Forrester: Europe leads in open-source adoption

France may not have shown up for the Euro 2008 soccer finals, but it continues to demonstrate the most adoption of open-source software, according to a recent report from Forrester Research ("Open Source Adoption: Notes From The Field").

In France, 24 percent of the enterprises surveyed by Forrester are currently using open-source software, with another 15 percent either piloting it or planning to start a pilot within the next year. (I'll wager that the other 61 percent are using open source but simply don't know it).

The United States? It's at 17 percent adoption, with another 11 percent in near-term pilots. Canada is tied with the States, while Germany, along with France, leads.

International Adoption of Open Source

(Credit: Forrester Research)

As noted in the comments to an earlier post, these low numbers suggest that Forrester is talking to the wrong people within enterprises. I'm confident in suggesting that at least 90 percent of these same companies that Forrester surveyed are actively using open source--but the CIO simply doesn't know it.

Even so, it's useful information to see that a greater percentage of European companies recognize their adoption of open source, with fewer misplaced concerns: only 45 percent of European companies cited open-source security as a concern, while 71 percent of U.S. and Canadian companies view security as a problem for open source.

Of much more interest to me, personally, is which companies are buying open-source software. I suspect that the United States would be tops in that survey.

[lmasanti]

I do own a Mac. How must I answer?
Mac OS X is based in the Open Source Darwin kernel: so, I'm using Open Source Software!
How Forrester evaluates "incidence" in companies: are they speaking of kernels (Linux), GUIs, applications... Full stacks, maybe?

[Kev Orng]

I'd be interested in comparing it against FireFox's market share. Wouldn't surprise me if FF's breakdown by country has similar numbers.

[ydemontcheuil]

As an open source vendor with a sizable community on both sides of the pond, and doing lots of business in Europe and in the US, I have to say that I am not surprised to see France and Germany so well positioned (Talend is getting lots of traction in these two territories) but the US are in good position also and recent successes at companies such as US Cellular, Fidelity or Rubbermaid are proving that open source adoption in the enterprise is on the rise. And I am talking about CIO level here - not grass roots.
Regarding grass roots adoption, that we track by measuring downloads by geography of our GPL product Talend Open Studio, as well as user registrations, the US lead, and we find that our numbers are proportionally consistent with global IT market sizes.