The year ahead: Open source smackdown ahead in 2007

Companies will eye new products, delivery mechanisms and support options for open source products at an accelerated rate

By Jennifer Mears, Network World, 12/20/06

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Now that Linux has become a data center mainstay, companies in 2007 should be taking a closer look at open source applications and how they can meet traditional business needs, industry experts say.

“In 2007, the discussions of open source in the enterprise will focus far less on technological details and far more on alignment with business goals and benefits, and on integration with incumbent resources and skills,” says Michael Dortch, director of IT infrastructure management strategies at the Robert Frances Group. “Open source in 2007 will continue growing ever closer to enterprise IT and business mainstreams.”

Indeed, the last few months of 2006 – with Oracle announcing full support for Red Hat and Microsoft striking a deal with Novell – illustrate the changes underway in the open source world as acceptance grows and traditional, proprietary vendors jockey to get position in the developing market.

“Microsoft’s announcement and Oracle’s announcement were really a wake-up call, a big spotlight on ‘Guess what, open source is going to go beyond the Linux kernel,’” says Brian Stevens, CTO at Red Hat.

Traditional enterprise vendors such as HP, IBM and Sun, in addition to Microsoft and Oracle, are looking at ways to widen their embrace of open source. Sun, for example, released its Solaris operating system under its own open source license last year but is considering using the GNU General Public License Version 3 when it is finalized in 2007. Sun released Java under the GPL last November.

At the same time, smaller start-ups are getting a boost as venture capitalists continue to pour money into open source efforts. In addition, companies such as SpikeSource and OpenLogic, which sell and support integrated software stacks that include open source components, are getting more attention from enterprise users looking to fit open source into legacy environments.

The software-as-a-service model, which in general is getting more IT attention, may also play a part in making open source more accessible in 2007 by giving companies without deep resources an easy way to tap into the free software, analysts say.

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