Open Source in the Enterprise: 2008 Predictions

Here are the main 2008 predictions included in the Open Solutions Alliance survey:

The confluence of open-source and software-as-a-service (SaaS) models.

"These are the two most powerful trends in software today, and while they've traditionally been seen as separate, parallel developments, they are rapidly combining to create the new business model for enterprise software," said William A. Soward, CEO of Adaptive Planning, an open-source budgeting, forecasting and reporting software company.

No one region will lead the charge in terms of adoptions of open-source software, but each will have its area of strength.

"There are certain markets that have always been historically more embracing of the notion of open source, such as public sector bodies in Europe, compared to the U.S. where open source is more prolific in private organizations," said David Richards, CEO of Concursive Corp., an open-source customer relationship management company. "But implementation in Asia will be much more rapid than in the U.S."

A shake-out among open-source business models.

"We've seen a lot of open-source entrants into a number of categories of software," said Javier Soltero, CEO of Hyperic, an open-source systems management software company. "Most of these companies will be transitioning from 'advocacy and awareness' mode into 'make money' mode and it's in that latter phase that we'll see whose models work and whose don't."

Consolidation will come.

"Watch for consolidation among open source organizations as a way to strengthen their offerings and development efforts as well as acquisitions of open source market leaders by large commercial vendors who have a desire to expand their market reach and revenue stream," said Mark Tolliver, CEO of Palamida, an open-source IP management company.

License issues are becoming less of a factor in decision making by commercial customers.

"Customers continue to get educated about the code they use and about open source licensing in general, so FUD will have less of a factor than in the past," said Kim Polese, CEO of SpikeSource, an open-source application integration platform.

Interoperability between open source and closed source solutions.

"As enterprise open source solutions become more prevalent and more mission critical in the information system, they will need to interoperate with all systems," says Bertrand Diard, CEO of Talend, an open-source data integration software company. "Most information systems are heterogeneous and rely on multiple technologies, open source and closed source, that all need to interoperate. This will be the main challenge faced by most open source vendors in 2008," he adds.