Research shows that all large enterprises have an enormous appreciation for open-source software. The enterprises feel that the use of open-source brings benefits to their businesses.
The survey was conducted by Percona, a company that offers open-source database software and related services. The company interviewed 200 IT decision-makers in the past month to discuss their experiences with the services Percona offers. 25 percent of the respondents worked at medium-sized companies with 500 to 1,000 employees, and 75 percent worked at larger companies with at least 1,000 employees.
Especially large enterprises are moving to the cloud
According to Percona, larger companies, in particular, have moved their databases and applications to cloud services. Only 15 percent of large companies still have their data stored on-premises, compared to 29 percent of medium-sized companies. This transition has accelerated considerably in the past year because of the Covid-19 pandemic, Percona said. However, this did lead to an increase in costs as 63 percent said cloud infrastructure had become more expensive in the past year.
More usage of open-source software
However, 79 percent of respondents said they had increased their use of open-source software in the past year. When asked what the benefits of this were, 63 percent said that it led to more innovation, 58 percent thought that such software was more secure, for 50 percent the price tag was more attractive, and 21 percent were trying to avoid vendor lock-in.
Concerns about licences
There also appear to be concerns about changes to open-source licences. Percona refers to licenses such as the Business Source License and the Server Side Public License. The first licence delays the step to a fully open-source model by three years. The second licence gives third parties less freedom to manipulate the software. Elastic recently felt compelled to switch to that licence after AWS based its own product on Elastic’s software without contributing to Elastic’s project.
Almost half of the respondents are concerned about such changes. They fear that costs will increase (44 percent), people will be tied to a vendor (37 percent), there will be less interaction from the open-source community (34 percent), and it will hinder growth in the open-source market (26 percent).
Contributions from cloud providers
Public cloud providers themselves can also contribute to open-source, for example, by offering better security, according to 59 percent of respondents. Another way is to encourage open-source cooperation, says 48 percent. Improving the quality of existing code and enabling open source to run on their cloud is each suggested by 43 percent of respondents.
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