Enterprise content management (ECM) firm Alfresco Software’s latest research uncovers some interesting pointers about how companies are evaluating and deploying open-source software. The short version is: not in the same way as they are deploying other types of software.

Alfresco’s Open Source Barometer aims to take a regular reading of how, where and why companies are deploying open-source software. It is far from empirical as the only respondents are users of its own open-source software. However, it is far-reaching, based on some 35,000 responses to its most recent poll, and skewed towards large organisations. It is a fascinating insight into the still immature and fast-changing open-source world.

Among the most significant trends unearthed by Alfresco is that open-source software does not exist in a silo but is typically blended with, and even resides on, proprietary software. For example, when Alfresco asked about evaluation, 40 per cent of respondents said they used Windows to road-test the software, compared with 35 per cent on Linux. This is in spite of the fact that many more actual deployments are on Linux than on Windows.

That split suggests that open-source developers that do not have a Windows-based option could be missing out on attracting business adopters to at least look at their offerings. Also, it is clear that many firms will skip traditional vendor selection procedures when looking at open-source software, perhaps because of perceptions that there is a low risk and low cost associated.

“It’s a tongue-in-cheek statement but Windows is good for open source because that’s where people start to use it,” said Ian Howells, chief marketing officer of Alfresco. “People will look at four or five vendors, see if they can make it work, and then make a quick decision. They download it to their laptops, try to get it going, and make a choice.”

Incidentally, the Alfresco data also backs up other polls suggesting that very few users are running Vista ­ just two per cent, compared with 63 per cent on XP and 28 per cent who are Windows 2003 loyalists. Even the venerable Windows 2000 hosts many more Alfresco users than Vista.

On Linux, two companies appear to be sprinting away from the rest; Ubuntu with 23 per cent and Red Hat Enterprise Linux on 35 per cent. As for databases, 60 per cent are running the open-source leader and recent Sun purchase MySQL, compared with 14 per cent on Oracle and 13 per cent on SQL Server.

With application servers there is also a clear open-source leader in Tomcat with
a 70 per cent share, ahead of JBoss with just 18 per cent.

What is interesting is that firms that adopt open source seem to be creating a snowball effect, with certain companies already having achieved critical mass. Already, Red Hat for Linux, MySQL in databases, and OpenOffice in productivity applications are clear leaders in their categories. “There’s a network effect,” said Howells. “It’s in nobody’s interest to have eight packages.”

Another interesting trend is in geographical patterns of open-source adoption. Whereas in proprietary software, North America tends to be dominant in sales, and European sales approximately follow size of economies, open source fluctuates wildly, with Spain, for example, being an enthusiastic consumer and the UK lagging.

As an example, in Alfresco’s poll of desktop applications suite usage, OpenOffice is very popular in France and Germany but only half as popular in the UK.
Also, some programs are hugely popular in some geographies and much less so in others. In Germany, for example, Suse Linux is four times more popular than Red Hat, but Red Hat is far larger elsewhere.

This can partly be explained by relative enthusiasm of governments and the need to drive down costs but there may also be cultural factors at play, with some companies keen to support local firms and challenge the dominance of the US
in enterprise software.

Also, patterns of adoption appear to be viral in open-source software, with positive feedback quickly circulating via the web.

“It’s not a normal distribution pattern,” said Alfresco’s Howells. “Usually when you start a software company, you create demand for it in a sector and no one outside even knows who you are. For example, when we set up Documentum we created demand in pharmaceuticals. But in open source you get this long-tail effect.”

Clearly, open-source software is still at an early stage in its development but the certainties of proprietary software may be replaced by a more complex pattern
of adoption.

“When we started, we asked ourselves should we start on a Lamp [Linux, Apache, MySQL, Perl/PHP/Python] stack rather than a Sun/Oracle/BEA stack,” Howells said. “But we found out quickly that just because it’s an open-source program, it’s not all on Lamp, and adoption varies by geography and many other factors.”