Open source adoption set to rise

Gartner says proprietary software market will suffer as a result

Open source software will take away 22 per cent of the traditional software market over the next five years, according to research firm Gartner.

Analysts at the company believe the market will expand as small and medium size business customers adopt more open source software to keep costs low.

Gartner analyst Laurie Wurster says most open source growth will be in areas like application development tools and integration software.

'Customers are looking at tools like databases, and realising they don't need the sophistication offered by proprietary software,' she said.

'In fact, 70 per cent of those who are purchasing open source systems are doing so in preference to software from traditional vendors.'

Wurster also says she has found that many business users are starting to look at enterprise resource and customer management systems.

'If they actually move to implementing those kinds of open source systems, it could have an even broader impact than that which we are currently predicting,' she said.

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