed its database of job postings at large enterprises and found that open source recruitment represented somewhere between 5% and 15% of total IT recruitment at those organizations. Obviously, organizations would not be recruiting for those skills if they weren’t taking open source seriously.
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