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Five Main Advantages of Open Source for Enterprise Solutions

Nothing will slow the progress and increased adoption of open software
By Bertrand Diard
Article Rating:
February 28, 2008 06:15 AM EST
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 10,620
Nothing will slow the progress and increased adoption of open software. What was traditionally viewed as developer and infrastructure tools has quickly infiltrated the enterprise environment.

The public sector was one of the first to initiate the trend. For example 400,000 workstations in the French administration have already migrated to Open Office. Other players of the public sector have also started to switch to open source technologies: in the United States (City of Largo in Florida, University of Nebraska, Colorado Department of Human Services, City of Chicago, etc.), in France (National Gendarmerie, Ministry of Finance, National Assembly, etc.), and the rest of the world (Cities of Munich and Amsterdam, Swedish National Police, libraries in Romania, schools in Macedonia, Russia and Venezuela; etc.). Even if, according to a study by the University of Maastricht, contributions and innovations are mainly European (70 percent of open source developers are based in Europe), the U.S. has the highest usage rate within enterprises and government agencies. However, according to Markess International, investment in open source from the IT budgets of the public sector is expected to go up from 7 percent in 2006, to 11 percent in 2007, to 14 percent in 2009.

Open Source on Every Floor!
We already know that open source software is widely present within companies’ infrastructures: security (firewall, IPS-IDS, sniffer, proxy, antivirus, anti-spam, etc.), operating systems (workstations, network, scientific computers, etc.), databases, and Web browsers.

Today, however, open source technology can also be found in the lower layers of companies’ or government agencies’ information systems. They are also deployed in the higher layers (business applications) as well as the middleware layers (non-visible to the user) like Talend Open Studio, Talend's flagship data integration product.

For instance, some common business applications include the OpenBravo or Compiere ERPs, the SQL Ledger accounting system, CRM systems such as SugarCRM or Concursive (formerly CentricCRM), BI suites like JasperSoft's or SpagoBI. In summary, five open source segments are particularly appreciated in the business world: enterprise applications (office automation, management, CRM, content management, business intelligence); development tools (applications, collaboration, project management); Web servers and application software (middleware, Enterprise Server Bus, integration, portals); and databases and operating systems.

Published February 28, 2008 – Reads 10,620
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More Stories By Bertrand Diard

Bertrand Diard is co-founder and chief executive officer of Talend. He is also a founding member, Open Solutions Alliance. Prior to co-founding Talend, he was managing a Business Unit of one of the largest European systems integrators. Bertrand has extensive experience with managing large integration projects.

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