Open source software is slowly but surely conquering the corporate segment, as evidenced by a study by the RedHat team (). The company conducted a survey among 950 IT executives around the world. Of these, 400 people work in the US, 250 in Latin America, 150 in the UK, another 150 in English-speaking companies in the Asia-Pacific region. According to the results of the survey, RedHat came to the conclusion that open source software is replacing proprietary solutions from their historical market - from the Enterprise segment.
Here's how executives assessed the importance of open source as part of the study:
By the way, the numbers of understanding the importance of open source software are only growing from year to year: in 2019, as part of the same survey, 89% of respondents called the development of open source important or very important, that is, the increase is 6% per year.
Also, 77% of respondents believe that open source software's market share will only grow. Given the reputation of the open source flagship—kernel-based systems—that intimidates non-technologists, Linux — as complex, unfriendly, and highly specific, a rating of 77% among management is an excellent indicator. However, 22% of respondents claim that the open source market will no longer grow and only 1% think it will shrink.
It is also important to note that, according to RedHat research, the share of proprietary software in the corporate segment has been declining for several years, and at a serious pace. According to the 2019 report, the share of closed solutions was 55% from all software used by the business. Now this figure decreased to 42%, and according to the forecasts and opinion of the respondents, by 2021 the volume of proprietary software in use will be reduced to 32%.
An interesting remark is that, according to 86% Respondent The most innovative companies in their fields use open source software. It turns out that the most advanced software is open source?
In fact, this statement is not so far from the truth, if you look at the actions of some large companies and their relationship with the open source community in the last decade. Back in 2014, Tesla related to the development and construction of electric vehicles in the public domain. In 2018 to keep safe Linux from legal trolls and other lawsuits. We think it's worth reminding you that MS is a platinum member. Linux Foundation and actively supports the Open Source movement (which is surprising, since historically Microsoft has been an antagonist of the free software movement and Linux in particular) - it's not worth it.
It is also surprising that main advantage open source versus proprietary solutions executives call the higher quality of the open source product against the backdrop of a similar closed solution. The lower cost is only the second reason for choosing open source. This is followed by reasons from the field of infobez, adaptability to work with cloud systems, and only the last, fifth argument - the absence of a threat to get a lawsuit.
Also, open source is pushing proprietary solutions out of their classic niches: information security, working with databases and big data.
The growth of trust in open source security solutions is particularly indicative: by the end of the decade, businesses no longer saw evil hackers everywhere, poking around in their cores. Linux and dream of stealing their data through backdoors in open-source software, and have begun to trust open-source products more than proprietary ones.
True, the business is now not worried about conditional hackers under the guise of developers, but the very quality of the code of open source products. The main barriers to a full transition to open source are the main diseases of open source software: doubts about the quality of the code base, poor support, compatibility with already built infrastructure, and a lack of qualifications of employees in the company itself for such a transition.
The respondents also shared their plans for the software infrastructure for the next two years. So, almost a third of companies will follow the golden rule “it works - don’t touch it”, that is, they will leave everything as it is and continue to use proprietary software products further, as they perform their functions and there is no need to change anything. 17% of companies in the next 24 months plan to send legacy programs to the scrap, as they cannot cope with modern tasks. The remaining 52% of respondents said that in one form or another they would update the software park in terms of upgrading or transferring software to the cloud.
Of course, RedHat's study could be considered partially biased, as the results clearly benefit the company. On the other hand, the overall trend toward open source products and the growing influence of the entire open source movement on the industry are hard to deny. Penetration Level Linux-systems in the server environment are approaching 100%, Linux Foundation is actively supported by many companies, including the corporate giant Microsoft. Open-source projects are also actively developed by other giants, such as Google, which has been making the Chromium engine available to everyone for many years.
There are many examples, so there is no reason to doubt the results of the RedHat study too much.
Source: habr.com
