Almost all companies around the world now recognise the importance of open source. The new Red Hat State of Enterprise Open Source report, based on 950 interviews with global enterprise IT leaders, demonstrates this. Only 1% of the enterprises reject that interest.
“The question is no longer when your enterprise should adopt open source technologies. The question is when and how”, says Jim Whitehurst, CEO of Red Hat, in the report, reports ZDNet. According to the company, such technologies are therefore increasingly being used in “categories that are historically more associated with proprietary applications”. These include cloud management, security and storage.
The choice to use open source technologies is often made because it is cheaper. 33 percent of enterprise users state that the lower total cost of ownership (TCO) is the most important advantage. 29 percent decided to use such technologies because it gives them access to the latest innovations.
But also better security, higher quality software, access to support and the option to customize software are mentioned as advantages.
Worries
On the other hand, there are still some concerns about open source technologies. For example, 38 percent say that security is something they’re still worried about. If the code is not closely monitored, there is a chance that a company may be missing security patches and solutions. This was the case, for example, with Equifax, which leaked credit card data from 143 million Americans by not updating Apache Struts.
Nevertheless, the use of open source software continues to increase. Last year, 68 percent of the enterprises surveyed increased their use of such software, while only 3 percent stopped using it altogether. 59 percent expect to increase their efforts, while 2 percent see themselves running away from open source in the future.
Yet according to Red Hat, enterprises still use a lot of their own software. “Change is slow. This is mainly because proprietary programs have no answer to the innovations of open technology.
This news article was automatically translated from Dutch to give Techzine.eu a head start. All news articles after September 1, 2019 are written in native English and NOT translated. All our background stories are written in native English as well. For more information read our launch article.