Actuate's 2007 survey of enterprise adoption of open source is out, and the results point to a massive groundswell of open-source adoption. Actuate surveyed 602 senior IT executives and discovered a widespread interest in and use of open-source software.
This survey is particularly useful because it tracks attitudes and adoption patterns of open source across three different vertical markets: financial services, public sector, and telco. It's particularly focused on the United States, but also reveals data for the United Kingdom and Germany. (As with other surveys on the U.K., the Actuate survey shows the U.K. trailing other mature markets in open-source adoption.)
Here are some of the most interesting data from the research:
Only one-fifth of respondents (20.9 percent) describe their organization's level of familiarity with open-source software as 'high,' with a further 43.8 percent rating it as 'moderate.' More than a quarter of respondents (29.1 percent) think their organization's level of familiarity with open source software is 'low.' To me, this says that the market for open source is wide open and can only grow as understanding of open source grows. (Interestingly, this level of familiarity is roughly the same across financial services, the public sector, and telco respondents.) (6)…
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