Open source software take-up among financial
services firms is now widespread, and is mirrored in the public
sector.
Business intelligence software firm
Actuate
questioned 600 business professionals in the UK, US and Germany to
measure open source adoption.
The main samples were taken from the financial services and
public sectors, but they were also joined by those working in
manufacturing and telecoms.
Actuate found that of UK financial services professionals, 52.1%
said their organisations were now using
Linux, and that 45.5% were using the Apache OS.
The Actuate survey is now in its second year. Overall, the
proportion of financial services respondents using open source
software has increased from 38.8% to 45.8% in a year.
When the UK financial services and public sector sample is
combined, it shows that 47.9% of organisations are using open
source.
In addition, a further 3.4% are currently in the process of
adopting open source, with a further 1.8% having plans to adopt
it.
Open source benefits cited included no licence costs (64.3%),
not being locked into Microsoft (45.2%), vendor independence
(43.5%), access to source code (42.6%), flexibility (39.1%), and
building on
open platforms (37.4%).
US open-source take-up is similar to the UK, and in Germany it
is higher, although Actuate hasn’t provided a percentage
figure.
The full results of the survey are expected to be made public at
the end of the month.
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Actuate site >>