Some people trust market analysts, some do not. My own position is to have a higher level of trust in those who publish research about a market or product in direct competition with one of their major clients. By doing so I (perhaps naively) believe that the chance for unintentional bias is reduced.
So, when IDC published their report on the size of the open source software market and its potential for growth in the coming years I decided to take note since one of IDC’s major clients is Microsoft, a company that is certainly in competition with some of the significant open source success stories.
So what does the report say? Well, it’s difficult to say, I don’t have access to the full report, only to the press release. The highlights in the release are:
- Worldwide revenue from standalone open source software reached $1.8 billion in 2006.
- This revenue will reach $5.8 billion in 2011, representing a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 26% from 2006 to 2011.
- Software vendors are advised to consider several factors when evaluating how best to leverage open source software as a business opportunity, including the most appropriate business model, the appropriate usage of partnerships and alliances, and the characteristics of the community supporting the open source software.
OSS Watch are here to help with “evaluating how best to leverage open source software”. We are able to provide advice and guidance on how UK Education institutions can leverage open source software either as a revenue generator from spin-off companies, for cost reduction or for business and community engagement.Please contact us if you would like any assistance with any aspect of open source development.
There is no question that the income of open source is continuing to rise – but how does this fit into the income of software in general? I would like to believe that the percentage of open source software income is growing in the overall software market, but I haven’t found anything that demonstrates this.
Good data, btw. I just want to see how open source has increased its hold over the years.
Hi Taran, Good to hear from you (for those who know Taran or myself, we know one another from the time I spent living and working in Taran’s native homeland of Trinidad and Tobago, if you need to know what is happening with respect to open source in that part of the world, Taran is a good starting point).
With respect to your point, I agree. Having hard data comparing the revenue growth of closed source against the revenue growth of open source would be useful. I wonder if anyone reading here knows of any such data.
Of course some peeple may still mistakenly think that open source is free, as in beer – and may be surprised by such figures. And others may think that open source that open source is about eradication of western capitalism – which these figures don’t support.
More seriously, isn’t there a danger that proprietary vendors could use such figures to demonstrate how expensive deployment of open source software is liekly to be?
Brian Kelly
Brian wonders… “isn’t there a danger that proprietary vendors could use such figures to demonstrate how expensive deployment of open source software is likely to be?”
They may, but then they would have to prove that open source software is either more expensive or less appropriate than their closed source alternatives. Sometimes this will be the case, sometimes it will not. What we, at OSS Watch, want to see happening is organisations choose the best solution for their needs, sometimes this will be the least expensive, sometimes the most expensive, sometimes the most polished, sometimes the most flexible etc.
A valid purchasing decision does not only consider price.
The important thing from this report is that it shows income can be generated from open source product. This should have the effect of increasing business involvement in open source development.
Of course, it would be nice to follow up this post with some hard evidence that open source also reduces cost, unfortunately, the only data I know of in this area tends to be fairly ad hoc or limited in scope and is therefore of little use in most business cases.